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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

WOW slow-mo lightning strike 100,000,000 V

Joined
Aug 25, 2007
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^Eh, who knows, that whole show was pretty whack. A "happy accident" aboard a space-elevator-satellite saves the world by making the best solar cells ever. Every idea there was just, well, crazy. To me, it came off as too crazy to lend credence to any of the good ideas that might actually make it. The laser part in it, well, who knows what they were talking about. There are certainly lots of lasers capable of doing such things, lasers are used to precisely measure the distance to the moon for instance. But most everything else in there is kind of bunk, so I don't quite buy into any single parts.

But the carbon nanotube guy they show taught one of my classes last year (he's not nearly as good at teaching as he is at growing carbon nanotubes).
 





Kenom

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I love how they at the very end of that video show the cable tying that orbital station to the earth. I've read a number of places how they have come up with a new carbon fiber tubules that are along the lines of 50 times stronger than steel and flexible to boot. Make it so that the unreliable and potentially dangerous route of space shuttles and solid fuel rockets will no longer be necessary to get to outer space. GOTTA LOVE SCIENCE.
 
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Yeah but the quote from the article says:

"I'm not sure exactly how fast this camera is, but it's got to be shooting at a speed faster than the Casio EX-F1 can shoot at, at least at a resolution this high."

I mean, like hemlock mike said, that entire video is a fraction of a second. maybe .2 seconds. That would be 240frames at 1200fps. so 240 frames replayed at 30fps is only 8 seconds, this video is 25 seconds. It's possible that the lightning strike itself lasted a bit longer (it would need to be about .7 seconds long for this to fit), but even at the end of the 25-second video the lightning hasn't 'gone away' yet, so we may only be seeing half of the actual 'strike', meaning the frame rate would have to be REALLY fast.

I dont necessarily think it's fake, but whatever is filming it must be one hell of a camera.

Edit: Just found a camera that can do 2,000,000 FPS. Thats more along the lines of what I would expect to capture something like this. Especially based on the beginning of the video when the charge is searching for a ground, you NEVER see that, not even for a fraction of a second, and it lasted for a good number of frames in the video so the camera filming it must be incredibly fast, which would also explain why the 'strike' lasts for so long.

EDIT again: This one does 1,000,000 fps. pretty badass. http://www.visionresearch.com/ (check out some of the videos on the home page of that site... thats the type of camera I would assume would be needed to capture this.)
 

RossUK

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Apr 18, 2007
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Wow, lightning travels around 60,000 miles per second, so yeah it would have to be ALOT more than 1200fps  :D

that site quotes:

# 6242 frames-per-second at full 1280x800 "widescreen" resolution
# 1,000,000 pictures-per-second at reduced resolution

So I guess you would have to stitch the photos together using some software.

And looking at that Casio EXILIM Pro EX-F1... well my money is being saved up!  :eek:
 

Things

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May 1, 2007
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Those little firework looking things at the start are called "Streamers", they search for the fastest path to ground. The first 1 to reach the ground wins! Follow them in the vid and you will see! It lasts for quite a while due to the air is still super heated and highly ionised. If it didnt, than you would barely be able to see lightning!

Sweet vid tho!!
 




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