Lighting Caught on Slow-Mo Camera Is Mesmerizing to Watch

Nature is beautiful. Even in this day and age when virtual reality has taken over our daily lives, natural phenomena continue to amaze people. The latest nature craze trend is a video of a lighting caught on slow-mo that went viral short after it was posted.

Natural electrical discharges, or thunders, have sparked the interest of humans since the dawn of time. Viktor Frankenstein used its power to create his famous monster, Benjamin Franklin played with a key and a kite and discovered a way to use electricity for domestic purposes.

Normally, when thunder hits we only see a short flash of light and a sort of zig-zag shape in the sky. However, the entire event is much more beautiful and sophisticated and a professor at the Institute of Technology in Florida, Ningyu Liu, managed to capture all of the mesmerizing details thanks to a next-generation video camera.

According to the viral video, when lighting strikes, it branches out, its shape being closer to that of a tree than of a simple zig-zag. Naturally, the event happens so fast, that our eyes can only perceive a fraction of the entire phenomena. That’s how the stereotypical shape was popularized.

In the short video, that replays the event that usually happens in a fraction of second in 29 seconds, the viewers can clearly see that lighting is capable of striking in multiple places at the same time. The shape of the electrical discharge reminds people of that of a wide branched tree. Its actual size also explains why thunder sometimes sounds like thousands of cannons are firing at the same time.

The instrument that Liu used to capture the breathtaking slow motion video will be used in other research that is set on “capturing and studying the dynamics and energetics of the upward electrical discharges from thunderstorms known as starters, jets and gigantic jets.”

Scientists have been using high-speed cameras in order to film detailed actions for quite some time now. A couple of months ago, a team of American researchers published a comprehensive study on how sneezing works. In order to reach their conclusions, they filmed multiple people while sneezing and then replayed the videos in slow motion.

You can check out the viral video below.