LASER LIGHTENING and 4 other stunning strikes caught on camera

Something that strikes me is the power of lightening. Pun inteded It is caused by a massive discharge of electrostatic between regions either between two clouds or between a cloud and the ground or other object on the surface of the Earth. According to the Encyclopedia of World Climatology lightening flashes 1.4 billion times per year. Most of the time it’s nothing more then an amazing light show, however, it can become very dangerous and in some cases deadly.

When lightening strikes a tree for instances it is so intense that it will actually vaporize the sap. When a person or an animal is struck most times they die from the massive damage the lightening causes to their internal organs. In the past few years many of the worlds structures have been struck with massive bolts of lightening and some have been caught on camera.

September 22, 2010 the statue of liberty in New York City was struck by lightening and a photographer by the name of Jay Fine got pictures. He told Fox news he had been waiting 40 Years to capture a picture like the one he got on that September night.

February 2013 Lightning appeared to strike St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City on Monday just hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation.

May 23, 2014 Lightening strikes 1 World Trade Center in New York City after a severe storm rolled through lower Manhattan. 

January 2014 Lightning has broken a finger off the right hand of Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Lightning frequently strikes the nearly 100-foot tall statue, a symbol of Rio that overlooks the Brazilian city from the peak of the Corcovado mountain.

Now for the mother of all lightening strikes science fiction becomes reality. Laser Lightening This science-fiction-like scene was captured by Martin Kornmesser, a visual artist for the European Southern Observatory. The laser in this photograph is a powerful one, with a 20-watt beam, but the power in a bolt of lightning peaks at a trillion watts — although it lasts for just a fraction of a second. Shortly after this picture was taken the storm reached the observatory, forcing operations to close for the night.Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/88688/astrophoto-laser-lightning/#ixzz36exIsYpY

Sources of info and photos included here

• http://books.google.com/books?id=-mwbAsxpRr0C&pg=PA452&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
• http://nation.foxnews.com/culture/2010/10/14/lightning-strikes-liberty
• http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/02/12/lightning-bolt-strikes-vatican-pope-benedict-resignation/1913095/
• http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/lightning-strikes-1-world-trade-center-storm-article-1.1804156
• http://nypost.com/2014/01/17/lightning-breaks-finger-off-christ-the-redeemer-statue/
• http://www.universetoday.com/88688/astrophoto-laser-lightning/#ixzz36ewwdbaF