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Terrestrial Gamma Ray Bursts Very Common

Posted by samzenpus on from the planet-hulk dept.

Rambo Tribble writes It was long thought that gamma ray bursts were the exclusive province of deep space sources. More recently it was found that storms could produce such emissions, but such occurrences were thought rare. Now, data from NASA's Fermi satellite suggest such events happen over a thousand times a day. Per Prof. Joseph Dwyer, from the University of New Hampshire, "These are big, monster bursts of gamma rays, and one would think these must be monster storms producing them. But that's not the case. Even boring-looking, garden-variety, little storms can produce these."

2 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Re:More important: how is this happening? by Khyber · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Uhhh, have you paid attention to the news lately? Lightning bolts are now known to create anti-matter. To produce a gamma ray is pretty much EXPECTED.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  2. Bremsstrahlung effect? by cachimaster · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Xrays produced by the Bremsstrahlung effect are proportional to the voltage of free-electrons hitting an atom. That is, a 30kV electron would produce X-ray light with a spectrum centered in 30kV.

    Rays have millions of volts and should be expected to produce X-rays of mega-electronvolts energy, this is gamma-ray energy levels.

    But Bremsstrahlung needs vacuum, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about.