. Scientists believe that studying the exploded stars will help us better understand Earth’s lightning and thunderclouds. An international research team says cosmic rays can be used to examine lightning and thunderclouds in extraordinary detail. What is the mechanism that triggers lightning in thunderclouds It is difficult to know how one can measure the electric fields within these dangerously charged clouds. This week, a team of scientists published in Physical Review Letters that cosmic rays are suitable probes for measuring electric fields within thunderclouds. A cosmic ray causes a particle shower that reaches LOFAR via a thundercloud. Radboud University. The measurements were made using the LOFAR radio telescope in the Netherlands. Pim Schellart 2015, an Astronomer, completed his PhD at Radboud University, Nijmegen in the Netherlands. He is supervised and guided by Professor Heino Falcke. These were just too messy. They were too messy. These particles travel high up into the atmosphere and strike molecules in the air, creating “showers” of elementary particles. These showers can be measured using radio emission, which is produced when the constituent particles of these particles are deflected in Earth’s magnet field. Radio emission provides information about original particles. The measurements can be done with LOFAR in ASTRON (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy), Dwingelloo. However, they are not performed during thunderstorms. Modelling Schellart, Gia Trinh, Prof. Olaf Scholten, from the University of Groningen and Ute Ebe (lightning expert at Centrum Wiskunde and Informatica) all examined these data. Schellart stated that “we modeled how thunderstorms’ electric fields can explain different measurements.” It worked well. “How radio emissions change gives us lots of information about thunderstorm electric fields. It was possible to determine the intensity of an electric field at certain heights in the cloud. This field could be as strong as 50kV/m (kilovolt/metre). The voltage at thunderclouds can reach several hundred millions of volts across a long distance. The dangerous charge Lightning is a natural phenomenon that can kill and injure people, animals, and plants, and cause infrastructure damage. The authors claim that this new technique for measuring the electric field within thunderclouds can help us better understand and predict lightning activity. The measurements currently made from small rockets and balloons are too precise. The measurement is also affected by the equipment’s proximity and contact with thunderclouds. The thunderclouds are scanned by cosmic rays from the top down. They move at a speed of almost light and provide an instantaneous picture of the electrical fields in the cloud. They are also naturally generated and readily available. Professor Falcke stated that this research was an example of interdisciplinarity between geophysicists, geophysicists, and astronomers. The model will be further developed to answer the question “How is lightning created within thunderclouds?”. Citation: Schellart and colleagues, “Probing the atmospheric electric field in thunderstorms via radio emission from cosmic ray-induced air showers,” Schellart and co. Physical Review Letters. Publication April 24, 2015.
The study of exploding star’s light and thunderclouds helps us to understand Earth
