In the news today this image of lightening striking behind the Eiffel Tower has been getting everyone drooling on Twitter.
Now everyone is saying the lightening is striking the tower but I don’t believe that, it looks like it’s clearly behind it to me (please feel free to dispute that if you disagree). My question is inspired by the way people believe it is being struck however:
Could lightening strike the tower half way down? Would the main bolt of lightening ever ignore the tip of the tower and strike lower down (not just a finger off the main bolt)?
It certainly looks like it’s behind the tower to me. If you compare it to other photos of the tower being struck by lightning, you can see that the bolt tends to strike the top, as you’d expect. I can’t see that it would create its own path through air if it was very close to all that metal, which suggests to me it is striking something else some distance behind.
(BTW, it’s “lightning” - “lightening” is the process of becoming lighter, in either colour or weight.)
Edit: the BBC describes the lightning as “giving a vivid backdrop” to the tower, rather than hitting it.
There is no building of comparable height anywhere near the Eiffel Tower (even if you consider it hitting the second level). So unless the lightning is striking nothing (or the image is photoshopped), it’s hitting the Tower. It also appears to wend its way in and out of the Tower’s frame.
Oops, poor spelling. Sorry and thanks for pointing it out. That might save me some embarrassment at some later date! Perhaps a mod could change the title?
Would it be possible to put a conductor halfway down a metal structure that might succesfully attract lightning away from the very top? I realise this might be utterly pointless but just wondering.
I believe the Sacre Coeur should be only 100-200 ft lower than the Eiffel Tower. The photo seems to be through a fairly strong telephoto lens, so that would compress the apparent distance between the tower and the lightning strike.
Don’t know Paris well enough to tell if this view is looking north however.
I’m not sure what you mean. As far as I can tell, the bolt extends right down behind the tower as far as the first level, and maybe even further. I think the main bolt goes behind the left-hand leg - you can see white light shining trough the gaps between the girders. You can certainly see a thinner leader stroke in the gap between the left-hand and “middle” (i.e. frontmost) legs, which extends down as far as the top of the “balcony” on the lowest level. I think you can see more lightning behind the middle leg, too.
ETA: The first level is only 189 feet above ground level. There are plenty of buildings that high in Paris, as well as lots of construction cranes. Especially when you consider that the tower is right by the river, so on the lowest ground. Clearly the photo was taken with a long lens, too.
Doing some googling, I find that the elevation of Sacré-Cœur to be 426 ft above sea level, and the elevation of the Tour Eiffel to be 137 ft. Their heights are, respectively,
272 ft and 986. These total to, again respectively, 698 ft and 1123 ft. So, it’s more than a couple hundred feet. Just so you know.
I would also point out that it was taken over three years ago, in July 2008. The reason it’s doing the rounds now is that it was released as a publicity shot for a forthcoming exhibition in which it is featured. See Sacrebleu!
You can’t put anything halfway down a *metal *structure that will offer a path of lower resistance than the top of the structure. The Eiffel Tower is like one humongous lightning rod.
I don’t know if the OP’s picture is real or not, but there are plenty of other pictures of lightning striking the Eiffel Tower – including this famous one from 1902. Wikipedia says it’s “one of the earliest photographs of lightning in an urban setting.”
lightning goes where it wants. there is so much energy to transfer the electricity takes any path it can and often multiple paths. it has traveled miles through not very conductive air and anywhere towards the earth is good.
Lighting can certainly do weird things when it gets a mind to, but it seems pretty unlikely that it would arc from steel beam through the air, and back to the steel beam, without changing shape at all. So, my bet is on a strike somewhere behind the tower, maybe to one of those cranes in the background.
I would expect there to be plenty of pictures of lightning striking the tower (it’s got to happen multiple times per storm), but it looks like there are only plenty of copies of the same handful of pictures (only two of which look like the lightning is actually striking the tower).
And there don’t need to be any taller buildings for the lightning to be in the background of the tower, either. Lightning doesn’t need a building at all. It could just be striking the ground, for all we can tell. Yeah, it’d have to be pretty far back to choose the ground rather than the tower, but we have no way of judging distance here.
I talked to a pilot who flew the F-106 into thunderstorms for NASA to study the effects of lightning on the structure. One story he told me was a researcher who showed him a picture of a lightning bolt that traveled parallel to radio tower and finally struck the tower only three feet above the ground. So, per this information, it is possible.
I’ve read up enough on lightning to know that there is no hard and fast rule with respect to where it where it will and won’t strike. The first time I was made of aware of this was when I found a picture of an SUV showing a hole in the windshield, a fried steering wheel, and a blown out left front tire. So, if there is a lightning storm, I’ll stay in my car–but it’s not absolute guarantee that I will not be injured or killed.
Sure it’s hitting it. You can even see the bolt is weaving in and out through the girders!
It’s not really doing that, of course, it’s an effect of the lightning being bright enough for the exposure to “bleed around” the girders of the tower. But I think that effect is part of what makes it seem like it must be hitting the tower.
Thanks everyone. Sorry to keep asking questions but I’m intrigued now: imagine there was a very thick sheet of rubber separating the top and bottom half of the tower. Would the lightning still strike the top? Or would it be more likely to strike the bottom half which would be in contact with the ground?
Um… big enough to prevent the lightning from leaping from the top half to the bottom. If it pleases you let’s make it really thin but a mile in diameter.
EDIT: no forget that that would shield the bottom half from the sky! Okay a mile thick then. Whatever you choose…
The reason I ask is because, while rubber is a pretty good insulator, air is even better. And of course lightning manages to make it through a mile or so of air. Lightning won’t even notice any realistic amount of rubber at all.
You know I hear this all the time in this type of discussion, but it’s usually with regard to tires insulating a car from the ground. If lightning travels through a mile of air to hit a car, it would be just as happy to go through another 6 inches of air to reach the ground, and would not be deterred by rubber tires.
But does (moist) air really insulate better than rubber? Does this imply that if there were a one-cubic-mile block of rubber, the lighting would go right through the middle of it more readily than it does through air?
