Tuesday, 1 February 2011

Chance of thunder ... and of gamma-ray flashes

Physics - Chance of thunder—and gamma-ray flashes
In a paper appearing in Physical Review Letters, scientists in Italy (Tavani et al.) present new space-based observations of gamma-ray emissions from thunderclouds, called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs). Their analysis suggests that storms located deep within our atmosphere sometimes produce bursts of electrons with energies up to 100 MeV.