First published September 27, 2018.
Images need individual provenance
The gallery can illustrate reported experiences, but not every branching mark is authenticated by its caption. It is not a diagnostic guide or a reason to delay assessment after a strike.
Most of us have seen lightning dancing through the sky but have you ever thought what happens when lightning strikes the ground or people? While thousands of people are struck by lightning each year, only a fraction are fatally injured. A lightning bolt could heat the surrounding air up to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit which is much hotter than the Sun’s visible surface and involves an electrical discharge; the earlier kilovolt figure incorrectly labelled voltage as energy. When this amount of electricity enters the body, it short-circuits the small electrical signals which run your heart, lungs, and nervous system. That can lead to cardiac arrest, brain injury, spinal cord damage, seizures, and amnesia. The blistering heat, light, and electricity can also damage your eyes. And the electrical discharge scars some of them with a tattoo-like mark, known as the Lichtenberg figure.
The mechanism of the transient branching marks is not fully understood; they should not be explained here as an established movement of blood cells into the epidermis. These intricate designs are called Lichtenberg figures. Lichtenberg figures or branching markings, whose mechanism remains incompletely understood, often covers the body in odd, spiderweb patterns which are incredible.
More info: allthatisinteresting | businessinsider
Additional sources: National Weather Service: lightning voltage and current; National Weather Service: lightning strikes and urgent medical attention; NCBI Bookshelf: lightning injuries and transient Lichtenberg figures.
The electrical units need to describe the right quantity
Kilovolts measure voltage, not energy, so the original numerical phrase was misleading. The photographs also should not turn transient skin markings into a promise of permanent scarring. A suspected lightning strike requires urgent medical attention regardless of whether a branching mark appears; a gallery cannot assess internal injury or the circumstances of a particular survivor.
COMMENTS