Joseph Dwyer, who is a lightning research at Florida Institute of Technology, claims that he has discovered a form of lightning that he now calls ‘dark lightning’. Deemed very powerful as well as invisible, dark lightning is said to release sudden pulses of unimaginably powerful radiation. Planes up in the sky are obviously susceptible to dark lightning, though they’re not at any risk from it. People inside these planes though receive the maximum safe lifetime dose of ionizing radiation, which isn’t exactly good for the human body. The passengers won’t feel or hear anything, but they would have already received the significant radiation dose.
A radiation detector must be used to figure out whether or not a plane has been hit by dark lightning while it was up in the sky. However flyers can find solace in the fact that dark lightning is apparently quite rare, it occurs just once for every 1,000 visible lightning strikes. Besides that, planes don’t normally fly in between thunderstorms, they’re usually routed to avoid getting stuck in such nasty weather. Seeing violent flashes of lightening some 30,000 feet from the ground never calms nervous flyers anyway! [Image via Gizmodo]
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