All language subtitles for Raging.Planet.S01E03.1080p.DSCP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-WiLF

*

This is the most powerful electrical
force on Earth.

Even hotter than the sun.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

For generations it was a mystery.

Now the latest camera technology

reveals its incredible secrets.

Lightning - violence from the skies
of our raging planet.

Around the world,

lightning strikes more than
eight million times every day -

a hundred times a second.

A bolt of lightning superheats
the surrounding air,

causing it to rapidly expand
and explode.

The shockwave
creates a clap of thunder.

(THUNDER BOOMS)

Most lightning
never touches the ground.

It discharges inside thunder clouds.

But when it does strike,
it can do so anywhere on Earth,

delivering a trillion watts
of electricity,

enough energy to power
an entire city.

Running across the centre of Florida
is America's lightning hot spot,

known as Lightning Alley.

Every year there are over 50 strikes
per square mile,

and every year, people get hit.

On a September evening in 1999,

fisherman Dave Grillmeier had just
cast his line into the lake.

Without warning,

a bolt of lightning streaked down
from the cloud above him

with shocking consequences.

The rod, as you see here,

what's left of it,
was about a 7ft rod.

It was obviously so hot that it
burnt the epoxy away, evaporated it,

and left nothing but the carbon
fibres at the end of the rod.

It wasn't just the rod
that was damaged.

Dave suffered multiple burns.

But it was the condition
of his clothes

that revealed the true power
of the strike.

The zipper was all gone.

And I, several months later,
I asked the paramedic,

'Well, was there anything
stuck in me?'

And he goes, 'Your zipper was
almost burned onto your abdomen -

that's how hot it got.'

This is what's left.

This is where my beeper was at,
on my side.

Doesn't look too bad there

compared to what the beeper
looked like when I got it back.

Dave thought his boots
were untouched

until he saw strange pinholes

where the lightning
had finally left his body.

I guess the electricity
passed through my body

to the bottom of the shoe,

jumped over the heel
and back to the ground.

Dave was one of the lucky ones.

One in every ten lightning
strike victims dies instantly.

Across North America,

more people are killed by lightning
than by tornadoes or hurricanes.

But there is a place on Earth
that's even more dangerous.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

The heart of equatorial Africa.

Here there are more lightning strikes
than anywhere else on Earth.

Dr Earle Williams

of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology

is a world authority on lightning.

Using data from NASA satellites,

he calculates that lightning strikes
the Congo basin

more than twice as many times
as Florida.

In some places there are over 300
strikes per square mile every year.

But lightning in this part of
the world has rarely been studied.

Thanks very much.

So today, Earle is at the border
between Zambia

and the Democratic Republic of Congo
to witness the lightning for himself.

As darkness falls,
the thunderstorms begin.

(THUNDER BOOMS)

There has been much evidence

that this IS the most electrically
active place on the planet.

To be here and see it
from the ground

and witness the high rates
of lightning is very exciting.

Some strikes can't be seen
with the naked eye,

so one way to count them
is by using an optical sensor

that beeps every time
there's a flash.

(BEEPING)

An average storm produces
around two strikes a minute.

Here, Earle measures
more than 60 a minute.

(BEEPING)

The storms here are definitely
living up to expectations.

They're producing lightning at rates
which are extraordinarily high.

This is really the best place
to study lightning on Earth.

These are the perfect conditions
for large electrical storms.

*

As the Earth is heated by the sun,
it produces lots of warm, moist air.

Warm air rises.

As it gains height,

the moisture cools and condenses
to form clouds.

These clouds grow and merge
into larger ones,

rising all the time.

Some of the water drops
become too heavy

for the updraft of air to lift.

They fall as rain.

Some are lifted
by powerful air currents,

high into the cold upper regions,

where they freeze into tiny crystals
of ice.

As the cloud hits the base
of the stratosphere,

it spreads out sideways

to form the anvil shape
typical of thunder clouds.

Dr Earle Williams of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

studies these clouds.

The clouds that make lightning
are the largest in the atmosphere.

A big active cumulonimbus cloud
is about as wide as it is deep,

and they generate long anvils,

which extend horizontally
in the prevailing wind, aloft.

Some ice crystals build in size
to form small hailstones.

Scientists believe
that as these hailstones

fall back through the rising
ice crystals,

millions of tiny collisions occur.

These collisions
build up an electric charge

which is stored in the cloud
like a battery.

A cloud is very much like a battery,

but a battery with
a much higher voltage

than your typical flashlight
battery.

Not 1.5 volts,
but 100 million volts.

But what scientists don't know

is exactly how this electric charge
generates lightning.

What remains a major
meteorological mystery

is how it is
that ice particle collisions

result in the generation
of lightning.

We're very much in the middle ages
on that problem.

It's extremely difficult
to study lightning,

since each strike lasts
just a fraction of a second.

One of the best ways is to freeze
the action using a camera.

David Stillings is a photographer

who patrols Lightning Alley
in pursuit of electric storms.

For the last 30 years
he's been obsessed with lightning.

I'd put my last few cents
in my gas tank

if it meant I could go chase
a storm.

His success rate
is less than one per cent,

but when he does capture lightning,
the results are spectacular.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

Back in 1976,
this was the first one.

And when it popped out of that cloud
right there

with that blue sky in there
and the purple cloud - oh!

And from that point on,

lightning was everything
I wanted to photograph.

This particular one, it's got
so many bolts of lightning in it,

and they all happened
at the same time.

This is in 2004.

The shutter couldn't have been open
more than one second.

A purple sky, gold sunset -

all the neat stuff
that I love to see out there.

And it all came together in one
photograph! That's cool. (LAUGHS)

But before David can even begin
to photograph lightning,

he has to find it.

Those two domes there

might be getting high enough
to produce lightning.

And the sun is breaking through
and it's going to heat it up.

The humidity's going to start.

This is cool. This is...

This has the potential
of being good stuff.

David has found a thunderstorm
that will produce lightning.

Now the challenge is to point
his camera in the right direction.

And I hope it's a big one
right there.

An average storm here

will produce a couple of lightning
flashes every minute,

but it's impossible to predict
where they will strike next.

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

Whoa! Whoa!
I'm in the wrong spot again.

Jeez!

Whoa! Whoa!

Be later, please!

Man, listen to this thunder.
Listen to this.

Listen to that.

There's another one right there.
Oh, man!

This is a dangerous occupation.

Cos I got to... Oh! Oh, man!

Lightning can strike anything
and anyone

up to 40km away from a cloud.

(CAMERA CLICKS)

(THUNDER CRACKS)

(DAVID YELLS DISTANTLY)

David prefers to use
a traditional film camera,

so he never knows
whether he's got the shot

till he gets
the processed photos back.

Please tell me there's something
on there.

Roll after roll after...

Oh, look, I got a streak of
lightning right there. Nah.

Occasionally,
David's patience pays off,

and he manages to capture
the elusive phenomenon on film.

Oh, look! The channel! Yay!

Oh, man, it's...

Oh, man, is that cool?!

This is neat, man. I... Oh!

(THUNDER CRACKS)

The bottom line is, yeah,
this is my addiction.

But if you have to be addicted to
something, look.

A picture of a lightning strike
frozen in time

can be a work of art.

But photography
is also extremely valuable

for scientific analysis.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

When observed with the naked eye,

lightning appears to travel from
the clouds directly to the ground.

But recent advances
in video camera technology

reveal that the anatomy of lightning
is much more complex.

This is the US Air Force
Atmospheric Research Center

in Colorado Springs.

Here Dr Geoff McHarg

is using a super slow motion camera
to capture lightning.

To do this, he needs
split-second timing.

Oh, darn it.

It's a lot like fishing.
You have to get lucky

and get the lightning bolt
inside your field of view.

Success is rare,

but two years ago,
Geoff hit the jackpot.

I was simply
watching the lightning get closer,

and I kept recording it.

And I didn't know what I had
until I went back and reviewed it.

For the first time ever,

Geoff had recorded
the birth of a lightning bolt

in super slow motion.

When played back,

it shows a flash of light
dart out of a cloud

and zigzag downward in roughly
50-yard segments.

This first stage of lightning
is called a stepped leader.

You can see the stepped leader
coming down here,

looking for ground,
going back and forth.

You can see the torturous channel
it is taking

as it divides back and forth.

As this stepped leader
gets close to the earth,

it has an extraordinary effect
on objects on the ground.

They respond
to the strong electric field

by growing positive streamers.

These reach up anywhere

between one and a few hundred metres
above the ground,

as seen in these rare photographs.

Finally, when a stepped leader
and a positive streamer meet,

the electric charge
can drain to earth,

resulting in the blinding flash
of light we call lightning.

The entire field of view lights up.

That's the main part
of the lightning strike

that your eye would catch.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

The new generation of cameras
has enabled scientists

to record a strike that lasts
just a fraction of a second.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

They then play it back
over 200 times slower

to analyse its details.

These super slow motion images
show the stepped leader

making a connection with the ground.

The entire charge then drains
from the cloud above,

seen as a series of pulses.

Scientists are now just beginning

to unravel the mysteries
of lightning.

New research has revealed
that heat and humidity

can have an effect on the frequency
of lightning storms.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

*

Tampa, Florida, is the lightning
capital of the United States,

with more lightning
than anywhere else.

Scott Steiger from State University
of New York

believes the city attracts lightning

because Tampa
is an urban heat island.

An urban heat island
is caused by the fact

that a city area has a lot more
impervious surfaces

of asphalt and concrete

that absorbs a lot of the
sun's solar radiation.

That energy gets re-emitted
and warms the air in the city.

A city can be as much as
15 degrees warmer

than the surrounding rural areas.

As the warm air rises,

it creates strong upward convection
in the atmosphere over the city.

This urban heat island can cause
more thunderstorms

as it develops a convergence zone
over the city,

which helps to lift the air
and initiate more thunderstorms.

The creation of thunderstorms
means lightning is inevitable.

Especially cities in warm,
humid climates,

like Tampa Bay, Florida,
and Houston, Texas,

are very capable of producing
more thunderstorms

and more lightning, which is
more dangerous to the public.

Scientific research
has recently produced evidence

that lightning doesn't just
come down from above.

It also streaks up
high into the sky.

Here in Rapid City,

scientist Tom Warner
has been using high speed photography

to uncover a previously hidden world
of lightning.

We're seeing things in such a way
that we've never seen before.

Using a battery of cameras,

he's managed to capture
some astonishing images

which show lightning travelling
not from cloud to ground

but shooting upwards.

This extraordinary form of lightning

has been known about since the 1930s,

but these pictures have finally
confirmed its existence.

This is the first time that mankind

has seen upward lightning
in such detail

as we're seeing right now.

Our understanding of physics
relating to these upward flashes

is increasing immensely.

Tom has observed
that upward lightning

is triggered by a nearby
cloud-to-ground lightning strike.

In this image a lightning strike
produces a bright flash of light.

In under a second, it initiates
the formation of upward leaders

from two radio masts.

Why this happens is still a mystery,

but Tom's theory is that
the lightning strike

causes large amounts
of electric charge

to build up around the top
of a tall structure,

and this charge leaps up and connects
with a cloud above.

You'll see a delay between
when the flash takes place

and then the leader is shot up from
the tower tip and goes upward.

The images Tom has filmed
over the last few years

have astounded the world
of lightning science.

This mysterious lightning

would never have been seen without
state-of-the-art technology.

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

But to see one of the greatest
lightning displays on the planet,

the only equipment you need
is your eyes.

Here on Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo,

a team of scientists
from the University of Zulia

are setting out in search of

the region's legendary
Catatumbo lightning.

Unusual conditions in this area
create a unique kind of lightning.

Methane gas bubbles up
from rotting vegetation

in the swamps and rivers.

And Lake Maracaibo's oilfields
also produce methane as a by-product.

It all accumulates in the atmosphere
above the marshes.

As night falls,

the scientists
are hoping for an electrical storm

so they can study the extraordinary
effects of the gas.

Methane is lighter than air.

As it rises up into the clouds,
it feeds the storm,

creating brighter,
much more colourful lightning.

But lead scientist
Professor Angel Munoz and his team

think there may be more to Catatumbo
lightning than meets the eye.

Catatumbo lightning
leaps from cloud to cloud,

and is much more powerful
than cloud-to-ground lightning.

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

On average, it can be seen 200 nights
of the year

for up to ten hours a night.

This display is so colossal,
it's visible 160km out to sea.

For centuries,
sailors used it for navigation.

It was known
as the Maracaibo Lighthouse.

A lightning storm can be spectacular
from a distance,

but up close,
lightning can be deadly.

During a thunderstorm,

the most dangerous place to be
is in a wide open space...

...including any
large expanse of water.

And it's true that sheltering
under a tree is a bad idea.

Lightning can turn tree sap
into superheated steam,

making the tree explode in a shower
of potentially deadly splinters.

Lightning can also travel down
telephone lines.

There's a very scary warning sign
that you're in danger.

If your hair stands up, you've just
become a positive streamer.

And coming down from that cloud

is a negative leader that,
if you don't do something,

when they connect, you've just
become a bolt of lightning.

If this happens to you,
the best thing to do

is to quickly crouch down
on the balls of your feet.

(LOUD CRACK)

Student Carolynn Nath had no warning
she was in danger.

She was making her way to class

at the University of South Florida
in Tampa when lightning struck.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

I heard a loud, loud crack
of thunder,

and within a second, I saw a light.

Basically, the corridor
in front of me of palm trees

was an overexposed picture.

And I felt the electricity start
going through my entire body.

I could feel it, every ounce,
every inch of my body.

My muscles expanded,
they contracted very tightly.

And every nerve, it just...

I could feel that pressure
going through my entire body.

The after-effects were devastating.

Everything was completely swollen.
My skin was lobster red.

It was basically like I had a very,
very severe sunburn.

So, afterwards, everything...
all my skin peeled off.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

A lightning flash
contains up to 200,000 amps...

...but it takes just one-tenth of
an amp to kill a human being.

(SIREN WAILS)

So how do victims survive a lightning
strike and live to tell the tale?

Doctors at the University of Illinois
have been trying to find the answer.

Professor Mary Ann Cooper

is an expert on what happens
when lightning strikes.

When lightning attaches to a person,

the vast majority of the energy goes
around the outside of the person

rather than through them.

Instead of striking vital organs,

the charge flows through the moisture
on the skin and down to the ground.

It can leave behind scars
called Lichtenberg marks.

As it's going around the outside,

it may turn the rainwater or sweat
the person has on them into steam.

Sometimes, the build-up of steam
in clothing or shoes

can have explosive consequences.

You may have heard about people
in explosions

blown out of their shoes -

that's what we see sometimes
with lightning as well.

Because that sweat or the water
expands tremendously

so that we actually see more damage
to the inside of footwear

and sometimes to clothing
than we see to the outside of it.

A lightning strike can cause cardiac
arrest, but this is rare.

MARY ANN: The vast majority of
people survive lightning injury,

although they may have
permanent problems,

including damage to
the nervous system.

One survivor, Pam Cooper,

is still suffering from
the damaging power of a strike.

I was just a mom sitting
on the beach with my book,

minding my own business,
doing nothing extraordinary,

and my life was changed forever
by lightning.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

I don't remember the actual event
of being struck.

It's through my friends and family
that I know second-hand

what exactly happened to me.

That day, Destin Beach in Florida
was hot and sunny.

My family says that they heard
a large clap of thunder, lightning.

Everyone else was starting to scurry
and pick up their belongings

because of the lightning strike
being so close.

I was sitting with my feet
in the sand,

and the lightning struck the sand
and then came up through my feet.

(DISTANT SIREN)

Pam was rushed to the hospital
with extensive burns.

Five years later, she still suffers
from mobility problems

and short-term memory loss.

Being struck by lightning is very
similar to a computer crashing,

because, on the outside,
I look fine.

But on the inside, my circuitry's
all messed up.

Pam's experience
could happen to anyone,

so it's vital to know exactly
what to do

to protect yourself
from a lightning strike.

*

When a thunderstorm forms,
people's lives can be at risk.

We tell people, 'When thunder roars,
go indoors.'

What we mean is
'Seek a safer shelter.'

If you're ever in a thunderstorm,

one of the safest places to be
is in a closed vehicle.

Many people believe the rubber tyres
on a car will keep them safe,

but that's not true.

It's the car's metal body
that provides protection...

...as this high-voltage
experiment will demonstrate.

A Tesla coil
is the lightning simulator,

an electrical transformer
that discharges

three-quarters of a million volts
of electricity.

Dr Lisa Lazareck
is an electrical engineer

who's willing to sit in a car
underneath the coil

to prove that
its metal body will protect her.

The electrical charge striking
this car is going to conduct

around the outside surface
of the enclosed body,

so I should be fine as long as I
don't touch the metal of the car.

But it's one thing to talk about
the theory,

and it's another thing
to put it into practice.

So I guess I'm ready.

The electrical charge flows around
the metal body of the car

and discharges harmlessly
to the ground.

I'm fine.
The theory has worked as expected.

My feet are slightly tingling,

and, because I was nervous, my hands
are still clamped together.

But other than that, I'm fine.

The experiment has just proved
the rule of physics

that an electrical charge
like lightning

will always travel around the outside
surface of an enclosed metal body.

That's why passengers are unharmed
when a plane is struck by lightning.

This incredibly rare footage of
a plane flying into Sydney Airport

shows a dramatic strike.

No-one on board
even knew they'd been hit.

And this video captures another

as a plane takes off
from an airport in Japan.

Once again, the passengers
had no idea what happened.

On average, every commercial aircraft
is hit once a year.

Besides suffering a direct hit
from a lightning bolt,

the biggest threat to life
is when lightning triggers a fire.

During the summer of 2008,

an unusually high number
of lightning strikes

set large areas of California
on fire.

One single storm unleashed
up to 5,000 strikes...

...igniting more than a thousand
individual fires.

The flames destroyed dozens of homes.

In a lightning-prone area,

living in houses built among trees
carries a high risk.

But though lightning fires

can destroy property
and devastate forests,

they can also have a positive
effect on the landscape.

Nature has evolved a way to work
in harmony with lightning fires,

and even depends on them
to renew life.

Here, in the Australian outback,
such fires are a common occurrence.

Jeffrey Lee is a park ranger
charged with looking after the land.

He welcomes the fires
because they clear the ground

and encourage the regrowth
of edible plants, or bush tucker.

Many plant species

have evolved to colonise the areas
these fires lay bare.

and some seeds actually need fire
to germinate.

Lightning also helps produce
vital plant fertilisers.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

At its peak, the temperature of
a lightning bolt hits 50,000 degrees,

burning the air.

In the heat, nitrogen and oxygen
react together to create nitrates.

These rain to the earth and provide
nutrients for plants.

Scientists have now discovered that
lightning may also be playing a part

high in the Earth's atmosphere.

When these bizarre images
were taken from above the earth,

they took scientists
completely by surprise.

They showed huge bursts of light

flashing over the top
of electric storms.

Called sprites, they were first
photographed in 1989.

Since then, scientific projects
around the world

have joined the hunt
for these elusive phenomena.

In 1997, New Zealand scientist
Professor Richard Dowden

arrived in Australia's
Northern Territory

on a quest for sprites.

Richard wanted to be one of the first
to capture them on camera.

He came here with his scientific team
to Beatrice Hill,

60km east of Darwin.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

This region is home to some of
the biggest thunderstorms on Earth.

But Richard wasn't interested
in regular lightning bolts.

He was chasing sprites, which appear
directly above thunderstorms.

Beatrice Hill was a perfect place
to spot them,

because you need a clear view of
the top of a thundercloud

from a distance of nearly 100km.

Even then, the sprites are hard to
see with the naked eye

because they're only visible
for a few milliseconds.

So Richard made
a special modification

to his standard amateur camera.

The big change was this thing
in front of it,

which is an image intensifier.

These are used by the military
all over the world.

Rather hard to get, the ones
which are very sensitive.

This one here actually came from
Russia, from the Russian military.

Richard and his team waited night
after night,

taking turns manning the camera.

After nearly two weeks,
they finally had a breakthrough.

Well, on the night we got those
sprites, it was really a big thrill.

But we didn't know what was there

until we ran the tapes
back out of the camera.

The tapes reveal these flickering
images of sprites

speeding through the atmosphere

at more than one-tenth
the speed of light.

That was a fantastic thing.

I don't think we got any sleep,
any more sleep that night.

Scientists remain mystified by the
first fleeting sightings of sprites.

But just two years later,

Dr Geoff McHarg of the US Air Force
Atmospheric Research Academy

made another breakthrough.

He managed to record sprites
using an image intensifier

on the front of
his super slow motion camera.

It was probably the most fun I've
actually ever had taking data.

It was just great.

We took data all night long.

We recorded pretty much
every tape that we had.

The tapes revealed an incredible
variety of sprites.

The scientists have since
given them names.

What we're looking at right now
is a jellyfish sprite,

and the first thing you'll see is,
they're very large.

They may be 30 miles tall,
30 miles wide.

Just think about that. That's almost
from Colorado Springs to Denver.

Then there's the extraordinary
carrot sprite.

It physically looks like a carrot,

with the upper part being like
the leaves of a carrot

and the downward tendril
that we call it

going like the stalk of the carrot.

Geoff also captured the 'C'
or column sprite.

Here we have three of them
side-by-side.

And the motion is pretty much
all down,

hence the name 'column'
or 'C' sprite.

Around the world,
as many as ten sprites

could be shooting up from the clouds
every minute.

Scientists now know that sprites are
large-scale electrical discharges

that make the air above them glow

in a similar way to
a fluorescent light bulb.

But it will take a lot more research

before we truly understand
these electrical phenomena.

(THUNDER CRACKS)

Even though the serious study
of lightning

began over two centuries ago,

scientists are still struggling
to work out

what guides lightning's path

or why it chooses to strike
in one place over another.

We've learned a lot about lightning
in a few hundred years,

but there is still a major
meteorological mystery.

What we do know

is that lightning has an incredible
capacity for destruction,

and it can never be controlled.

itfc subtitles

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