[img]http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/12/10x1228bv3light.jpg
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You know, we could just leave you with the image above and be done
here, but its backstory is almost as cool. Researchers at the Florida
Institute of Technology have built a 1,500-pound X-ray camera that can
shoot ten million frames a second and then pointed it at a nearby
flash of lightning to try and learn more about it. How did they know
where the lightning would strike? Well, in true scientific fashion,
they caused it themselves! This was done by shooting rockets into
thunderstorms, with attached wires directing the flow of energy down
into their target zone. The imagery produced from the X-ray sensor is
actually extremely low-res -- a 30-pixel hexagonal grid is all you get
-- but it's enough to show that X-ray radiation is concentrated at the
tip of the lightning bolt. What good that knowledge will do for the
world, we don't know, but we're sure it'll provide nice fodder for the
next round of superhero empowerment stories.
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