"In a surprise announcement, Japanese researchers found that lightning bolts can be powerful enough
to cause nuclear fission, leading to new isotopes— including carbon-14.
For decades, we have been told that carbon-14 is generated only by high-energy cosmic rays striking the atmosphere, hitting nitrogen atoms. Carbon-14 (14C) is one of the leading dating methods for organic remains up to a maximum of 100,000 years. Now, researches from the Kyoto University watched lightning bolts generate gamma rays and positrons, indicating that nuclear fission was occurring. One of the products, they believe, is 14C. Their paper in Nature says,
If you pardon his dip into pagan mythology, Wild explains the significance of this finding about lightning:
CEH
....Cast forth lightning,... Psalm 144:6
For decades, we have been told that carbon-14 is generated only by high-energy cosmic rays striking the atmosphere, hitting nitrogen atoms. Carbon-14 (14C) is one of the leading dating methods for organic remains up to a maximum of 100,000 years. Now, researches from the Kyoto University watched lightning bolts generate gamma rays and positrons, indicating that nuclear fission was occurring. One of the products, they believe, is 14C. Their paper in Nature says,
There are only two known natural origins of carbon isotopes on Earth: stable primordial 13C from geological time, which originated from stellar nucleosynthesis, and semi-stable 14C, which is produced via atmospheric interactions with cosmic rays. The lightning-triggered atmospheric nuclear reactions provide a previously unknown channel for generating isotopes of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen (13C, 14C, 13N, 15N and 15O) naturally on Earth. The short-lived isotopes 13N and 15O provide a new methodology for studying lightning, via positrons observed from the ground. The more stable 13C, 14C and 15N isotopes contribute to the natural isotope composition on Earth, albeit only a small fraction.They don’t really know what that small fraction is, however.
If you pardon his dip into pagan mythology, Wild explains the significance of this finding about lightning:
New Scientist considers a health warning from the discovery:
The findings also have implications for astronomers and planetary scientists. Other planets within our solar system have thunderstorms in their atmospheres that might contribute to the composition of their atmospheres. One of these planets is Jupiter, which is fittingly also the god of thunder in ancient Roman mythology.
Thunderbolts and lightning are more than just frightening – they also create radiation. For the first time, we have definitive proof that lightning sparks radiation and even clouds of antimatter, though it’s not clear how or if this will affect the health of people on the ground.None of the articles consider whether the finding will cause changes to radiocarbon dating results. That seems unlikely, since calibration of the method depends on the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere, which was already known. However, it is significant that a discovery of this magnitude, involving something as common as lightning, was made this late in the history of physics."
CEH
....Cast forth lightning,... Psalm 144:6
