So how can you tell this apart from homicide? Sorry to steal your thunder, Thor, but the researchers created lightning in a lab themselves and targeted pieces of human bone to see the effects. Resulting fractures that radiate outward can give away a lightning death. This triggers the piezoelectric effect, which stresses and cracks brittle crystals of bioapatite in the bone. Bone realigns its collagen fibers when exposed to an electrical field. This is the effect that causes some materials to generate an electric charge when experiencing mechanical stress.
Randolph-Quinney thinks two processes create a telltale pattern of microfracturing in bone - barotrauma, an injury that occurs because of changes in air or water pressure, and a piezoelectric effect. “We suspect that high intensity current like lightning causes microfracturing due to a pressure wave, or barotrauma, that follows a path through the bone that offers the least resistance - the easiest route,” Augustine told SYFY WIRE.
#DEATH BY DEGREES COSPLAY SKIN#
This was really difficult to prove before, unless the body was not fully decomposed and marks were identified on the skin or internal organs. New research has found a way to determine whether people or animals were victims of fatal lightning strikes just by studying their skeletons. They co-authored a study on their findings that was recently published in Forensic Science International: Synergy. While signs of lightning trauma can be identified in the soft tissues of bodies that have not yet decomposed, what happens if investigators are too late, and how can you tell death by lightning apart from murder or another cause if only bones are left? Researchers Tanya Augustine, of Wits University in South Africa, and Patrick Randolph-Quinney of Wits University and Northumbria University, have found out. But what happens if a victim has been reduced to a skeleton by the time their remains are found? Deadlier fingers of lightning have been reaching down from the fiercer thunderstorms brought on by climate change. In South Africa, the threat of lightning storms is real, with 250 people (compared to 24,000 across the planet) perishing from lightning each year. The hammer of the Thunder God can strike a lethal blow. “You have a better chance of being struck by lightning” might not be the most reassuring adage, and monster flashes of electricity can be more than special effects in a Marvel movie, depending on where you are.
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