

Lightning captured at 7,207 images per second - yk
http://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/27440704838

======
WillyF
I was almost hit by lightning a few months ago.

My Dad and I were on a fly fishing trip with a guide in a long canoe-like boat
on a river. When the storm came up behind us, we pulled to the side of the
river and took cover under the branches of some small overhanging trees. I
wasn't very concerned, as the storm wasn't all that big and I'd been in
similar situations before.

When it started hailing, I became a bit more worried, but I was still
reasonably relaxed. Then I saw an extremely bright flash, screamed, and
ducked. My Dad and my guide never heard the scream because the thunder was
instant. It took me a few seconds, but I turned around to see if they were ok.
They were, and they asked me if I saw where it was. I said that I just knew
that it was close. They told me that it was about 3 feet to my right, and it
hit the water (my Dad said he saw a hole in the water).

I definitely felt something from it, but I can't really describe what it was.
I'd pay a lot of money to be able to see a video like this of that strike.

I'm pretty lucky to be alive/not disabled for life. Don't let your
misconceptions about lightning put you in a similar situation. Read NOAA's
guide on lightning safety: <http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/>

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jaekwon
Holy bolts, that looks like the source of the lightning is doing a distributed
spatial breadth search of the potential space looking for a connection for the
main jolt (the action potential event).

Could this be what the brain is doing? A group of neurons get excited (some
concept or thought), and a distributed spatial search happens electrically
starting at the source of excitation (literally brainstorming), until it finds
the best pathway to connect to "ground" (reasoning), at which point the
pathways between "source" and "ground" stay continuously excited for a
measurable period of time (the ephiphany moment, learning is happening via
hebbian). "Ground" is whatever that causes the source energy to drain, such as
the epiphany of a solution, which makes the solution appear obvious.

~~~
ionforce
I like your theory. Now if only a neurologist could chime and and confirm!

~~~
jaekwon
[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/unlock-inner-
savan...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/unlock-inner-savant/)

------
polyfractal
More (awesome) videos can be found at the original Vimeo page:

<http://vimeo.com/ztresearch/videos>

(Why link to that blog? It offered nothing extra to the videos)

~~~
thisisblurry
Or, if you want to go a level deeper, go to the video poster's own site:
<http://www.ztresearch.com/>

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Kiro
A video that went viral 5 years ago pops up on HN three times in two days.
What's up?

~~~
lucaspiller
Something to do with the alignment of mars, the earth and the moon I think...

~~~
scottmey
Could have something to do with the intensity of the storm we experienced here
in NYC yesterday....

[http://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/2357/20120718/nyc-
sto...](http://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/2357/20120718/nyc-storm-
july-18-2012-amazing-thunderstorm.htm)

~~~
reustle
Every time I see that picture it makes me hate Instagram a little bit more.

~~~
thisisblurry
Any reason in particular for that? Seems a bit harsh.

~~~
sp332
It removes all the fine features from the funnel, most of the color and
contrast information, and shrinks the resolution. It made this photo worse in
every way.

~~~
thisisblurry
To be fair, that image wouldn't exist (nor would we be having this discussion)
otherwise as it wouldn't have been published to Instagram. I can't comment in
regards to the photographer's filter preference though...

~~~
sp332
Maybe the resolution would have been the same. But it's possible to upload a
photo in Instagram without stopping to apply a filter, isn't it?

~~~
thisisblurry
Nope, you can go sans filter. It's actually the first option - you have to
scroll past it to get to the modifying filters. You can see it in step 2 here:
[http://help.instagram.com/customer/portal/articles/168150-ta...](http://help.instagram.com/customer/portal/articles/168150-taking-
and-sharing-photos-on-instagram)

------
noahc
Does anyone know how close prosumer/off the shelf technology can get to
reproducing this?

I've seen 1000fps on prosumer cameras, before, but are we close to 5,000 even
on sub-$1000 cameras?

~~~
colanderman
I bet you could do it with 5 1000fps cameras and some software trickery. The
algorithm would likely be very similar to those used for superresolution
merging of multiple photographs of the same scene.

~~~
noahc
I think you're probably right.

The biggest problem I see is storage if you hack something together. Not just
raw storage, because that is an issue, but how fast you can clear the buffer
and get the image to disk.

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jeremyarussell
Nikola Tesla would have loved being alive with today's camera technology.

~~~
dclowd9901
I get the impression he knew what was going on _without_ the cameras.

~~~
jeremyarussell
I think that goes without saying, the point being that it's still amazing to
see it with the high speed camera.

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DanielRibeiro
Former discussion (the links is now dead) from last week:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247484>

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perlgeek
This says "Any use requires licensing via [...]", and yet the web page doesn't
indicate that it obtained any such license.

So, is this illegally copied material on the top 1 spot of HN?

~~~
perlgeek
No replies, just downvotes on an honest question. Can somebody please answer
and enlighten me? Thanks.

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ChuckMcM
I love how once the circuit to ground is established it just pumps power
through it until it is fully discharged.

