New Research Reveals Thunderstorms Emit Gamma Rays

News Desk

Islamabad: Recent studies have revealed that big thunderstorms continuously emit gamma rays, a phenomenon previously thought to be undetectable from the ground.

This groundbreaking discovery could provide crucial insights into the mechanisms that spark lightning, according to findings published in the journal Nature.

Despite the occurrence of over 40,000 thunderstorms generating more than8 million lightning strikes daily, the science behind these events remains poorly understood, as noted by physicist Joseph Dwyer, who analyzed the new research.

Gamma rays, known for their extremely high-energy light bursts, have typically been associated with cosmic events such as solar flares and black holes.

However, in the 1990s, NASA satellites designed to detect high-energy particles from outer space began capturing gamma rays originating from Earth. This revelation indicated that other than nuclear reactors, nothing on the planet had been thought capable of producing such radiation.

Since then, researchers have identified two distinct types of gamma rays occurring within thunderstorms, both of which are invisible to the naked eye. Gamma-ray glows can persist for several minutes over areas approximately 20 kilometers (12 miles) wide, while more intense “flashes” last less than a millisecond.

“Essentially all big thunderstorms generate gamma rays all day long in many different forms,” said Steven Cummer, a researcher at Duke University and co-author of one of the studies.

To further investigate the phenomenon, an international team of scientists utilized a NASA ER-2 airplane, capable of flying at altitudes exceeding 20 kilometers above storm clouds.

Over the course of a month in 2023, the aircraft, launched from a Florida air force base, collected evidence indicating that gamma radiation is much more prevalent than previously believed.

The storms consistently generated gamma-ray glows for hours across vast areas, closely linked to the storm’s most intense regions.

Describing the storms, Martino Marisaldi of Norway’s University of Bergen stated that they resemble “a huge gamma-glowing ‘boiling pot'” in both pattern and behavior. The second study indicated that these glows can intensify into “flickering” gamma-ray flashes, suggesting a connection between the two types of emissions.

These findings blur the lines between gamma-ray glows and flashes, with implications that glows may transform into intense pulses. Notably, lightning often follows these intense gamma-ray emissions, hinting at a possible role in the initiation of lightning strikes.

Dwyer remarked, “How lightning is initiated inside thunderstorms is one of the greatest mysteries in atmospheric sciences.” He emphasized the excitement of discovering that Earth’s atmosphere still holds surprises, spurring a new avenue of research more than two decades into the 21st century.