Geology.com presents us with a very interesting map of global lightning strikes – high-resolution version available here. Central Africa is clearly the lightning hotspot of the world, and by a fairly stunning magnitude, I might add. (Black indicates the most active regions).
I wonder what you’d do, on the other hand, if your own brain showed up on this map… A moving black spot, crashing harddrives, frying satellites, starting fires in the deserts of sub-Saharan Africa. Or the canyons of Manhattan, funneling frictive clouds of geomagnetic energy down avenues, lighting up this map with darkness.
For that matter, if, instead, spinning out in the middle of the Pacific you find a weird eye of unexpected hydro-electrical activity, dooming ships, hiding islands, setting up the storyline for King Kong 2…
In any case, yet more information about lightning, etc., can be found at the Center for Lightning and Atmospheric Electricity Research.
You should visit where lightening and atmospheric electricity research first occurred on this planet. You might just be surprised at what strikes you, especially if figure out how to let it happen.
Apologies for the irrelevance of this, but is anyone else spending way too much time excitedly tapping random locations into Google Earth, just to see that globe spin? Also, this blog lights up my life…..cheers!