Lightnings, dark matter, and lepto-pion hypothesis again

Lightnings have been found to involve phenomena difficult to understand in the framework of standard physics. Very high energy photons, even gamma rays and electrons and positrons with energies in gamma energy range, have been observed.

I learned recently about even more mysterious looking discovery (see this). Physicist Joseph Dwyer from University of New Hampshire and lightning scientists from the University of California at Santa Cruz and Florida Tech describe this discovery in a paper to be published in the Journal of Plasma Physics. In August 2009, Dwyer and colleagues were aboard a National Center for Atmospheric Research Gulfstream V when it inadvertently flew into the extremely violent thunderstorm – and, it turned out, through a large cloud of positrons, the antimatter opposite of electrons, that should not have been there. One would have expected that positrons would have been produced by annihilation of highly energetic gamma rays with energy above .5 MeV but no gamma rays were detected.

This looks rather mysterious from standard physics point of view. There are also earlier strange discoveries related to lightnings.

1. Lightning strikes release powerful X-ray bursts (see “Lightning strikes release powerful X-ray bursts” ).

2. Also high energy gamma rays and electrons accompany lightnings (see “Earth creates powerful gamma-ray flashes”). The problem is that electrons should lose their energy while traversing through the atmosphere so that energies in even X ray range would be impossible.
3. The third strange discovery was made with Fermi telescope (see “Antimatter from lightning flashes the Fermi space telescope”): gamma rays with energies .511 MeV (electron mass) accompany lightnings as if something with mass of 2 electron masses would decay to gamma pairs.

Could TGD explain these findings?

1. A possible explanation for the finding of Fermi telescope is that in the strong magnetic field of colliding very high energy colliding electrons assignable to the dark magnetic flux tubes of Earth particles that I call electropions suggested by TGD are created (see this). Also evidence for mu-pions and tau-pions exists. They would have mass rather precisely 2 times the mass of electron and would be bound states of color excited electron and positron. Evidence for this kind of states was found already at seventies in heavy ion collisions around Coulomb wall producing electron positron pairs at total energy of 2 times electron mass but since they do not fit at all to the standard physics picture (too large decay width for weak bosons would be predicted) they have been put under the rug, so to say. The paradox is solved if these particles are dark in TGD sense.

2. If the annihilations of electropions give rise to dark electron-positron pairs and dark gamma rays, which then transform to ordinary particles, one could understand the absence of gamma rays in the situation described by Dwyer et al in terms of too slow transformation to ordinary particles. For instance, the strong electric fields created by a positively charged region of cloud could accelerate electron from both downwards and upwards to this region and lepto-pions would be generated in the strong magnetic fields generating strong electromagnetic instanton density E•B generating lepto-pion coherent state.
3. But how it is possible to observe gamma rays and ultrahigh energy electrons at the surface of Earth? The problem is that atmosphere is not empty and dissipation would restrict the energies to be much lower than gamma ray energies which are in MeV range. Note that the temperatures in lightning are about 3× 10⁴ K and correspond to electron energy of 2.6 eV which is by a factor 10⁵ smaller than electron mass and gamma ray energy scale! And how the electrons with energies above MeV range are created in thunder cloud? For years ago I proposed a model for high energy gamma rays and electrons associated with lightnings in terms of dark matter identified as h_eff=n× h phases. This model could provide answer to these questions.

First some background is needed.

1. I ended up to h_eff=n× h hypothesis from the observations of Blackman and other pioneers of bio-electromagnetism about quantal effects of ELF em fields to vertebrate brain, which he explained in terms of cyclotron frequencies of Ca⁺⁺ ion in endogenous magnetic field B_end=0.2 Gauss (2/5:th of the nominal value B_E=.5 Gauss of the Earth’s magnetic field). Cyclotron energy E= h× f is however extremely low, much below the thermal energy in physiological temperature so that no quantal effects should be possible. This inspired the hypothesis h_eff=n× h scaling up the energy.

2. Nottale introduced originally the notion of gravitational Planck constant h_gr= GMm/v₀ to explain the orbital radii of planets in solar system as Bohr orbits. The velocity parameter v₀ is different for inner and outer planets. Quite recently I proposed v₀ is in constant ratio to the rotation velocity of the large mass M. The interpretation in TGD framework is that the magnetic flux tubes mediate gravitational interaction between M and m and the value of Planck constant is h_gr at them. The proposal h_eff=h_gr at flux tubes is very natural sharpening of the original hypothesis. The predictions of the model do not depend on whether m is taken to be the mass of the planet or any elementary particle associated with it and the gravitational Compton length λ_gr= GMc/v₀ does not depend on the mass of the particle as is proportional to the Schwartschild radius 2GM of Sun.
3. This hypothesis can be generalized to apply also to Earth (see this). For the strength B_gal∼ 1 nT for galactic magnetic field assumed to mediate Earth’s gravitational interaction cyclotron frequency 10 Hz in alpha band is mapped to cyclotron frequency scale of 72 minutes. Scaled EEG range corresponds to cyclotron periods varying up to 12 hours for B_gal. For M= M_E and B_gal the cyclotron energy corresponds to about 1 eV at the lower end of visible photon energies.
4. What about the interpretation of ordinary EEG in terms of cyclotron frequencies assuming that the corresponding energies are in visible and UV range corresponding to the variation of B_end? M_E is certainly too large to give a spectrum of cyclotron energies in this range suggested by Blackman to explain the findings about quantal effects of ELF radiation on brain not possible in standard quantum theory because the energy is much below the thermal threshold. M_D= .5 × 10^-4 M_E would be needed. I have proposed that M_D corresponds to a mass assignable to a spherical layer at distance of Moon’s orbital radius and there are independent pieces of evidence for the existence of this layer. B_end would represent the lower bound for the value range of the magnetic field varying at least by 7 octaves would give the highest UV energies around 124 eV. The transformation of dark photons to ordinary photons would yield biophotons with energies in visible and UV range. Also B_gal would have some variation range.
5. This has a connection to quantum biology and neuroscience. The proposal is that dark cyclotron photons with energies in visible and UV range associated with flux tubes of magnetic field of appropriate strength serve as a communication tool making biological body (BB) to communicate sensory data to magnetic body (MB) and allow BB to control BB.

Consider now the model for how electrons and gamma rays accompanying lightnings can travel to the surface of Earth without dissipating their energies and how the collisions of electrons with gamma ray energies generating electropions are possible.

1. What happens if one replaces M_D with M_E meaning that also Earth’s gravitons could reside also at the flux tubes of B_end rather than only those of B_gal? The energies get scale up by a factor M_E/M₁= 2× 10⁴ and this scales up the 1-100 eV range .02-2 MeV so that also gamma ray energies would be obtained.

2. The earlier proposal was that electrons and gamma rays associated with lightning arrive to the surface of Earth along dark magnetic flux tubes so that by macroscopic quantum coherence in scale of λ_gr they do not dissipate their energy.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.