When it comes to thunderstorms, lightning tends to steal the show, dazzling everyone with its spectacular displays, and overshadowing the powerful long-distance rumbles that accompany the atmospheric energy release.
But now a team of scientists working at the Southwest Research Institute in the US has captured the world’s first detailed image of thunder, and it looks even more incredible than we ever imagined.
The image was created using acoustic wave maps, which were based on recordings from a range of microphones positioned around an artificially generated lightning strike.
Because sound waves from higher elevations take longer to travel to the microphones, these recordings allowed the scientists to visualise how the claps and rumbles emitted during a storm move in space.
Read more at Science Alert
