Wow ! Is the Earth's magnetic field able to stop these ?
I guess it must or, we'd all be fried by now.
No. It doesn't. They just plow on in. The overall flux is quite low compared to other radiations. In any event the atmosphere is our shield here, CR's hit the air molecules and cause of a 'shower' of secondary particles.
There was a theory at one time that lightning in the atmosphere was initiated by cosmic rays (probably the secondary ones). I don't know whatever became of that, but it seems quite curious to me that we should be able to see the effects of such high-energy cosmic rays directly (more or less).
Wow ! Is the Earth's magnetic field able to stop these ?
I guess it must or, we'd all be fried by now.
No. It doesn't. They just plow on in. The overall flux is quite low compared to other radiations. In any event the atmosphere is our shield here, CR's hit the air molecules and cause of a 'shower' of secondary particles.
There was a theory at one time that lightning in the atmosphere was initiated by cosmic rays (probably the secondary ones). I don't know whatever became of that, but it seems quite curious to me that we should be able to see the effects of such high-energy cosmic rays directly (more or less).
Interesting point. I recall some Russian studies showing fusion level gammas emitted from lightning storms. This was poo-pooed as the cloud to ground voltage has no where near enough drop ie. Mev perhaps but not GeV or more. But a crowd of CR cascade debris would do nicely ..... however Fermi data has another view. Fascinating.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: RE: Wow ! Is the
)
There was a theory at one time that lightning in the atmosphere was initiated by cosmic rays (probably the secondary ones). I don't know whatever became of that, but it seems quite curious to me that we should be able to see the effects of such high-energy cosmic rays directly (more or less).
RE: RE: RE: Wow ! Is
)
Interesting point. I recall some Russian studies showing fusion level gammas emitted from lightning storms. This was poo-pooed as the cloud to ground voltage has no where near enough drop ie. Mev perhaps but not GeV or more. But a crowd of CR cascade debris would do nicely ..... however Fermi data has another view. Fascinating.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal