While this has no new info on how a person can survive a lightning-strike, it points out another unanswered question about charge distribution in Earth's atmosphere, and how unmanned aerial drones may help solve this mystery.
And check out the cool pic of a lightning strike on a launch (by clicking on the first graphic/diagram in the NASA article)! http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/30oct_lightning.htm?list818490 "...If you could see the invisible force fields around magnets and clothes that have "static cling," a storm on the horizon would look very different. Engulfing and dwarfing the storm clouds, ghostly ribbons of huge magnetic and electric fields would arch high above the thunder clouds to the top of the atmosphere, and would sprawl downward from the clouds like tendrils groping the landscape. These invisible fields are always in motion, swelling and contorting as the storm clouds churn, lurching suddenly as lightning bolts strike. "Scientists have long assumed that this mostly hidden side of thunderstorms serves as the electrical "pump" that maintains a huge difference in charge between the earth's surface and an upper layer of the atmosphere called the ionosphere. There's a voltage drop between the two, measuring somewhere between 150,000 and 600,000 volts. Left to itself, this difference should naturally balance out in about 15 minutes, but it doesn't...All the cloud-to-ground lightning strikes occurring over the whole planet--about 15 strikes per second--don't move enough electric current to maintain the charge difference seen. Something else must be happening..." Debbi Yesterday I Wore A T-shirt, Tonight It May Snow Maru __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
