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"Dark Lightning" Could Expose Airline Passengers To Radiation
mbstone writes "Lightning researcher Joseph Dwyer of the Florida Institute of Technology claims that thunderstorms unleash sprays of X-rays and even intense bursts of gamma rays which could cause airline passengers to receive in an instant the maximum safe lifetime dose of ionizing radiation — the kind that wreaks the most havoc on the human body. Dwyer hopes his sensor aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, will provide more data."
Should be really easy to study - are aircrew more likely to suffer the ill effects of ionizing radiation, whatever those are.
It would be the sort of thing that an established Airline and staff (or air force) would probably already have noticed, particularly any that fly through and around the intense storms in the tropics. The fact that they haven't leads me to think that this may be a non-story.
Not so fast, mister cynic. First the article says "one dark lightning occurrence for every thousand visible flashes" and then shortly afterward "thunderstorms produce about a billion or so lightning bolts annually".
So that's one million "dark lightning" incidents every year, and how many global aircraft flights? Avoidance of thunderstorms or not, odds are it's been happening and we didn't know to look for symptoms until now.
If they do not carry dosimeters, why not?
It's an avoidable business expense. As most airlines are either bankrupt or teetering on the edge, they don't spend a red cent more than they absolutely have to.
Plus why carry something that could only give your airline bad publicity, and open up the possibility of being sued for "not taking sufficient evasive measures".
Don't most planes fly above the storms?
Not necessarily. Airliners in which I have flown commonly go no higher than 36,000 feet - occasionally perhaps 40,000 feet. The tops of thunderstorms often reach 55,000 feet and can be even higher. One extreme case reached about 70,000 feet. Moreover, it is necessary to fly well above the tops of the visible clouds, as bad things can happen up to a mile higher. Check out, for instance, http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/152684/
So pilots almost always opt to fly around storms instead.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
There are dosimeters on board. I have completed several radiation safety courses during my work and radiation levels for airline crew are monitored and tracked just like they are for workers in nuclear and other research fields. Frequent fliers are not monitored and tracked. I work at CERN and I know exactly how much ionizing and neutron dose I receive during my work, but I also have to travel between my home at Fermilab and CERN and I have no idea how much dose I receive on my trans-Atlantic flights. The pilot of the plane is monitored and his dose is tracked. That pilot should also have access to his personal dose, but I don't know what the level of transparency is in the airline industry. So if there were a significant likelihood, the data is there.
Speaking from a physics point of view, a huge acceleration is need to produce x-ray and gamma rays. And they aren't hard to detect. It would seem that a balloon experiment flying some CsI or other crystals in some thunderstorms would quickly detect this phenomena even if it is 1/1000 or even 1/10000.
Still, if you have to looking for symptoms, it can't be that bad.
The symptoms, in the form of radiation damage, don't appear until many years afterwards. Like the damage cigarettes cause, for example.
How do you associate your cancer to the airplane rides you took 20 years previously?
I thought flight levels were odd-only starting at and above FL290 — or do the airliners in which you fly not adhere to flight levels?
Not since 2005 in the U.S. - under a program called Reduced Vertical Separation Minima, the 2000-foot separations apply at FL410 and above. Below that, it's based on heading (or actually ground track); 0-179 will be assigned odd FLs; 180-359 get assigned even FLs.
FTFY
You crazy Americans insist on misspelling everything
That's exactly how we spell 'everything', what are you talking about?
> just stick a few geiger counters and recorders on planes and fly them near thunderstorms
Rewind the footage to about 5:00 when the airplane is at about the cruising altitude, it is that bad, even without the pesky thunderstorms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2IMEk1dvNw
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum#Etymology
The scientist who first named the actual element settled on the name aluminum, which matches the oxide to the elemental name, alumina -> aluminum, as is consistent with other oxides. It is not incorrect, and predates the -ium use.