Entirely new forms of lightning have been discovered up to 1000 times bigger than any bolt previously seen. While normal lightning fires down below cloudsthese giant bolts shoot up, stunning experts with images of lightning 80 kilometres high. This lightning, six times more powerful than passenger planes are designed to withstand, may be the real killer in a spate of baffling air disasters. Each day, the earth is shaken by 8 million bolts of the sky’s most powerful force: lightning. energy from one bolt explodes in split second, but could power a household for half a year. At any time, 1800 storms pummel our planet. each one is a giant battery. Inside a storm, water turns to hail. failling ice crashes on rising droplet, creating static electricity. charges of up to 100 million volts build up, arcs of electricity fire out, this is lightning. More than 90 percent of all bolts fire within clouds, but a highly charged storm will fire a cascade of electrical charge to earth, drawn to the highest point. A tree or a blade of grass can trigger lightning, or even a person. Each year, 1000 people around the world die from direct hit. A lightning bolt is only 3 cm wide, but at 33,000 degrees celcius, it is hotter than the surface of the sun. This heat expands the surrounding air, which explodes outwards as thunder, the sound of lightning. A lightning flash travels at the speed of light, it’s thunder travels much slower. The shorter the time between the flash and the thunder, the closer the lightning bolt. Few cloud to ground strikes are longer than three kilometres. and textbooks said no lightning could exist above the clouds, but then weatherman walt lyons aimed his camera across the colorado plains on july 6, 1993. What he saw overturned 200 years of scientific certainty in an instant. His videos show lightning 80 kilometres high and 40 kilometres wide firing above the clouds. Their existence had been dismissed as fantasy, their discovery sheds new light on what has been causing airplanes to fall from the sky. The discovery of mega-lightning began with ordinary people seeing extraordinary things. This documentary interviews these people and explores the topic of megalightning.
