Related papers: From cosmic explosions to terrestrial fires?
The observation of neutrinos from cosmic accelerators will be revolutionary. High energy neutrinos are closely connected to ultrahigh energy cosmic rays and their sources. Cosmic ray sources are likely to produce neutrinos and the…
The existence of cosmic rays of energies exceeding 10^20 eV is one of the mysteries of high energy astrophysics. The spectrum and the high energy to which it extends rule out almost all suggested source models. The challenges posed by…
We present a model for lightning shock induced chemistry that can be applied to atmospheres of arbitrary H/C/N/O chemistry, hence for extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs. The model couples hydrodynamics and the STAND2015 kinetic gas-phase…
The physical origin of the observed cosmic neutrinos remains an open question and the subject of active research. While matter accretion onto supermassive black holes is long thought to accelerate particles to high energies, it has recently…
Cloud-to-ground lightning is the most common among atmospheric discharges. Since electric fields in the vicinity of a thunder-cloud do not exceed 250 kV/m the physical process that triggers the lightning remains unexplained. [1, 2, 3]…
Lightning strikes are one of the leading causes of death among natural disasters in tropical regions. The Congo rainforests host the highest rates of lightning flashes in the world and the lightning properties in this region have a strong…
Recent studies of the effects on the Earth's atmosphere by astrophysical sources, such as nearby gamma-ray bursts or supernovae, have shown that these events could lead to severe changes in atmospheric composition. Depletion of ozone, the…
We discuss some the effects of local gamma-ray bursts on the earth's atmosphere. A rough calculation of the fraction of ozone destruction by catalytic $NO_{x}$ cycles is given, which in turn serves to argue how the large flux of gammas from…
We discuss the possibility of observing ultra high energy cosmic ray sources inhigh energy gamma rays. Protons propagating away from their accelerators produce secondary electrons during interactions with cosmic microwave background…
We constrain high-energy neutrino fluxes with the observed cosmic ray and gamma ray fluxes, include flavor oscillations and propagation through Earth, and show that blazars could possibly be detected by cubic-kilometer neutrino telescopes.
The passage of the Earth through dense clumps of dark matter, the presence of which are predicted by certain cosmologies, would produce large quantities of heat in the interior of this planet through the capture and subsequent annihilation…
Human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, primarily from fossil fuel combustion and changes in land use and land cover (LULCC), are a key contributor to climate change. As the climate warms, extreme events such as heatwaves, droughts,…
The collisions between accelerated protons and the photons present in cosmos can be a main source of high-energy neutrinos (E \geq 10^6 GeV) of all flavors above the atmospheric neutrino background. I discuss here the possibility of…
Supernova explosions are one of the most energetic--and potentially lethal--phenomena in the Universe. Scientists have speculated for decades about the possible consequences for life on Earth of a nearby supernova, but plausible candidates…
Nitrogen is the most common element in Earth's atmosphere and also appears to be present in significant amounts in the mantle. However, its long-term cycling between these two reservoirs remains poorly understood. Here a range of biotic and…
The tidal heating of hypothetical rocky (or terrestrial) extra-solar planets spans a wide range of values depending on stellar masses and initial orbits. Tidal heating may be sufficiently large (in many cases, in excess of radiogenic…
Recent observations suggest that many planetary-mass objects may be present in the outer solar system between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. Gravitational perturbations may occasionally bring them into the inner solar system. Their…
Cosmological $\gamma$-ray bursts originate from relativistic winds. Temporal fluctuations in the wind velocity can give rise to internal shocks which dissipate a significant fraction of the wind kinetic energy. Part of the energy dissipated…
Lightning is an important electrical phenomenon, known to exist in several Solar System planets. It carries information on convection and cloud formation, and may be important for pre-biotic chemistry. Exoplanets and brown dwarfs have been…
The Earth's high energy gamma-ray emission is caused by cosmic ray interactions with the atmosphere. The EGRET detector on-board the CGRO satellite is only the second experiment (after SAS-2) to provide a suitable dataset for the…