They look like branches. Tattoos printed on the skin, some very subtle, others extreme and brutal. The path that lightning traces as it travels through the human body is, to the astonishment of many, a mirror of its real form.
The probability of lightning striking a person is quite remote: 1 in 300,000,000. It is not easy, but it is not a minimum probability either – for example, there is less chance of winning the lottery.
It is estimated that 90% of those affected by lightning survive. However, the electrical shock is so strong that it can cause highly serious effects, ranging from seizures, paralysis and brain damage, to amnesia, severe burns and cardiac arrest.
A lightning strike can heat the surrounding air to 50,000°F (27,760℃), meaning it can be five times hotter than the sun, and can contain up to 1 billion volts of electricity. In this sense, having the misfortune of encountering lightning is not at all a chance event that is easily dealt with.
Those who have been fortunate enough to survive one have been left with scars, not only in their memories but, terrifyingly, also on their skin. These scars are Lichtenberg figures or electric arborescences… Trees of light.
Anyone who sees them would say that it is a tattoo designed in a studio. But the truth is that it is a very beautiful (and at the same time spooky) fractal pattern in the nature of lightning. Yes, the branching patterns observed in Lichtenberg’s figures have fractal properties, that is, the same figure repeats at different scales. And how can we not remember that natural mathematics is implicit in every detail.
A beautiful and (no doubt) fearsome manifestation of nature.
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