Thor doesn't know what he's doing?

[z00se]

Saw this video of a lightening strike captured in 7207 frames per second and slowed down. It seems to me that the earth, gods, universe, or whatever is just as unsure about how to achieve what it want's to achieve as we are. 

 

This lightening strike looks to me it is discharging it's self through trial and error. No divine sense of knowing or anything... ?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxQt8ivUGWQ

[Brian]

A very interesting dynamic process develops, which we are still figuring out, in which an ion channel is built in a stepwise fashion -- a series of capacitive discharges from one section of air to another, establishing the "easiest" pathway (or pathways) between two enormous charged bodies. The process of establishing that pathway reinforces it, too, so that the next (and subsequent) discharges tend to follow the same pathway. What results is the formation of a "dark leader" quickly followed by a rapid back and forth series of discharges until the potential difference is no longer sufficient to span the gap. Of course, everything above the Earth is in turmoil, and the charges at the Earth are continually responding to that changing electric field so the whole thing happens and then the process starts anew.

 

People tend to be drawn to the mystery of relativity and quantum mechanics but electrostatics and electrodynamics are incredibly rich and rewarding topics in their own rights. Heck! Just wrapping one's head around why a door knob might shock you is a significant accomplishment.

[Marblehead]

Seems that lightning, like water, is very Taoish in nature in that both take the path of least resistance.

[Brian]

Seems that lightning, like water, is very Taoish in nature in that both take the path of least resistance.

Or one might say that Taoism is very natural in nature.

[Nungali]

So, Thor does know what he is doing  .....  he is just lazy .  

[Spotless]

This was fascinating

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W9xzU0xjlhE

[TheWhiteRabbit]

What you see in the video is the charge contacts the ground.  Then, because the electrical potential is imbalanced, the remaining unbalanced potential is carried back upstream to its origin.  In essence, balancing itself out.