Dr Füllekrug and colleagues have discovered that all-natural particle accelerators is generally shaped by lightning storms (Picture by Axel Rouvin) (PhysOrg.com) -- A lightning researcher on the University of Bath has discovered that during thunderstorms, large all-natural particle accelerators can type 40 km over the surface on the Earth. Dr Martin Füllekrug from the Universitys Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering presented his new work on Wednesday 14 April in the Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting (RAS NAM 2010) in Glasgow. His findings show that when particularly intense lightning discharges in thunderstorms coincide with high-energy particles coming in from space (cosmic rays), nature provides the right conditions to form a giant particle accelerator previously mentioned the thunderclouds. The cosmic rays strip off electrons from air molecules and these electrons are accelerated upwards by the electric field in the lightning discharge. The free electrons and the lightning electric field then make up a normal particle accelerator. The accelerated electrons then develop into a narrow particle beam which can propagate from the lowest level with the atmosphere (the troposphere), through the middle atmosphere and into near-Earth space, where the energetic electrons are trapped in the Earths radiation belt and can eventually cause problems for orbiting satellites. These are energetic events and for the blink of an eye,
Office 2007 Standard Key, the power on the electron beam might be as large as the power of a small nuclear power plant. Dr Füllekrug explained: The trick to determining the height of one with the purely natural particle accelerators is to use the radio waves emitted by the particle beam. These radio waves were predicted by his co-worker Dr Robert Roussel-Dupré using computer simulations in the Los Alamos National Laboratory supercomputer facility. A sprite shaped by an intense thunderstorm (Credit: Oscar van der Velde,
Office 2010 Pro Plus X64, Universitat de Catalunya, Spain and Serge Soula,
Office Professional Plus 2007 Key, Laboratoire d'Aerologie, France)A team of European scientists, from Denmark, France,
Office 2007 Professional Key, Spain and the UK helped to detect the intense lightning discharges in southern France which set up the particle accelerator. They monitored the area over thunderstorms with video cameras and reported lightning discharges which were strong enough to produce transient airglows over thunderstorms known as sprites. A small fraction of these sprites were found to coincide with the particle beams. The zone above thunderstorms has been a suspected all-natural particle accelerator since the Scottish physicist and Nobel Prize winner Charles Thomson Rees Wilson speculated about lightning discharges over these storms in 1925.
In the next few years five different planned space missions (the TARANIS,
Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate Product Key, ASIM, CHIBIS, IBUKI and FIREFLY satellites) will be able to measure the energetic particle beams directly. Dr Füllekrug commented: Its intriguing to see that nature creates particle accelerators just a few miles previously mentioned our heads. Once these new missions study them in more detail from space we should get a far better idea of how they actually work. They provide a fascinating example of the interaction between the Earth and the wider Universe. Provided by University of Bath (news : web)