- Sep 16, 2003
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Something I thought was interesting.
Discovery and more indepth explanation
Discovery and more indepth explanation
A team of physicists, including Joseph Dwyer at Florida Tech have developed a model of how thunderstorms produce high energy radiation. In this model, instead of lightning, thunderstorms can also result in an electrical breakdown of high-energy electrons and the anti-matter equivalent, positrons. The interaction between the electrons and positrons creates explosive growth in some of these high energy particles emitting the observed terrestrial gamma ray flashes and rapidly discharging the thundercloud, sometimes even faster than normal lightning. Even though abundant gamma-rays are emitted by this process, with little or no visible light, it creates an electrical breakdown within the storms now called Dark Lightning by the scientific community.
