#superbolt

A superbolt-producing lightning flash captured by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper over the southeastern United States in 2019.The lightning flash spanned several hundred kilometers and lasted nearly 7 seconds.

On April 2,1978,Vela the spy satellite,which monitors nuclear explosions,detected a double flash,indicating that a nuclear bomb possibly had been dropped on the small mining community of Bell Island off the coast of Newfoundland.However,it is unlikely that the Cold War would suddenly and dramatically heat up in Newfoundland and it was quickly to be confirmed that the area hadn't been subjected to a nuclear explosion.Vela wasn't detect normal lightning because the light from a nuclear bomb is much brighter than them,but what it detected was a "super lightning" that was more than 100 times more intense than ordinary lightning,and they was later called Superblots by American scientist B.N. Turman.

So-called superbolts are 100-1000 times brighter than ordinary lighting,and their optical radiation power (typically over 200GW) far exceeds the average for normal lightning (about 0.2GW).Normally lightning strikes from the bottom of a cloud,only three thousand feet above the ground,but superbolts originates from thirty thousand feet above the ground,so it requires a very strong voltage to travel such a long distance.The superbolt that struck Belle Island could be heard thirty miles away,created a three-foot dent,and was said to have caused a ​​one-mile swath of damage.A superbolt also occurred in Leland of Illinois on April 2,1954,which leaving a 12 foot hole in a corn field.It's fortunately (but unfortunately for the researchers) that superbolts occur very rarely,only about five out of every 10 million lightning,which accounts for less than 0.01% of global lightning activity,and usually occur over ocean areas.

In 1838,a superbolt struck the 800-pound mast of the British Royal Navy ship Rodney.The water on the mast quickly boiled and expanded into gas,blowing the entire mast apart.The author Frank Lane wrote in his book The Elements Rage that the superbolt "instantly chopped the mast into a heap of sawdust.""like a carpenter scraping a wood plane across a boat."

Although it sounds deadly,being "surrounded by lightning" is a situation in which the chances of survival are higher because it means that the current passes through the surface of the body (the path of lowest resistance) rather than inside the body.If the skin is wet,flashover is more likely to occur when struck by lightning,which prevents the electricity from passing through the internal organs.

A car is a good lightning shelter because the low resistance of the car's metal make the current of lightning will only pass through the outside of the car but will not reach the inside of the car.However,if a superbolt had fallen,far stronger metal might have been needed to against its power.