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Clouds

What do supernovas and fluffy white clouds have in common? That's non a riddle, information technology'south a question several groups of scientists are seeking to answer. A dying star releases vast amounts of energy, some of it in the class of cosmic rays. We know these loftier-energy particles occasionally slam into Earth's atmosphere, but what effect practice they have? A Danish team suggests that cosmic rays can affect deject cover, and thus, World'southward climate.

About cosmic rays are diminutive nuclei that have been stripped of their electrons. These particles (commonly hydrogen or helium) travel at a pregnant fraction of the speed of light. When impacting Earth'due south atmosphere, they produce a shower of secondary particles that nosotros tin detect on the ground. The new report from Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Constitute points to a manner this procedure could produce clouds. Svensmark claims this can even account for significant temperature swings over Earth's history.

Svensmark and his team based the assertion on experiments with an 8-square-meter cloud sleeping room. By increasing the number of electrically charged particles passing through the chamber, they were able to coax small clouds to form. This is similar to the ionization consequence when cosmic rays strike the atmosphere — information technology may produce an droplets that leads to the formation of a cloud.

The written report goes on to speculate on the potential scale of this effect with a computer model. Svensmark suggests that clouds generated by distant catholic events could shift the global temperature by several degrees. More than cosmic rays hateful more clouds and lower temperatures, and vice versa. Events like the Fiddling Ice Age betwixt 1300 and 1900 CE could allegedly accept been caused past our solar system's passage through waves of cosmic rays.

It's a pretty wild hypothesis, and Svensmark seems as well fast to call this instance closed. The scientific community remains unconvinced of "cosmoclimatology" equally described in Svensmark's latest publication. Other researchers question how the small-scale increases in cloud formation demonstrated by Svensmark could have global effects that outweigh cloud-seeding particles already in the atmosphere. Additionally, temperature increases take tracked closely with atmospheric changes, but there'south no such correlation with supernova activity.

This is an interesting thought that will no doubtfulness be studied in detail. CERN has a like project running to study the effects of cosmic rays on the atmosphere. Thus far, that squad has institute no reason to expect catholic rays to accept a significant impact on climate or deject encompass. Nosotros demand much more data than can exist gathered in a tiny deject bedchamber to say supernovas affect the climate, but it makes for a proficient headline.