Do lightning bolts carry cosmic radiation to Earth? How dangerous are magnetic storms during thunderstorms?

How I wish I could be under a summer downpour! A radioactive downpour? A frightening study has appeared in the journal Nature. If a thunderstorm coincides with a magnetic storm, then lightning can bring cosmic radiation directly to Earth. There are plenty of magnetic storms right now, and thunderstorms will add to them in the summer. Should we start worrying and building makeshift bunkers? Or have we misunderstood everything? Let's find out with the experts.

NO, THE SENSORS DO NOT LIE

The article was written by the renowned Loren Bloom, a professor and recognized expert in cosmic radiation, along with her graduate students. They brought the boss's attention to strange sensor data. In South America and around Florida in the USA, powerful bursts of radiation were suddenly recorded. Out of nowhere. The radiation (beta rays) appeared as a stream of electrons accelerated to nearly the speed of light. The bursts lasted up to three seconds. For those seconds, unsuspecting people found themselves as if in outer space.

Was it only in South America or just in Florida? Of course not; it’s just that there are sensors there. They exist everywhere, including here in Russia. Bloom began to search for the cause.

Her scientific intuition prompted her to correlate the moments of radiation bursts with… lightning. Well, the connection is evident: about a second after a lightning flash, electrons rain down from the sky. But another condition is required. There needs to be a magnetic storm raging during the thunderstorm.

It seems as if lightning breaks through the protective barriers that Mother Nature has set up to safeguard her children. What is actually happening?

“THIS IS A LESSON FOR ME FOR LIFE”

Let's first clarify what we're dealing with.

Charged particles, that harmful stuff, are rushing from the Sun (but not only from it) towards us. The key word here is “charged.” Remember your physics lessons: charged particles move freely until they encounter a magnetic field. When they do, they stick to it, and that's it; they are trapped.

Earth has a magnetic field. As it approaches the planet, it captures radiation and collects it in the so-called Van Allen belts, at an altitude of thousands of kilometers. Our planet is surrounded by a radioactive “doughnut” (it resembles that shape), and we don’t get any of it. That's why we're alive. Thank you, magnetic field.

The belts were discovered at the dawn of the space era, as you might guess, by Van Allen, on the first American satellite. Scientists placed radiation sensors there, and it immediately went off the charts. They expected it to be hot, but not to that extent.

Over time, details emerged. The inner Van Allen belt is stable and hovers at an altitude of about a thousand kilometers. The outer belt is located about 3,000 kilometers from the planet, and it’s chaotic: particles arrive, whirl around, being tossed from the southern magnetic pole to the northern one.

And it seemed all of this was so far away from us; let them spin.

When Bloom realized that there was no insurmountable barrier between the terrifying belts and Earth… “This was a lesson for me: to be ready for the unexpected, as no one could even imagine that this was possible,” she writes, still stunned by what she uncovered.

THE SOFT SOUND OF THUNDER

Initially, Bloom tasked her graduate student Max Feinland (his name appears first in the list of authors) with verifying one not-so-reliable hypothesis.

Radio enthusiasts sometimes hear mysterious sounds, which in their slang are called “choral singing.” These sounds occur because lightning impulses travel around the Earth, wrapping around it several times, getting distorted, and sounding eerie. It was believed that such impulses could dislodge radiation from the outer Van Allen belt and bring it closer to Earth, but it turned out that from time to time, bursts of energetic electrons of another kind occur.

These electrons clearly came from the inner belt, and they are very “nasty”; they shouldn’t be there. And the main question is – how did they get to us?

And you already know – through lightning.

IS IT DANGEROUS?

The mechanism is exotic but generally understandable, says candidate of sciences and employee of the Institute of Earth Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation Valery Petrov.

Lightning is a powerful source of radio waves, the researcher explains. You can confirm this by turning on a receiver before a thunderstorm (don’t do this during a storm): you’ll hear crackling. These waves, Valery Petrov says, propagate to the ionosphere (the charged layer above our heads) and then through the plasma. And since plasma, as we remember, is “stuck” to the magnetic field, its power lines and patterns also guide the radio wave.

When encountering electrons, how does it affect them? It distorts their path. Normally, electrons move from northern magnetic latitudes to southern ones, but the wave creates additional “pressure,” changing their movement vector. This can lead to the discharge of electrons, which we see on Earth as a spike in beta radiation.

- Essentially, this is the scattering of electrons on waves, - formulates Valery Petrov.

Russian scientist sees no particular danger in such a phenomenon. Electrons are already discharging into the upper atmosphere, which we observe as auroras. But the fact that lightning somehow provokes this well-known process is certainly interesting.

Why is this only possible during magnetic storms? The storms stir up the radiation belts, as stated in the study. Energetic electrons appear in the lower belt, which weren’t there before. They are the ones that create the “weather.” Cosmic weather – which turned out to be related to earthly weather.

Lightning during magnetic storms does not pose a danger

Photo: Mikhail FROLOV. Go to the Photo Bank KP

THE MYSTERY OF MAGIC MIRRORS

This phenomenon is natural, and therefore safe, agrees physicist, professor Vladimir Polyakov:

- We’ve been living with this for millions of years, we’ve adapted! The dangerous norm of electromagnetic radiation, according to medical standards, is 0.1 watts per square meter, while we receive 600 watts per meter from the Sun. It turns out that artificial waves harm us, while natural ones, which are 6,000 times stronger, do not!

Radiation from space is not new to us; despite the multi-layered protection, it reaches Earth from both the Galaxy and the Sun. This creates what is known as the natural background, says Vladimir Polyakov:

- Sometimes we are penetrated by extremely energetic galactic particles, such as protons, with energies in giga-electron-volts. More often, a particle cannot “break through” the air but creates a shower of “fragments.” All of this passes through us and causes no harm.

The phenomenon discovered by the Americans is not some new natural entity that has emerged, for example, from destructive human activity, the researcher is convinced. It’s simply that space is poorly studied, and such things were not noticed before. Researchers had long suspected something like this, says Professor Polyakov. Scientists have long suspected that the ionosphere could work like… a laser. More precisely, like a maser – the same as a laser, but for microwaves.

- How does a laser work? Two mirrors facing each other, with a medium between them that has excess energy. Such mirrors are amazing things. In mysticism, it is believed that with their help, one can see a tunnel into infinity. The amplification of the photon stream in a laser is achieved through a standing wave, resulting in more powerful and, importantly, synchronized light, - says Vladimir Polyakov, - It’s amazing, but something like this seems to happen in nature by itself. Take a power line of the magnetic field that exits from the polar zone, passes through the Van Allen belts, and enters the Earth in the southern hemisphere. A particle, an electron, “wraps around” the power line and starts circulating from north to south, from south to north. There’s your resonator!

In such a mechanism, energy amplification is indeed possible, leading to a massive discharge of electrons, including the formation of auroras. They searched and searched for such masers, but couldn’t find them. It is possible that the Americans have finally discovered them, concludes Professor Polyakov.

So, we’ve figured it out! The phenomenon looks frightening at first glance – and it’s no wonder that conspiracy theory enthusiasts are already spinning