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Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

phys.org

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Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#11

Post by idontwantthis »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #9
cperciva wrote: post #2

Positively charged particles end up at the top of the storm while negatively charged particles drop to the bottom, creating an enormous electric field that can be as strong as 100 million AA batteries stacked end-to-end. Or put another way, 150 MV. What's with this media obsession with using obscure non-SI units?

I assume they wanted a way to make it sound massive when it’s really not. Like, that’s about enough to run the average American household for 10 years, but we have power plants that supply multiples of that daily.

A voltage is not a unit of power.

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#13

Post by [deleted] »

cperciva wrote: post #2

Positively charged particles end up at the top of the storm while negatively charged particles drop to the bottom, creating an enormous electric field that can be as strong as 100 million AA batteries stacked end-to-end. Or put another way, 150 MV. What's with this media obsession with using obscure non-SI units?

[deleted]

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#14

Post by ctoth »

mhog_hn wrote: post #3
cperciva wrote: post #2

Positively charged particles end up at the top of the storm while negatively charged particles drop to the bottom, creating an enormous electric field that can be as strong as 100 million AA batteries stacked end-to-end. Or put another way, 150 MV. What's with this media obsession with using obscure non-SI units?

I agree in giving flak for using the term AA batteries in this context.

Shots fired!

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#16

Post by calmbonsai »

throwaway314155 wrote: post #4
cperciva wrote: post #2

Positively charged particles end up at the top of the storm while negatively charged particles drop to the bottom, creating an enormous electric field that can be as strong as 100 million AA batteries stacked end-to-end. Or put another way, 150 MV. What's with this media obsession with using obscure non-SI units?

Familiarity with the unit is important to gauge scale.

True, but at least get the units right.

A "stack of AA batteries" as described would be a measure of electrical potential (i.e. voltage), not electric field strength (Volts / unit-length in the applicable dimension(s)).

It's been known for quite some time that high density static electric field "break-downs" generate electromagnetic radiation all throughout the spectrum--look at any wide-band antenna's reception next to any spark-gap generator. It doesn't take much--even the piezoelectric igniter on a grill wand will do it.

One can also generate X-rays by rapidly unrolling Scotch tape. It the same phenomena on a _much_ smaller scale. What's "new" here are the two distinct types of gamma discharges indicating (likely) very different field breakdowns--not that these gamma rays themselves are being produced.

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#17

Post by sneak »

cperciva wrote: post #2

Positively charged particles end up at the top of the storm while negatively charged particles drop to the bottom, creating an enormous electric field that can be as strong as 100 million AA batteries stacked end-to-end. Or put another way, 150 MV. What's with this media obsession with using obscure non-SI units?

Nobody outside of the industry knows how much a megavolt is.

Megavolts are actually the obscure unit, for normal people.

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#18

Post by labster »

cperciva wrote: post #2

Positively charged particles end up at the top of the storm while negatively charged particles drop to the bottom, creating an enormous electric field that can be as strong as 100 million AA batteries stacked end-to-end. Or put another way, 150 MV. What's with this media obsession with using obscure non-SI units?

If all of those 100M AA batteries were laid out flat, they would cover over 13 football fields (70000 sq m), including the Chargers home stadium.

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#19

Post by samplatt »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #8
madars wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But familiarity gets more remote as you need larger and larger (or, smaller and smaller) multipliers. It's far more illustrative to say "the volume of a typical gas tank" than "the internal volume of hundred million poppy seeds", even though the volumes are in the same ballpark. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(voltage) says that high voltage substations are in 100 kV range and 25.5MV i…

That's fair but the average person kinda knows how much (work/light/heat) a single AA battery can do/produce, but not what a substation can do.

I would posit that no person on earth has personal experience of 100 million AA batteries in a single circuit.

Re: Gamma radiation is produced in large tropical thunderstorms

#20

Post by doodlebugging »

mhog_hn wrote: post #3
cperciva wrote: post #2

Positively charged particles end up at the top of the storm while negatively charged particles drop to the bottom, creating an enormous electric field that can be as strong as 100 million AA batteries stacked end-to-end. Or put another way, 150 MV. What's with this media obsession with using obscure non-SI units?

I agree in giving flak for using the term AA batteries in this context.

They could've made it easier for laymen and laywomen to grok if they simply would've defined the volume of batteries in terms of how many Olympic-sized swimming pools one could fill with all those batteries.
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