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The Cosmic Start Of Lightning

http://earthchangesmedia.com/the-cosmic-start-of-lightning
Even though lightning is a common phenomenon, the exact mechanism triggering a lightning discharge remains elusive. Scientists at the Dutch national research institute for mathematics CWI, the University of Groningen and the University of Brussels now published a realistic model involving large…

Even though lightning is a common phenomenon, the exact mechanism triggering a lightning discharge remains elusive. Scientists at the Dutch national research institute for mathematics CWI, the University of Groningen and the University of Brussels now published a realistic model involving large ice particles and cosmic rays.

The big picture of lightning is clear: charge separation occurs inside a thundercloud and is eventually short-circuited by a conductive tube of ionized air. However, the electric field inside these clouds is usually an order of magnitude too low to create the conductive tube. This is why lightning inception is first out of the ‘top ten questions in lightning research’, according to a recent review.

Lightning researchers at CWI (Amsterdam), the University of Groningen (KVI-CART), and the University of Brussels now claim to have cracked this question. Large ice particles or hydrometeors form the first ingredient of their model. These grow out of hailstones moving up and down in the turbulent air inside thunderclouds. When they grow in an elongated shape, this will focus the electric field inside the cloud on their tips. The increased electric field is high enough to accelerate free electrons and start an ionization cascade, necessary to create a conductive tube.

Simulations showed that ice particles of 6 cm length and a narrow, elongated shape would increase the electric field enough to cause discharge inception. Estimates from the literature suggest such hydrometeors occur inside thunderclouds in a density of roughly 0.1 m-3.

Normally there are too few free electrons present in the surrounding air to cause a discharge. However, these could be provided by high energy cosmic rays, which can generate large showers of free electrons. Computer simulations showed that in an electric field of 3 meters high and 0.2 km2, one air shower per minute of free electrons capable of discharge inception would occur.

In short, free electrons from air showers caused by cosmic particles entering the atmosphere are accelerated in the electric field at the tip of a hydrometeor, and form self-propagating tubes of ionized air. These conductive tubes can short-circuit the built-up charge difference inside a thundercloud, between clouds or between a cloud and the earth’s surface. The results, presented in a Physical Review Letters paper, show that this mechanism for discharge inception is realistic.

The proposed model would predict that lightning inception at higher altitudes (e.g. 12 km) is less likely, as the hydrometeors would have to be longer to reach the required electric field density, while electron density in air showers caused by cosmic particles is lower at this altitude.

If these results are confirmed, a big question will have been solved. However, professor of particle physics Olaf Scholten, says there are still plenty of questions remaining. “Our institute is using data from large radio telescopes, like the Dutch Low Frequency Array LOFAR, to study lightning and increase our understanding of this phenomenon.” Future projects include studying the charge separation in clouds and the location of the discharge inside a cloud.

The study was partly funded by the project ‘Creeping Sparks’ from Technology Foundation STW and ‘Cosmic Lightning’ from the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM).

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Human Brain May Contain A Map For Social Navigation

http://earthchangesmedia.com/human-brain-may-contain-a-map-for-social-navigation
The brain region that helps people tell whether an object is near or far may also guide how emotionally close they feel to others and how they rank them socially, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published today in the journal Neuron. The findings…

The brain region that helps people tell whether an object is near or far may also guide how emotionally close they feel to others and how they rank them socially, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published today in the journal Neuron. The findings promise to yield new insights into the social deficits that accompany psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and depression.

The study focused on evidence for the existence of a “social map” in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that remembers locations in physical space and the order in which events occur. While previous studies had suggested that the hippocampus records a 3-dimensional representation of our surroundings when a key set of nerve cells fires, how the hippocampus contributes to social behavior had not been previously described.

“By quantifying the response patterns of people making decisions based on social interactions, we found that the hippocampus tracks relationships, intimacy and hierarchy within a kind of ‘social map’,” says Rita Tavares, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the Schiller Laboratory of Affective Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Our data suggests a common mechanism for how the brain codes for physical space, time and for social relationships.”

Previous social psychology studies and theory had identified two main factors that define social relationships: power (competence, dominance, hierarchy) and affiliation (intimacy, trustworthiness, love). In the new study, Mount Sinai researchers gauged participants’ sense of affiliation and power using a social space model: in a role-playing game, healthy subjects were tasked with finding a new home and job through power and affiliation interactions with virtual cartoon characters.

To quantify social interactions, study investigators used power and affiliation as the x and y axes of a two-dimensional graph where they recorded the social coordinates of each interaction. Each time the participant interacted with a character during the game, that character’s coordinates moved along a trajectory of greater or lesser intimacy or power. The researchers designed a mathematical analysis where they asked whether the brain activity being measured in the functional neuroimaging (fMRI) scanner tracked those changing social coordinates. The research team found a correlation between hippocampal activity and movement through the abstract social “space.”

“We found that participants who reported better social skills showed better hippocampal tracking of the movement of the game characters through that social space,” says Daniela Schiller, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and Lab Director of the Schiller Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Our results suggest that the hippocampus is crucial for social cognition and imply that beyond framing physical locations, the hippocampus computes a more general, inclusive, abstract and multidimensional social map.”

Navigating through social space may be relevant to many disorders that impair social cognition, such as sociopathy, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, depression and autism. Many of these disorders are known to involve hippocampal dysfunction. The current study results predict that an impaired geometric representation of social space in the hippocampus may accompany social dysfunction across psychiatric populations. Further exploration of these hypotheses could lead to improved diagnostic and therapeutic options for several psychiatric populations.

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Sinkholes Offer Glimpse into Comet's Heart

http://earthchangesmedia.com/sinkholes-offer-glimpse-into-comets-heart
Strange pits and divots observed on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko may be sinkholes, not unlike those that appear on Earth, a new analysis suggests.

T

Images of the comet taken by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe show the object’s surface is spotted with…

Strange pits and divots observed on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko may be sinkholes, not unlike those that appear on Earth, a new analysis suggests.

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Images of the comet taken by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe show the object’s surface is spotted with flat-bottomed pits that are emitting jets of gas. New research reveals how the steep divots could be created by melting ice under the comet’s surface, which creates empty spaces that can suddenly cave in.

Since August 2014, Rosetta has been orbiting Comet 67P (as it’s known for short) and photographing its every facet. But the inner workings of the comet, and its unusual pits and jets, have gone unexplained — until now. [Living on a Comet: ‘Dirty Snowball’ Facts Explained (Infographic)]

The new research suggests that when subsurface ice melts and the empty spaces suddenly cave in, new parts of the comet become exposed to the sun’s glare and heat up. This additional heat can generate gases inside the comet that escape as jets. The researchers say that understanding the sinkholes’ formation might help determine the comet’s’ makeup and age.

“Now, for the first time, we have a clear link between jets and between these pits that we have observed on the surface,” Jean-Baptiste Vincent, a planetary scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, told Space.com “And it’s also telling us a lot of things about the evolution of the comet and about the inner structure.”

Vincent is first author on the new research, which was published online today (July 1) in the journal Nature.

Photos of the comet revealed two types of pits: There are shallower pits, with more gradual, sloping sides. And there are pits with deep, nearly vertical walls, which create empty cylinders in the ground. Jets of material fly out of these steep pits’ sides, and researchers originally thought this was evidence that explosions were creating the pits. But now the scientists say that cannot be the case.

“The small jets that you see, it could take them forever to carve the pits that we observe now,” Vincent said.

The new analysis of data from Rosetta suggests instead that the pits form when the roof of an empty space in the comet collapses, similar to sinkholes that form on Earth and Mars. Vincent said that the voids could come from ice within the comet’s core turning to gas and escaping after exposure to heat. Then, the newly exposed walls of the pits begin to react in the sunlight by releasing material in jets, slowly collapsing and flattening them over time.

If found on other comets, the pits could offer insight into the makeup of those objects’ cores, as well as serving as a sign of age or exposure to the sun: the longer a comet was exposed to sunlight, the more worn away the pits would be.

“We think it’s a common process. It’s happening on all comets — maybe on slightly different timescales, but we think it’s happening everywhere,” Vincent said.

“We’re able to make a discovery like this now because Rosetta is a rendezvous mission, and everything before has been flybys,” Paul Weissman, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who wrote a commentary about the new paper in the same issue of Nature, told Space.com.

“We’re literally orbiting the comet at walking speed, typically a meter a second or less,” Weissman added.”And so this gives us the opportunity to stay there, see changes occurring, see what happens to the comet as it losses mass, as different areas come into sunlight and get active.”

As of June 23, the Rosetta mission has been extended until September 2016, so the spacecraft will be able to continue investigating Comet 67P after the space rock reaches its closest point to the sun next month and moves away again. Rosetta will keep gathering more detailed images and measurements. In the meantime, researchers will continue to scrutinize the existing data for details about the comet’s formation and composition.

“And there’s still going to be surprises to come, I think,” Weissman said.

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Sinkholes Offer Glimpse into Comet’s Heart

http://earthchangesmedia.com/sinkholes-offer-glimpse-into-comets-heart
Strange pits and divots observed on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko may be sinkholes, not unlike those that appear on Earth, a new analysis suggests.

T

Images of the comet taken by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe show the object’s surface is spotted with…

Strange pits and divots observed on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko may be sinkholes, not unlike those that appear on Earth, a new analysis suggests.

T

Images of the comet taken by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe show the object’s surface is spotted with flat-bottomed pits that are emitting jets of gas. New research reveals how the steep divots could be created by melting ice under the comet’s surface, which creates empty spaces that can suddenly cave in.

Since August 2014, Rosetta has been orbiting Comet 67P (as it’s known for short) and photographing its every facet. But the inner workings of the comet, and its unusual pits and jets, have gone unexplained — until now. [Living on a Comet: ‘Dirty Snowball’ Facts Explained (Infographic)]

The new research suggests that when subsurface ice melts and the empty spaces suddenly cave in, new parts of the comet become exposed to the sun’s glare and heat up. This additional heat can generate gases inside the comet that escape as jets. The researchers say that understanding the sinkholes’ formation might help determine the comet’s’ makeup and age.

“Now, for the first time, we have a clear link between jets and between these pits that we have observed on the surface,” Jean-Baptiste Vincent, a planetary scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, told Space.com “And it’s also telling us a lot of things about the evolution of the comet and about the inner structure.”

Vincent is first author on the new research, which was published online today (July 1) in the journal Nature.

Photos of the comet revealed two types of pits: There are shallower pits, with more gradual, sloping sides. And there are pits with deep, nearly vertical walls, which create empty cylinders in the ground. Jets of material fly out of these steep pits’ sides, and researchers originally thought this was evidence that explosions were creating the pits. But now the scientists say that cannot be the case.

“The small jets that you see, it could take them forever to carve the pits that we observe now,” Vincent said.

The new analysis of data from Rosetta suggests instead that the pits form when the roof of an empty space in the comet collapses, similar to sinkholes that form on Earth and Mars. Vincent said that the voids could come from ice within the comet’s core turning to gas and escaping after exposure to heat. Then, the newly exposed walls of the pits begin to react in the sunlight by releasing material in jets, slowly collapsing and flattening them over time.

If found on other comets, the pits could offer insight into the makeup of those objects’ cores, as well as serving as a sign of age or exposure to the sun: the longer a comet was exposed to sunlight, the more worn away the pits would be.

“We think it’s a common process. It’s happening on all comets — maybe on slightly different timescales, but we think it’s happening everywhere,” Vincent said.

“We’re able to make a discovery like this now because Rosetta is a rendezvous mission, and everything before has been flybys,” Paul Weissman, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who wrote a commentary about the new paper in the same issue of Nature, told Space.com.

“We’re literally orbiting the comet at walking speed, typically a meter a second or less,” Weissman added.”And so this gives us the opportunity to stay there, see changes occurring, see what happens to the comet as it losses mass, as different areas come into sunlight and get active.”

As of June 23, the Rosetta mission has been extended until September 2016, so the spacecraft will be able to continue investigating Comet 67P after the space rock reaches its closest point to the sun next month and moves away again. Rosetta will keep gathering more detailed images and measurements. In the meantime, researchers will continue to scrutinize the existing data for details about the comet’s formation and composition.

“And there’s still going to be surprises to come, I think,” Weissman said.

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• Dusty Surprise Around Giant Black Hole
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• Long-Duration Flare