There’s a topic on this subject here. I’d read about thunderstorms generating gamma ray flashes before, but this is the first I’ve heard about them generating antimatter.
Where’s the energy coming from? I gather that the standard “turbulent friction of water droplets” in the rising air columns doesn’t come close to cutting it.
Talking about lightning. Could a simple lightning rod suffice to replicate LPPX experiments on the cheap? Of course you could only expect to get a couple of shots per device per year so you would need several devices prepped at anyone time. But the costs would be offset by the fact that you could do away with switches and capacitor banks. 🙂
I’m currently in the process of installing such a device on my rooftop. 😉
Initially i’m interested in leading the wires through a container of water, isolating one of the electrodes in an insulated ceramic tube, like these scientists from the Max Planck institute did:
Long-living plasmoids from an atmospheric water discharge
(excerpt attached with this post, original link: http://iopscience.iop.org/0963-0252/17/2/024014)
I was struck when i saw this. Not by lightning. Rather i was struck by the striking resemblance between this experimental setup and the DPF (cf. Figure 1. in the paper).
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