They look like ramifications. Tattoos printed on the skin, some very subtle, others extreme and brutal. The path traced by lightning as it travels through the human body is, to the astonishment of many, a mirror of its real form.
The probability of a person being struck by lightning 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 electric shock is so strong that it can cause serious effects, ranging from convulsions, paralysis and brain damage, to amnesia, severe burns and cardiac arrest.
Lightning can heat the surrounding air to 50,000°F (27,760℃), that is, it can become five times hotter than the sun, and can contain up to 1,000 million volts of electricity. In this sense, having the misfortune of encountering lightning is not at all a fortuitous event that is easily dealt with.
Those who have been fortunate enough to survive one have been left with scars, not only in memory but, terrifyingly, also on their skin. These scars are the figures of Lichtenberg or electrical arborescences… Trees of light.
[related]
Anyone who sees them would say that it is a studio designed tattoo. But the truth is that it is a very precious (and at the same time terrifying) pattern of fractals in the nature of lightning. Yes, the branching patterns seen in Lichtenberg figures have fractal properties, that is, the same figure is repeated at different scales. And how can we not remember that natural mathematics is implicit in every detail.
A beautiful and (undoubtedly) fearsome manifestation of nature.
It may interest you: What happens if lightning strikes a plane in mid-flight
It might interest you