Researchers explore how storms on Earth create extreme bursts of radiation
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Re: Researchers explore how storms on Earth create extreme bursts of radiation
#2>Crucial to their plans was making cheap, tabletop γ-ray detectors that they could install in dozens of sites.
On a related note: there's a citizen science experiment that uses a volunteer-run array of old smartphones with taped over cameras to detect particle showers caused by ultra-high energy cosmic rays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic-Ray_Extremely_Distribut...
Re: Researchers explore how storms on Earth create extreme bursts of radiation
#3https://archive.is/zpyoo
You can find PDFs of that article if you search. It's fascinating.
Re: Researchers explore how storms on Earth create extreme bursts of radiation
#4I read this mainly to see what Dr. Dwyer was up to in regards to this. I was in the same grad school as his group at FIT. I was also working on gamma ray detectors at the time, so we would occasionally talk. Their big challenge was the range of the rays in the atmosphere. But I also think that they had a lot of fun - they would initiate lightning strikes by shooting rockets into clouds. That way they knew where to set up their detectors.
http://www.lightning.ece.ufl.edu/PDF/Dwyer_et_2009a.pdf
Re: Researchers explore how storms on Earth create extreme bursts of radiation
#5If I have to be careful with 20kv discharges generating x-rays, certainly it's within the realm of possibility that lighting bolts are generating y-rays, no?
Re: Researchers explore how storms on Earth create extreme bursts of radiation
#6If I have to be careful with 20kv discharges generating x-rays, certainly it's within the realm of possibility that lighting bolts are generating y-rays, no?
They want to figure out the details of why and how it happens.
Re: Researchers explore how storms on Earth create extreme bursts of radiation
#7I heard that lightning is triggered by cosmic ray particles. A seed in a supersaturated solution situation.
And cosmic rays always come from very very far away.
So a lightning bolt is literally an amplified message from beyond.
Re: Researchers explore how storms on Earth create extreme bursts of radiation
#8I read this mainly to see what Dr. Dwyer was up to in regards to this. I was in the same grad school as his group at FIT. I was also working on gamma ray detectors at the time, so we would occasionally talk. Their big challenge was the range of the rays in the atmosphere. But I also think that they had a lot of fun - they would initiate lightning strikes by shooting rockets into clouds. That way they knew where to se…
Reading the wiki and some related patents I am curious how many such rockets would be required to sufficiently protect a region from random lightning strikes.
Are there methods to determine the potential for a storm to generate lighting or simply how much energy is potentially there to create them?
Re: Researchers explore how storms on Earth create extreme bursts of radiation
#9If I have to be careful with 20kv discharges generating x-rays, certainly it's within the realm of possibility that lighting bolts are generating y-rays, no?
They want to figure out the details of why and how it happens.
I think snarfy is expressing incredulity that meteorology doesn't already account for these types of emmissions. Analogously, suppose the headline had read
> Water flows downhill. Scientists want to know why.
"But gravity makes everything flow downhill, right? What makes water especially worthy of investigation." Surely this is a reasonable reaction.
Re: Researchers explore how storms on Earth create extreme bursts of radiation
#10I heard that lightning is triggered by cosmic ray particles. A seed in a supersaturated solution situation. And cosmic rays always come from very very far away. So a lightning bolt is literally an amplified message from beyond.
no it's not, that's not how lightning works