(STUDY FINDS) – Fatal lightning strikes are about as rare as winning the lottery, but a new study finds climate change may be changing that. As the world gathered for the COP26 climate change conference, scientists in South Africa unveiled a tool they say can save lives due to increasingly lethal thunderstorms.
The invention reveals if humans or animals were the victims of a bolt of electricity – based solely upon an analysis of lightning’s “fingerprint” in their skeletons.
“Identifying a fatality caused by lightning strike is usually done though marks left on the skin, or damage to the internal organs – and these tissues don’t survive when bodies decompose,” says lead author Dr. Nicholas Bacci from the University of the Witwatersrand in a release.
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