Slashdot Mirror
Gamma Rays From Thunderclouds
KentuckyFC sends us a report of gamma rays detected at a Japanese nuclear plant, whose origin was thunderclouds high overhead (abstract, article PDF). The theory is that showers of electrons caused by cosmic rays, when they encounter the high electric fields present in thunderstorm clouds, can be accelerated to energies above 10 MeV and result in bremsstrahlung photons detectable on the ground.
Just fling electrons at the blue planet where the electricity is, and see if you can hit the little dust-specks. Like billiards! Anyway, it's fun to know that each time there's a thunderstorm, and a random electron flies in from somewhere in the universe, you're getting bombarded with braking radiation. Although, considering that I'm doing experiments with X-rays in my garage, I probably shouldn't worry about that. :)
also, first post (if my calculations are correct).
http://pinopsida.com
Is that five or six months down the line, the Incredible Hulk will start controlling electricity.
Or possibly the fusion of deuterium/hydrogen in rain water by lightning?
I actually posted an article about this back in 2005. Lightning Fusion And Other Hot News
Letter To Iran
This is going to make the best James Bond movie ever.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And neutrons will crash into other nuclei and there will be secondary fissions and fusions. Neither fission nor fusion is an entirely straight forward reaction with only one set of byproducts. Muon catalyzed fusion produces gamma rays directly.
Our own star the Sun produces gamma rays from the PP-I fusion chain 4 1H 1 4He + 2 positrons + 2 neutrinos + 2 gamma rays The by-products provide the source of luminosity: * Positrons: anti-electrons (e+) - collide with electrons (e-) * Neutrinos: rapidly escape from the star * Gamma rays (photons): travel outwards through star interacting many times with atomic gas. Energy is also provided by the PP-II and PP-III chains
Letter To Iran
The gamma ray observatories have to be in orbit. How is someone on the ground detecting gamma rays?
I have chaired sessions at meetings of the American Geophysical Union where this topic was discussed - over ten years ago!
THe Stanford radio science group is very active in modelling runaway electron acceleration such as this. In addition to gamma rays, free neutrons can also be produced.
scintillation crystals
Apparently the border guards are having problems telling the difference between kitty litter and enrich uranium
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
There are ground based gamma ray detectors (Google). They don't detect the gamma rays directly, but rather the showers as the gamma rays interact with molecules in the atmosphere.
GLAST , is a new gamma-ray mission which will launch early next year and will have the capability to measure TGFs up to much higher energies -- so we will get to really understand the acceleration mechanism. Both instruments on GLAST are designed to observe the celestial sky, but they have such large fields of view that they can also simultaneously make observations of the Earth for at least some of the time.
Isn't that what makes your films exposed? oh wait...
just wonder why there are so many anonymous cowards in this world....
I guess that explains why my light bulbs keep popping and the batteries in my remote controls keep going flat whenever there's stormy weather.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
A basic calculation indicates that as many as 0.7-3% of 10 MeV gammas could make it down from 2000 m. Put another way, any gamma headed for their detector will make it there about that percentage of the time. Starting with a high flux could mean that a significant number of gammas make it to the scintillators, which can trigger off of relatively small numbers of photons.
That having been said, 2000m is the lower end of the altitude range (as I understand it) for storm clouds, and my calculation assumed dry air at sea level. The attenuation of photons does go up pretty sharply as you get to energies less than 10 MeV, as well.
The story so nice, they posted it twice. ... and still only 23 comments.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
If thunderclouds can accelerate radiation energy, how come I never heard of people died in places where there are lots of thuderstorm activities due to radiation overdose?
Besides, even though there is no thunderstorm, cosmic rays can generate energy up to 1GeV.
It's really one of those jargon-related things that happen so often in physics. Your average physicist uses "intensity" in ways that make optical scientists rip their hair out, since in optics intensity has a very specific definition. In the same vein, radiation scientists reserve "gamma" to describe photons originating from nuclear processes. Physicists in other specializations generally just go by energy because gammas tend to be higher in energy than X-rays. It's not necessarily the case though.
Well, you learn something new everyday.
The border between x-rays and gamma isnt defined by energy.
There are gamma decays with only a few 10s of keV (just take any mösbauer experiment), and there are
x-rays in the many 100keV range (Uranium K-line, High energy undulators at the higher electron energy synchrotrons like SPring8, ESRF or APS).
For that reason in the range between 10keV and 1MeV, to avoid confusion, stuff is usually named by how it is made.
Although to be fair, starting at multi-MeV, the distinction kinda loses its point.
End lets not get started with the more or less arbitrary distinction between cosmic rays (the photon kind) and gamma rays (i have seen values between 100MeV and 10s of GeV for the threshold...)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Sure. I was just going to say that.
Kythe
Relatively opaque. 100 meters of atmosphere (sea level) will absorb about 50% of the gamma rays.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I call shinanagans. If this was true there would be a whole lot more green people running around smashing things. Everyone knows that gamma rays = Hulk, its a proven scientific fact.
I understand that the distinction is useful to somebody, in certain cases. But as far as I know the only distinguishing characteristic of a photon is its energy. Are you saying that an instrument could tell the difference between a cosmic ray @ 1 MeV and a fission gamma @ 1 MeV?
Tesla coils in a rainstorm with Geiger counters.
The game.
You know this has been proven false by more than a few people more than a few times over? Do a search for yourself and save the embarrassment of spewing someone else's literary diarrhea. For anyone that took the time to read the comment above, this theory is easily dismissed by the fact that electrons flowing TO the sun have NEVER been detected with the explanation from the believers of the electric model being "we're not looking hard enough"
With 41 comments, I expected at least ONE Incredible Hulk reference.
You're all very bad nerds.
this theory is easily dismissed by the fact that electrons flowing TO the sun have NEVER been detected with the explanation from the believers of the electric model being "we're not looking hard enough"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have NO way to detect electrons that don't strike normal matter? As in, if I send a stream of electrons 10 meters away from you in your spaceship, aren't you completely oblivious to what I did if I missed?
We also haven't detected one species splitting into two -- does that mean that evolution's a load of crap?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we have NO way to detect electrons that don't strike normal matter? As in, if I send a stream of electrons 10 meters away from you in your spaceship, aren't you completely oblivious to what I did if I missed?
You are wrong. Electrons in magnetic fields radiate synchrotron radiation and wee know that the Solar system and the Milky Way is pervaded by magnetic fields.
Yup. The cosmic ray usually isn't a photon, it's a particle of some type that slams into the atmosphere and turns into a bunch of other particles, which slam into the atmosphere some more and eventually turn into some sort of photon. That is opposed to the gamma ray which IS a photon.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I thought this article was supposed to be about KFC coming up with a new way to cook chicken wings.
A Japanese nuclear plant, cosmic rays, thunderclouds? What could possibly go wrong?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
the reason it is crud,
A.) There is more than one nuclear plant in the world, and most o them get rained on at one time or another.
B.) Nuclear plants check constantly for even the lowest levels of radiation.
C.) Japan does not have magic special super clouds.
If this theory were true we'd have heard about it years and years ago he first time there was a big thunderstorm at a Nuclear plant.
HOLY CRAP... BREMSSTRAHLUNG PHOTONS from frikkin BASIC FLUFFY CLOUDS IN THE SKY. What's next, some goshdarned erenkov radiation being emitted from like, Innocent Little Bunny Rabbits?! Or like, some freaking Antideuterium Particles shooting out of Very Cute Baby Kittens ??
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
when are we going to see first godzilla invasion ?
Read radical news here
You replay doesn't answer the question I was trying to ask. Obviously you can distinguish between a gamma and a neutron, beta, alpha, positron, etc.
Do two gammas at the exact same energy have any way to distinguish them based on their origin?
why until now this wasnt discovered ? radiation measurement is not something new, we are even able to map distant galaxies with radio telescopes, listen to background radiation with passive telescopes. clouds arent something new ? why did this discovery wait until now ?
Read radical news here
There is a suspected but yet unproven relation between cosmic rays and lightning. The theory is that when a cosmic particle strikes the atmophere, it ionises a path though the atmophere. This then provides a conduit for lightning.
F ARWorkshop_Apr07_HeinoFalcke.pdf
This is currently a hot research topic in particle physics and meteorology.
A professor in Nijmegen and a collegue of mine are studying this phenomena (Heino Falcke and Lars Bähren)
http://www.physorg.com/news4162.html
http://www.lofar.org/workshop/23Apr07_Monday02/LO
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
I think you didn't get him. Either that or you need to define the sources of your "different" gamma rays at the same energy.
"Little is much when little you need."
Those with a taste for good metal would have detected Gamma Ray in Japan after their album "Sigh No More" in 1992. Though I have no idea how they managed to get into a nuclear base.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Interesting discovery that a high-voltage, high current discharge can produce high-energy photons. Who didn't know that one? Gammas and hard X-Rays are the same thing, just differentiated by their source. X-Rays come from electron interactions and gammas from nuclear processes. Gotta figure that some electrons will be excited to higher than average energies during a lightning bolt and produce some really energetic X-Rays that will be detected as gammas. Although, I have to admit I am still much more worried about being hit by the lightning bolt itself rather than a miniscule amount of radiation from the discharge. What are we talking about here, about 1 micro-REM per lifetime?
It's like a car wreck. You just can't look away.
Google is a gamma ray detector? Well, I suppose they would index high energy radiation - they index everything else.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I guess you didn't succeed in asking the question you wanted to.
The answer to your new question is that, no, you can't distinguish a gamma ray from a gamma ray when they both have the exact same energy -- they are exactly the same.
The answer to the question I think you're TRYING to ask, can you distinguish an x-ray from a gamma ray of the same energy, is no, not if you only have a detector to work with. The distinction is entirely on the production side. Often you can tell because they're not the same energy though -- the processes that produce gamma and x-rays tend to produce more of them at particular energies.
In this case, since they're saying they know the source of the radiation, there should be no doubt about whether it's x-rays or gammas.
"If yer gonna build a quantum computer, yer gonna need some quantum memory to store qubits."
--
Yer also gonna need some real good smart folks whose readin' and writin' skills don't come from schoolin' they got down 'n South yonder.
Excuse me for a while, I need to go read a few books to make up for the five minutes I spent at that redneck blog.
Are you referring to Tim Thompson's critique of The Electric Sun Theory? That's been rebutted
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/Rejoinder.htm
I've been "searching" for a year now, and I'm fairly familiar with the debate. Contrary to your own assertion, there is a debate here. Many people will actually be surprised to learn that they cannot even find Electric Universe Theory on wikipedia, thanks to Josh Shroeder (aka ScienceApologist) and others. So, Josh has decided to make the decision for you. I suppose we should thank him. He's graced us with his presence actually recently, and it became extremely clear that he believes that nothing that he has ever read in his astrophysical textbooks can ever be untrue.
Actually, measuring electron drift is not as simple as you say here. It is far simpler on larger scales though. In fact, we would expect to see pretty much what we do see on larger scales: that the solar wind continues to accelerate as it passes the planets. The mainstream lacks a meaningful explanation for why this might be occurring.
It's also worth noting that the Ulysses probe has in fact observed a hot mph flow of electrons and protons at the Sun's poles. The mainstream prefers to believe though that it doesn't actually do anything.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
No, then what are Sprites?
Then why do we see it occasionally going into space? Why would lightning be traveling outside of your electrically closed system?
You ignore the fact that the Colorado river goes straight through the Kaibab Upwarp. Rivers tend to go around large obstacles rather than cutting through them.
Are you aware that some of these central spires have been observed to retain their stratigraphy?
That's interesting. Peter Thompson's experiment where he created a tornado within a petri dish used no pressure whatsoever
http://www.peter-thomson.co.uk/tornado/fusion/Cha
There are plenty of reasons for why EU Theorists could be correct. Focusing on just one mathematical item over-simplifies the issue. Numerous observations suggest that electrical plasmas are common in space. You will never realize this so long as you apply pseudo-skepticism to ATM theories, and refuse to actually read what is being said.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
Yes. The correct definition. ;)
You're right, the definition seems a little pointless until you understand a bit more about it. To start with, it's a bit of a historical thing, since x-rays and gamma rays were discovered at different times. Actually, all of the divisions in the EM spectrum are where they are mostly for historical reasons, which in turn are mostly due to the different processes that are required to produce the radiation. You can make radio waves by varying an electric current, but you (before LEDs) needed to heat something up to get IR, visible and UV. X-rays were produced by bombarding a target with electrons. Gammas produced by nuclear processes.
The naming does make sense though -- you're normally not so interested in the radiation itself but rather in where it came from. Normally the energy spectrum of the radiation gives away whether it's x-rays or gamma rays as well. So yes, practically, you can usually tell whether some detected radiation is gamma or x-rays by looking at the distribution of energies. Not for a single photon, but you rarely measure those except in things like particle accelerators where you know if it's an x-ray or gamma anyway.
Actually, I think the original poster has it backwards. Most particle accelerator sources produce gamma rays because the source is nuclear decay processes. For example, crashing positrons into electrons produces a pair of gamma rays (at a very particular energy).
There are interesting features of EM radiation other than radiation sickness.
There have been several important points in time within the history of science where the mainstream went wrong. I won't go into all of them here, but there is one in particular that people on Slashdot tend to be just completely clueless on: the interpretation of ancient documents through the context of uniformitarianism produces absolute nonsense. We have a wealth of materials to work with that range from astronomical recordings to mythological stories and even historical accounts, and yet, when documents are translated under the assumption that the Earth has always existed under the same exact conditions, numerous specific problems arise with regards to the contents of these documents. Not only that -- and this is extremely important for you to understand -- but the problems correlate amongst nearly all of the cultures of the world. This has led to the widespread belief that ancient people were idiots who spent a lot of time writing gibberish down for future generations to ridicule them about. Aside from validating stellar explosions and cometary encounters, it has become commonly accepted amongst the whole world, in fact, that there is nothing of any useful astronomical meaning within the writings of people of the past.
What you and many others do not realize though is that it is not that there is no information there. The problem with interpreting those documents is the assumption of uniformitarianism. Once you remove that doctrine from the mind of the interpreters, and allow them to translate the texts as they were written and meant to be read, the message correlates between nearly all of the ancient writers. Dwardu Cardona's "God Star" is the first truly successful attempt at pulling this off, and seeing that it was only published in 2006, you and others can be forgiven for not having heard of it yet. But, what is unmistakable, and beyond any shadow of a doubt at this point in time based upon what he has discovered, is that the universe operates according to a plasma cosmology. Now, I don't for an instant believe that you will believe me, or that you will even ever wonder enough about what is in that book to actually purchase it because I understand the situation better than you understand. I've spent massive amounts of time learning the Slashdot crowd. I'm quite familiar with the way that people here think, and what they consider to be valid and invalid evidence. I also realize that you cannot pick and choose your evidence for how the universe works, or what form it should take. And, it is only by ignoring everything that has been written down by people who witnessed events which directly contradict uniformitarianism and the mainstream astrophysical theories that mainstream astrophysicists and their advocates can claim that their theories are accurate. It is only by ridiculing evidence which does not agree with their own theories that they can continue to convince people to not read about that evidence. Make no mistake about it: there is more than enough evidence within "God Star" alone to indicate to most people that the Big Bang never happened, and that we exist within a static universe. Halton Arp was right. Wallace Thornhill's accurate Deep Impact prediction was no accident. Hannes Alfven's prophetic warning to abandon the concept of frozen-in-place magnetic fields in his Nobel Physics acceptance speech was correct. Velikovsky made mistakes with his timelines, but many of his points about planetary reshuffling and interactions were right on target. In particular, Velikovsky's assertion that Venus is still cooling off from its recent birth was money, 100% correct. To be honest, when you can just go back and look up the eyewitness accounts of the event in excruciating detail, there really is no more doubt anymore that it is true.
It's an interesting situation that you guys have set up for yourselves. You can surely claim that ancient people must have all been crazy in the same ways, and
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.