Related papers: Atmospheric Electricity at the Ice Giants
The international planetary science community met in London in January 2020, united in the goal of realising the first dedicated robotic mission to the distant Ice Giants, Uranus and Neptune, as the only major class of Solar System planet…
The origin of high-energy cosmic rays, atomic nuclei that continuously impact Earth's atmosphere, has been a mystery for over a century. Due to deflection in interstellar magnetic fields, cosmic rays from the Milky Way arrive at Earth from…
Uranus and Neptune are the last unexplored planets of the Solar System. I show that they hold crucial keys to understand the atmospheric dynamics and structure of planets with hydrogen atmospheres. Their atmospheres are active and storms…
Cosmic rays (CRs) are protons and atomic nuclei that flow into our Solar system and reach the Earth with energies of up to ~10^21 eV. The sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with E >~ 10^19 eV remain unknown, although there…
The Pierre Auger collaboration has reported a correlation between Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) and nearby Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) within 75 Mpc. Two of these events fall within 3 degrees from Centaurus A, the nearest AGN,…
Thunderstorms and the lightning that they produce are inherently interesting phenomena that have intrigued scientists and mankind in general for many years. The study of thunderstorms has rapidly advanced during the past century and many…
Uranus and Neptune, the so-called "ice giants", represent a fascinating class of planets. They are the outermost planets in the solar system with intermediate masses/sizes, complex non-polar magnetic fields, strong atmospheric winds, and…
Thunderstorms produce strong electric fields over regions on the order of kilometer. The corresponding electric potential differences are on the order of 100 MV. Secondary cosmic rays reaching these regions may be significantly accelerated…
A small scintillator-based detector for atmospheric ionization measurements has been developed, partly in response to a need for better ionization data in the weather-forming regions of the atmosphere and partly with the intention of…
Ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are particles, likely protons and/or nuclei, with energies up to $10^{20}$ eV that are observed through the giant air showers they produce in the atmosphere. These particles carry the information on…
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]…
Recent satellite data have revealed a surprising correlation between galactic cosmic ray (GCR) intensity and the fraction of the Earth covered by clouds. If this correlation were to be established by a causal mechanism, it could provide a…
Comparatively little is known about atmospheric chemistry on Uranus and Neptune, because remote spectral observations of these cold, distant ``Ice Giants'' are challenging, and each planet has only been visited by a single spacecraft during…
Massive stars play an important role in explaining the cosmic ray spectrum below the knee, possibly even up to the ankle, i.e. up to energies of 1e15 eV or 1e18.5 eV, respectively. In particular, Supernova Remnants are discussed as one of…
Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) arrive at Earth from the most energetic astrophysical accelerators in the universe. They collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere with energies about ten times higher than any man-made accelerator,…
Uranus and Neptune have atmospheres dominated by molecular hydrogen and helium. In the upper troposphere, methane is the third main molecule and condenses, yielding a vertical gradient in CH4. This condensable species being heavier than H2…
Images from instruments on Cassini as well as from telescopes on the ground reveal the presence of sporadic small-scale cloud activity in the cold late-winter north polar of Saturn's large moon Titan. These clouds lie underneath the…
We investigate the enrichment patterns of several delivery scenarios of the volatiles to the atmospheres of ice giants, having in mind that the only well constrained determination made remotely, i.e. the carbon abundance measurement,…
Aurorae are detected from all the magnetized planets in our Solar System, including Earth. They are powered by magnetospheric current systems that lead to the precipitation of energetic electrons into the high-latitude regions of the upper…
The weather layers of the gas giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, comprise the shallow atmospheric layers that are influenced energetically by a combination of incoming solar radiation and localised latent heating of condensates, as well as…