Thunderstorms have been shown to create positrons and send them to space. As the late, great, Johnny Carson of the Tonight Show used to say, “That is some weird, wild, stuff“.
NASA’s Fermi Catches Thunderstorms Hurling Antimatter into Space
Scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.
Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF), a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 TGFs occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected.
“These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams,” said Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He presented the findings Monday, during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.
| NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected beams of antimatter launched by thunderstorms. Acting like enormous particle accelerators, the storms can emit gamma-ray flashes, called TGFs, and high-energy electrons and positrons. Scientists now think that most TGFs produce particle beams and antimatter. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center |
Fermi is designed to monitor gamma rays, the highest energy form of light. When antimatter striking Fermi collides with a particle of normal matter, both particles immediately are annihilated and transformed into gamma rays. The GBM has detected gamma rays with energies of 511,000 electron volts, a signal indicating an electron has met its antimatter counterpart, a positron.
Although Fermi’s GBM is designed to observe high-energy events in the universe, it’s also providing valuable insights into this strange phenomenon. The GBM constantly monitors the entire celestial sky above and the Earth below. The GBM team has identified 130 TGFs since Fermi’s launch in 2008.
“In orbit for less than three years, the Fermi mission has proven to be an amazing tool to probe the universe. Now we learn that it can discover mysteries much, much closer to home,” said Ilana Harrus, Fermi program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
| Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor detected 130 TGFs from August 2008 to the end of 2010. Thanks to instrument tweaks, the team has been able to improve the detection rate to several TGFs per week. Credit: NASA |
The spacecraft was located immediately above a thunderstorm for most of the observed TGFs, but in four cases, storms were far from Fermi. In addition, lightning-generated radio signals detected by a global monitoring network indicated the only lightning at the time was hundreds or more miles away. During one TGF, which occurred on Dec. 14, 2009, Fermi was located over Egypt. But the active storm was in Zambia, some 2,800 miles to the south. The distant storm was below Fermi’s horizon, so any gamma rays it produced could not have been detected.
“Even though Fermi couldn’t see the storm, the spacecraft nevertheless was magnetically connected to it,” said Joseph Dwyer at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla. “The TGF produced high-speed electrons and positrons, which then rode up Earth’s magnetic field to strike the spacecraft.”
The beam continued past Fermi, reached a location, known as a mirror point, where its motion was reversed, and then hit the spacecraft a second time just 23 milliseconds later. Each time, positrons in the beam collided with electrons in the spacecraft. The particles annihilated each other, emitting gamma rays detected by Fermi’s GBM.
On Dec. 14, 2009, while NASA’s Fermi flew over Egypt, the spacecraft intercepted a particle beam from a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF) that occurred over its horizon. Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor detected the signal of positrons annihilating on the spacecraft — not once, but twice. After passing Fermi, some of the particles reflected off of a magnetic “mirror” point and returned. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientists long have suspected TGFs arise from the strong electric fields near the tops of thunderstorms. Under the right conditions, they say, the field becomes strong enough that it drives an upward avalanche of electrons. Reaching speeds nearly as fast as light, the high-energy electrons give off gamma rays when they’re deflected by air molecules. Normally, these gamma rays are detected as a TGF.
But the cascading electrons produce so many gamma rays that they blast electrons and positrons clear out of the atmosphere. This happens when the gamma-ray energy transforms into a pair of particles: an electron and a positron. It’s these particles that reach Fermi’s orbit.
| A TGF produces gamma rays (magenta) as well as high-energy electrons (yellow) and positrons (green). This simulation tracks a TGF and its particle beams from their origin altitude of 9.3 miles (15 km) to 373 miles (600 km), beyond Fermi’s orbit. Credit: Joe Dwyer/Florida Inst. of Technology |
The detection of positrons shows many high-energy particles are being ejected from the atmosphere. In fact, scientists now think that all TGFs emit electron/positron beams. A paper on the findings has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.
“The Fermi results put us a step closer to understanding how TGFs work,” said Steven Cummer at Duke University. “We still have to figure out what is special about these storms and the precise role lightning plays in the process.”
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership. It is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.
The GBM Instrument Operations Center is located at the National Space Science Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala. The team includes a collaboration of scientists from UAH, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and other institutions.
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h/t WUWT reader James Barker
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Re: “The land/ocean difference is interesting, because it reminds me of my gut suspicion that the South-Atlantic Anomaly where the Van Allen Belt touches the atmosphere (and which irradiates satellites and astronauts whenever they pass through it) is perhaps an important factor in the atmosphere’s electrical circuit
…
So far as I know, these questions haven’t even been asked, much less answered, but then again, they are wildly speculative and based on not much of anything except gut feeling.”
It’s not wildly speculative, and your gut instinct is really quite trustworthy (if you ask me). It’s the plasma universe view that thunderstorms behave as a sort leaky capacitor between space and Erth, and that the Van Allen radiation belts play an important role in this process.
Within the plasma universe view, planets, stars and even galaxies share a common homopolar motor (aka Faraday motor) morphology and function. However, we don’t see all of the individual parts of the discharge for every cosmic object: The Faraday disc is very easy to see in galaxies, but only shows up in certain spectra for stars and planets. I believe the Sun’s disc is visible in infrared (?), and this doughnut around the Sun is what ultimately stakes the sunspots down (more-or-less) to the Sun’s equatorial region.
My understanding is that, within this alternative view, the elemental makeup (and perhaps other contributing factors?) of each cosmic object has an effect upon the types of visible discharges which result from electrical discharging between cosmic bodies and their surroundings. On Mars, for instance, the electrical activity tends to take the form of gigantic dust devils. Although NASA has yet to make a big deal of it, if you zoom into one of those global Martian dust storms, you can see that the dust storms are in fact highly filamentary. So, it would appear that on Mars, the electrical discharge between the planet and space exhibits different characteristics than on Earth: It manifests as millions of side-by-side tornadoes which reach heights of about five miles high. From http://www.rense.com/general63/elel.htm
“Since Mars has no thunderstorms to “charge-up its ionosphere,” it should present a good case study of the Electric Universe. The electrical model predicts that the Martian ionosphere is indeed charged, and it posits no isolated dynamo to “separate charge.” On Mars, electrical effects will reach directly from the ionosphere to the surface without the ameliorating leakage via storm clouds that we see on Earth. Unlike radiant energy from the Sun, electrical energy can accumulate in the “planetary capacitor” for some time, with a potential for planet-altering events when the atmosphere finally “breaks down” and massive discharge activity is initiated.”
(BTW, notice the technique: they are applying laboratory plasma physics principles to our observations of cosmic objects. But, it only works if you understand laboratory plasma physics. Electrostatics will not help here. This is electrodynamics, no different than electric circuit theory.)
In fact, were one to drop all ideologies with regards to the Sun and Mars, these armies of Martian dust devils are very easy to confuse with the Sun’s spicules.
And this is one small example for why people tend to say that the EU model is simpler than the conventional theories: Conventional theorists put so much effort into breaking the universe into little, tiny labeled pieces which lack much in the way of commonality in how they operate.
EU Theory, on the other hand, demonstrates commonality for all cosmic objects and phenomena by presenting an electrical plasma cosmic framework which can naturally explain each component, based upon laboratory plasma physics fundamentals and a familiarity with the characteristics of the various cosmic objects.
It is a very clever approach. The conventional theories end up looking very Earth-centric, by comparison. Conventional theorists have not had a whole lot of success in explaining weather patterns on other planets in the solar system, so this is definitely taking it up a notch. It turns out that this approach can be used to explain all of the enigmatic planetary polar hotspots, enigmatic circulation patterns on the gas giants, and so on.
A person could literally spend a month straight digesting all of the various implications of this idea on the thunderbolts.info TPOD’s. It can be an exhilarating experience to learn this alternative view, as there are many aha-moments involved.
Re: “It is worth repeating that electrical power is 36 orders of magnitude greater than the power of gravity (IIRC), and that whereas with gravity and electrostatic charges, the force decreases with the SQUARE of distance, with magnetism, the force decreases in LINEAR correspondence with distance. Therefore, at mega-distances, its power starts to outstrip that of gravity.”
And not only that, but Birkeland Current filaments exhibit both long-range attraction and short-range repulsion with one another. This long-range attraction is the result of the electric force. What this means in practice is that filaments tend to twist around one another without actually combining (there are more technical explanations for this which involve double layers, btw … I’m summarizing …).
In other words, in the plasma universe view, the electric force is infinite in range. And this naturally supports the view that the universe is infinite in time and space, as we see a physical process which is completely self-sustaining and recursive for generating charge and organizing that charge in such a manner that the electric force is extended throughout the entire universe. The total picture does not reveal itself until you understand all of the individual key concepts, which all play an important role:
Marklund Convection
Birkeland Currents
Double Layers
Critical Ionization Velocity
Z-pinch
Glow discharge
and in some regards, the Van der Waals force
Anthony Peratt’s textbook on astrophysical plasmas lays down a solid foundation for how to construct a plasma universe using laboratory plasma physics fundamentals.
From johnnythelowery on January 11, 2011 at 6:29 am:
I think my reading of your comment was going fine, sounds like some stuff I’ve read before, until I got to this point:
Then I nearly choked, then read more carefully.
1. What’s being affected is the reception of the VLF signals generated by the lightning. As has always been the case with receiving through-air radio transmissions, signal quality and strength varies due to atmospheric conditions. Changes in Earth’s ionosphere are specifically mentioned.
2. Professor Price is saying this suggests a connection to the Sun due to the 27 day period of the pattern, which is the same as the Sun’s rotational period.
3. This talk about a 27 day Solar rotation period is somewhat laughable (the currently-popular term among the “educated elite” being “risible“). On the surface, the Sun rotates faster at the equator, has a higher angular velocity, than found moving towards the poles. The “27 days” is also problematic. From the provided Wikipedia link:
Thus the particular period mentioned would be a Carrington rotation, 27.2753 days.
The Lunar month, the period of a rotation of the Moon, can have several different values depending on the frame of reference. The ones in the range examined run from 27.2 to 27.55 days. The anomalistic month, based on when the Moon is closest to Earth (perigee to perigee) is longest with an average of 27.55455 days.
I wish there was a more precise value given for the observed period of variance in the VLF signal reception. As things stand, the Moon looks like a far more likely source of the variance than the Sun.
Very powerful electric fields oubreak.
What happens when free electrons and ions are subjected to an electric field?
Electrons are accelerated in one direction and ions are accelerated in the opposite direction.
An intense electric field can accelerate charged particles to velocities which cause gamma rays.
Plasma consists of free electrons and ions which can recombine to from neutral atoms.
More investigation and evidence needs to be gathered regarding the presense of antimatter.
What Science does know is that this process is an interaction of electric fields and magnetic fields (electric current causes magnetic fields) and charged particles, which is an expression of the Fundamental Force of Electromagnetism.
Thus, an investigation applying an electromagnetic framework of analysis & interpretation is warranted.
Also, the evidence suggests the presense of an electric circuit between the ground and the ionosphere (ionosphere consists of free electrons and ions). Additional investigation into the possible structure and processes is needed to illuminate whether such a circuit exists.
Insights gained from the application of Circuit Theory to plasma experiments in the laboratory can be compared & contrasted to the in situ data gathered.
And, if such an electromagnetic circuit does exist; what are the properties & dynamics of this circuit? What phenomenon result from the geo-physical dynamics involved.
High resolution observations & measurements of these electric fields, magnetic fields and charged particle flows will reveal these electromagnetic interactions.
It is well known from laboratory plasma experiments that electric fields will accelerate charged particles resulting in gamma ray emissions.
Explanation of physical phenomenon should first exhaust application of the known laws of physics before resorting to “new” physics.
Chris Reeve says:
January 10, 2011 at 6:08 pm
“They realized that every time there was a sprite above the clouds there was a bolt of positive lightning below the clouds. The sprite and the positive bolt were parts of a single discharge that stretched from space to the Earth’s surface.”
Nearly there Chris! I think that we get a simultaneous strike up from ground and down from ionosphere with opposite charge – where they meet is a large explosion which fuses hydrogen and produces the observed particles.
@kadaka
> This talk about a 27 day Solar rotation period is somewhat laughable …
That’s what they said about Relativity, back in 1905. Before totally dismissing this theory unseen, you should at least read the paper’s abstract:
So, the correlation to solar rotation strengthens the hypothesis, because it’s observed only at daytime (when the Moon is not necessarily visible). It really doesn’t make any difference that the Sun rotates at different speeds. A substantial part does rotate at the 27-day rate, so the effect may be constrained to that part of the process.
It is also well known that this atmospheric VLF waveguide is sensitive to external EMR radiation. Gamma ray bursts, for example, modulate the parameters and cause characteristic shifts in propagation.
A waveguide is a kind of filter, which has a minimum cutoff frequency, in this case the cutoff frequency of the VLF waveguide is about 2khz (which causes the characteristic musical “tweeks” in VLF receivers tuned to that frequency band).
http://home.pon.net/785/natural.htm
It is easy to calculate the height of the waveguide (i.e. height of the ionosphere) from the cutoff frequency. The sun strongly affects the ionospheric layers, so it would not be surprising to find more subtle solar signatures embedded in these signals.
So what exactly is the mechanism between rotation and cutoff freq?
Who knows, that’s what PhD Candidate Reuveni and his adviser Dr. Price are trying to figure out. The results should be interesting, even if the rotational hypothesis doesn’t hold up. That’s the nature of science.
James F. Evans says:
January 11, 2011 at 10:52 am
Also, the evidence suggests the presense of an electric circuit between the ground and the ionosphere (ionosphere consists of free electrons and ions). Additional investigation into the possible structure and processes is needed to illuminate whether such a circuit exists.
Mission Instruments has a Field Mill which is used to determine the likelihood of a lightning strike. According to their site, “On a clear day, when the atmosphere is clear of storm clouds, the primary source of electric charge creating an electric field on the surface of the earth is the ionosphere. This can be thought of as a large dome-shaped electrode high above the earth, which produces positive charges which contrast to the relatively negatively charged earth. This scenario creates what is termed a “fair weather” electric field due to the positive charge overhead. When this “fair” field is measured by the EFS 1001 field mill, it can be seen to produce an output of from 50 to about 200 Volts per meter (“V/m”). This value varies, depending upon conditions in the atmosphere, and is also altered by “local effects”. Such effects are caused by anything which can carry electrical charge, including but not limited to atmospheric space charge…” (my italics)
The military has determined that electric fields above 2000 V/m indicate the greatest lightning threat. You must see the graph at the bottom to see how rapidly a storm cloud oscillates between fair and foul weather efields. It’s incredible!
http://www.missioninstruments.com/pages/learning/elec_fields.html
So there possibly is a capacitance effect where charge builds up in the ionosphere and when it grows too great there is a breakdown. Wal Thornhill calls the earth’s atmosphere “a self-repairing leaky capacitor.” Another “plate” in the set-up is the magnetosphere. The earth is adjusting constantly to its electrical environment in space.
Just a thought; I wonder if all this adds anything to our understanding of the Catatumbo lightning over the Lago de Maracaibo (or Maracaibo Lake) in Venezuela?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatumbo_lightning
According to the article in the link above the lightning flashes there usually continue for many hours every day of the year and have done for centuries but last year there was a period of several months without any lightning “apparently due to a drought, raising fears that it may have been extinguished permanently.”
If that drought was due to global warming or climate disruption (or whatever it is called on Tuesdays) then that is one more thing for the world to worry about!
Correction: Gamma rays are caused when high velocity electrons strike atomic nuclei.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
January 11, 2011 at 10:38 am
3. This talk about a 27 day Solar rotation period is somewhat laughable (the currently-popular term among the “educated elite” being “risible“).
There is an important point related to 27 day period for solar rotation. Sunspots are not evenly distributed along heliocentric longitude. For many years solar scientists have known that there is a certain bunching at particular longitude. Dr. Svalgaard with his colleague J. Wilcox (Wilcox solar observatory) discovered & studied this effect some 40 years ago; Dr. S still keeps updating daily file.
I’ve done some calculations too as shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC13.htm
Dr.S. links
http://www.leif.org/research/spolar.txt
http://www.leif.org/research/Long-term%20Evolution%20of%20Solar%20Sector%20Structure.pdf
From John Day on January 11, 2011 at 11:26 am:
Wait, you got the abstract? I was working off the supplied Science Daily regurgitated press release. May I have the link, please?
Vuk
Whatever your EU belief (or mine for that matter) I loved your pics of the plasma bands on parallel tracks to the geomagnetic equator. The curious thing is that they do not quite correspond to the areas of maximum concentration of storms monitored here by the gamma-ray space telescope. Nearly but not quite. Piques my curiosity. Any ideas?
Anthony
great article, yet again, a deep thank you.
jorgekafkazar says:
January 10, 2011 at 8:33 pm
I once saw a satellite video of a thunderstorm in Texas. It looked like drops falling into a puddle, except that each crater was a single lightning discharge. Moreover, there seemed to be connectivity–the discharges appeared related. I’ve looked for the video on the ‘net several times. It was definitely worth watching, but I never found it.
If you ever locate that, can you link it up at tallbloke’s site? Clouds and atmospheric events are always welcome over there! ty
@kadaka
> May I have the link, please?
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010EGUGA..12.6430R
Fascinating post. Pair creation implies gamma ray energies above 1 Mev, which means that the electrons producing the gammas must be more energetic still, suggesting potential differences of several million volts. What happens when a downwards lightning bolt strikes the earth? Presumably there is also gamma ray production and pair creation. I always thought that the anti-matter explanation of ball lightning was fanciful, but this could go some way towards reinstating it.
Maybe thats how Gravity works lol! The earth has a warp engine! 🙂
Lucy Skywalker says:
January 11, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Nearly but not quite. Any ideas?
Gamma ray satellite fault, of course. Joking apart, I do agree with your comment, I was uncertain about post, but eventually thought it was worth it. As long as there is more to it than just coincidence, I am happy about the supposition.
Not certain, I suspect it could bedue to variations in the intensity of the equatorial electrojet (EEJ), also the ionospheric inner ring currents are a progresively weaker.
I wonder if somewhere some climate scientist is writing up a grant paper right now predicated on how this will turn out to be a positive feedback to global warming.
Great post. Ionizing and energetic particles are more commonly generated than we think – you can generate x-rays by pulling sticky tape from a roll.
… how about electron bursts with energy up to 100 Mev?
Joe Dwyer, the Florida Tech researcher mentioned in Andrew’s article and my first post above, has just published an APS article “Chance of Thunder—and Gamma-Ray Flashes” which summarizes some of these recent gamma ray findings (with a link to yet another TGF paper: “Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes as Powerful Particle Accelerators”)
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v4/1
“”””” Roger Longstaff says:
January 11, 2011 at 8:27 am
“Even though Africa is thousands of miles from Israel”
Eh ???
Bugger, should have stayed awake in geography classes. “””””
Psssstt….Hey Mate, I said GO SOUTH from the Gaza Strip; not North; up there it’s all ice and snow; bloody awful place up north of the Gaza; but it’s all gonna melt soon. And don’t sweat it Mate; Moses was a really lousy navigator too; found the only dry hole in the whole middle East. South buddy; got that ??
Very en-lightning. I’m about ready to charge off in all directions! But I’ve had a short in my positronic brain … Where’s Daneel when you need him?
My 1st design as a graduate Electrical Eng in 1975 was a 5 channel VLF receiver for Doppler tracking of an automated weather station mounted on an ice flow moving in the Beaufort Sea. I had known about and observed the diurnal effects at sunrise and sunset. Since VLF propagates well via the ionosphere while reflecting some of the signal back to earth, the overall path changes quickly. As I recall the shift was around 10Km in a few minutes time. It only shifted twice a day, forward then back and seemed to correlate with the location of sunset where I , the receiver was located and not the transmitter. and then stable during the rest of the day to within 10e-11. … I used high Q crystal filters to reduce noise BW to 100 Hz. I knew it was also good at picking up earth and inter-cloud lightning pulse noise but knew it wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up all the storms around the globe but certainly within thousands of miles.
Roy says:
January 11, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Just a thought; I wonder if all this adds anything to our understanding of the Catatumbo lightning over the Lago de Marcaibo (or Maracaibo Lake) in Venezuela?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatumbo_lightning
According to the article in the link above the lightning flashes there usually continue for many hours every day of the year and have done for centuries but last year there was a period of several months without any lightning “apparently due to a drought, raising fears that it may have been extinguished permanently.”
If that drought was due to global warming or climate disruption (or whatever it is called on Tuesdays) then tha is one more thing for the world to worry about!
I looked into this a short while back, and found the explanation for the lightning disappearing was that it was not the season for it..
What that article has cleverly done is to put two ideas together out of context from which ‘is read’ the idea as you have it, and as I had the first time I read it, that the lightening is a year round phenomenon and this ‘drought from January to April 2010’ signalled a change from norm.
What is missing then is that this event takes place in the rainy season from May to December.. (although occasionally during the dry season the lightning does happen) So the “140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours per day and up to 280 times per hour” is not actually spread throughout the year, but is limited to the months which are not January to April.
The quote obviously comes from an AGW stooge, he’s often quoted directly in other articles, even if he actually exists. Certainly not a real local who would know this.
See post 3 here: http://lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1572509
from someone who has a camp there and does tourist trips.
That wikipedia article doesn’t just need correcting, which would obliterate the propaganda bias which should be pointed out, but needs to show that a bias was posted by a deliberate sleight of hand to give the AGWmantra and by doing so, also giving the wrong information about the event. Beyond my capacity, hope someone who writes on wiki can do this.
From John Day on January 11, 2011 at 1:12 pm:
Whoops, that’s the link for the EGU General Assembly 2010 presentation. And I have no idea how to get ahold of a copy.
Google –> Actual paper’s abstract (at paywall)
About the same wording, although here it says “We have discovered a robust indicator of this 27-day rotation…” for some reason, go figure.
Google (title of paper) –> http://www.tau.ac.il/~royyaniv/ILAN_website/solar.pdf – Actual paper. Jackpot.
As I had previously known and clarified further by additional reading about the ionosphere, signal reception degrades during the day due to solar radiation. The paper notes this 27-day periodicity was noticed in the 2-5 kHz range. Thus the effect is noted during periods of marginal reception when those frequencies are most affected.
I noticed in the paper an apparent aversion to using a decimal point. Thy were used, as in the Introduction, while mentioning the uncertainty of existing solar rotation period figures. But for the work presented in the paper, 27 as a whole number is basically it. However there is an interesting tidbit found in Figure 3. Where the vertical red line has been drawn at 27 days, the actual peak occurs after that, indicating it was slightly longer than 27 days.
Beyond that, I noticed a major problem with the paper. There is no attempt to rule out the Moon’s influence. The effect could only be detected during the day, the period of marginal reception. Therefore the nearest source of a persistent 27 day pattern, the Moon, was ignored. As recently mentioned here at WUWT, new info about the Moon’s core may mean it has a larger influence on the ionosphere than previously thought. I admit I’m not aware of hardly anything published on the Moon’s influence on the ionosphere, beyond a slight knowledge of its effect on the related magnetosphere. But this is not a gross effect being examined in this paper, but rather a small one affecting a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum, thus the possible influence of the Moon on or around this little bit may not have been previously studied.
Thus what could have been a somewhat mundane paper noting the correlation between this effect and a rock-steady lunar cycle, most likely the perigee-to-perigee anomalistic month with an average of 27.55455 days, instead proudly trumpets “…a robust indicator…” of solar rotation period, a figure that varies greatly depending on what particular area of the Sun is of interest.
Besides, how useful could this “robust” indicator be anyway? It’s a very general figure, when we already have the Sun under so much direct observation that we can derive lots of measurements of rotation periods.
Well, best of luck to Dr. Price, the acclaimed climate change scientist, and all the graduate students that he’s trained to critically analyze data as well as he does.
😉