Neutrons produced in lightning strikes.

[jamesr]

A post on Ars Technica reports on the recent publication by a Russian group that they have detected a correlation between lightning strikes and neutron detection.

Who’d have thought an intense current flowing through a plasma filament could lead to nuclear reactions…

PRL paper: http://prl.aps.org/pdf/PRL/v108/i12/e125001

[AaronB]

Does anybody have any connection with these guys? They need to be aware of our work. We’ve had other posts about sprites and jets associated with gamma rays. Too few scientists are familiar with plasma physics and the basic principles of pinching and the formation of jets. If we can make fusion reactions (and neutrons) with just one MA and 40 kV in FF-1, then surely a bolt of lightning can do it also.

[asymmetric_implosion]

I find it surprising that neutrons are produced in lightning mainly because of the fuel. I hope someone can nail down the reaction. I would be interesting. To my knowledge no one has observed neutrons from nitrogen pinches or argon pinches. It might be interesting to test air in a pinch and see if neutrons are produced. The real problem seems to be dose rate and shot rate for a plasma focus.

[Steven Sesselmann]

Without knowing more about the research than what I read on that page, I would go back and look at all my wiring. I am currently running my own neutron background experiment with an He3 detector, and these things are so sensitive you only need to sneeze to get a false count, so Imagine what a near by lightning strike would do. The signal to noise ratio on most sensitive neutron detectors is poor, which makes them hard to work with in areas where there are plasma discharges. I am sure you guys at LPP agree with that. One of the reasons we like to use bubble detectors, as these are insensitive to EMF noise.

I suspect this might turn out to be another “faster than light neutrino” embarrassment.

Steven

[jamesr]

I’d imagine it would be pretty easy to design an experiment (although not necessarily to get good results!) where you build a few dozen detectors made up of a He3 or BF3 neutron counter and an antenna to pick up the EM pulse together with a GPS location/timer accurate to a few ns and data logger. Then space them in a grid a mile or so apart in a thunderstorm prone area. Leave them logging every strike for a season, then come back and process the results.

You can triangulate the position of the lightning strikes fairly simply, then although the neutron detections may only be barely above the noise level, over a few thousand strikes you may be able to build up reasonable statistics, using the delay from the EM pulse, giving not only the position (co-location with strike?), energy distribution, and maybe infer the height (ie do they come from the low level arc, or the jets/sprites higher in the atmosphere)

[Henning]

What about contacting the author Chris Lee about FF, with the newest publication in PoP? He seems to be a plasma physicist with access to a mainstream publication.

[DerekShannon]

Don’t ask, just do it! (Although this does get me in trubs with Eric sometimes 😉

[Author]

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