If you're ever flying in a plane through the clouds on a stormy night and wonder if those lightning bolts could feasibly endanger the flight, you've got something new to worry about. It turns out that, according to scientists, a certain invisible kind of lightning called "dark lightning" regularly hits plane passengers with gamma rays without their even knowing it.
"However," LiveScience adds, according to researchers, "these outbursts do not seem to reach truly dangerous levels."
More than 10 years ago, researchers discovered that "brief but powerful bursts of gamma rays" are produced by thunderstorms. These "terrestrial gamma-ray flashes" are the "highest-energy form of light," according to LiveScience, and can be so bright that they blind satellite sensors hundreds of miles from origin.
The problem with all these fascinating facts is that the terrestrial gamma-ray flashes tend to occur at the same height that commercial airlines often fly. It has been difficult to determine whether or not the radiation from these gamma rays can have an adverse effect on passengers, as scientists still have little information on exactly what these gamma rays are all about.
Scientists do believe that antimatter is "hurled" into space from these flashes.
"We know in detail how black holes work at the centers of distant galaxies, but we don't really understand what is going on inside thunderclouds just a few miles over our heads," said Joseph Dwyer, a physicist at the Florida Institute of Technology.
The provenance of these gamma ray flashes is referred to as "dark lightning" because although computers can be used to help detect this "extreme form of lightning," the blasts produce so little light it's hard to see them with the human eye.
"I find it amazing that it took us two-and-a half centuries after Ben Franklin to find out that there is another kind of lightning inside thunderstorms," Dwyer told LiveScience.
So, is this "amazing" dark lightning dangerous to passengers flying through the clouds when the gamma ray blasts are occurring?
"Doses never seem to reach truly dangerous levels," Dwyer noted. "The radiation from dark lightning is not something that people need to be frightened about, and it is not a reason to avoid flying. I would have no problem getting on a plane with my kids."
Along with colleagues Ningyu Liu and Hamid Rassoul, Dwyer detailed the team's findings at a conference of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna on Wednesday, April 10.
Like what you're reading? Follow @profklickberg.
