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Terrestrial Gamma Ray Bursts Very Common
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."
to the rest of the solar system in ways we are just beginning to see. The electric sun theory explains most of it. Now we are filling in the "we're not sure why" parts and it is amazingly simple. Physics rule. Radioactive decay releases energy that has to go somewhere. Since you can not destroy energy, just transfer it, Storms are conduits to the ground or a catalyst. The gamma rays go out to be balanced with the force needed to equal the force absorbed electrically or magnetically (Ion based) by the Earth. Ions and gamma rays Oh my! A sort of St Elmo's fire? Only with a radioactivity spectrum. No telling what we might see next with our new eyes.