|How fast is lightning? Lightning, in fact, moves not only too
fast for humans to see, but so fast that humans can't even tell
which direction it is moving. The above lightning stroke did not
move too fast, however, for this extremely high time resolution
video to resolve. Tracking at an incredible 7,207 frames per
second, actual time can be seen progressing at the video bottom.
The above lightning bolt starts with many simultaneously
creating ionized channels branching out from an negatively
charged pool of electrons and ions that has somehow been created
by drafts and collisions in a rain cloud. About 0.015 seconds
after appearing -- which takes about 3 seconds in the above
time-lapse video -- one of the meandering charge leaders makes
contact with a suddenly appearing positive spike moving up from
the ground and an ionized channel of air is created that
instantly acts like a wire. Immediately afterwards, this hot
channel pulses with a tremendous amount of charges shooting back
and forth between the cloud a