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http://news.discovery.com/earth/weather-extreme-events/dark-lightning-who-does-it-hurt-130410.htm
Dark Lightning Zaps Airline Passengers
You’ve probably never seen it, but it’s possible you’ve been exposed to it if you’ve ever flown through a thunderstorm. Dark lightning, flashes of gamma rays that occur at altitudes in which commercial aircraft fly, doesn’t produce much light, but it does produce radiation.
New research presented Wednesday at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna pinpoints the amount of radiation that dark lightning produces -- and how much pilots and passengers might be getting exposed to.
“The good news is that the doses are not super scary -- it could be worse,” said lead research Joseph Dwyer, a physics professor at Florida Institute of Technology. “It’s similar to going to the doctor’s office and getting a CT scan.”
The existence of dark lightning itself was discovered on a NASA spacecraft in 1994. In the electrical fields of a thunderstorm, electrons zoom close to the speed of light, colliding with atoms to emit the gamma rays.
In 2010, Dwyer and colleagues determined that dark lightning occurred at altitudes where airplanes commonly fly. That prompted the current work, which involved a physics-based model that can show exactly how the discharge happens.
Dark Lightning Zaps Airline Passengers
You’ve probably never seen it, but it’s possible you’ve been exposed to it if you’ve ever flown through a thunderstorm. Dark lightning, flashes of gamma rays that occur at altitudes in which commercial aircraft fly, doesn’t produce much light, but it does produce radiation.
New research presented Wednesday at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna pinpoints the amount of radiation that dark lightning produces -- and how much pilots and passengers might be getting exposed to.
“The good news is that the doses are not super scary -- it could be worse,” said lead research Joseph Dwyer, a physics professor at Florida Institute of Technology. “It’s similar to going to the doctor’s office and getting a CT scan.”
The existence of dark lightning itself was discovered on a NASA spacecraft in 1994. In the electrical fields of a thunderstorm, electrons zoom close to the speed of light, colliding with atoms to emit the gamma rays.
In 2010, Dwyer and colleagues determined that dark lightning occurred at altitudes where airplanes commonly fly. That prompted the current work, which involved a physics-based model that can show exactly how the discharge happens.
