Saturday, October 22, 2005

Lightening research at Tech featured on PBS

Argen Duncan El Defensor Chieftain Reporter

New Mexico Tech lightning researchers were national television stars — briefly — this week.

The PBS program NOVA scienceNOW aired a 9-1/2-minute piece Tuesday about the research on the cause and behavior of lightning by physicists Ken Eack and Richard Sonnenfeld, and eight or 10 students. The broadcast included interviews with the scientists and footage of researchers launching a weather balloon with scientific equipment into a thunderstorm.

Eack said getting his work to the public, who has a general interest, and educating them about it is important.

"After all, it's the public who supports this work, through the universities as well as the government," he added.

Sonnenfeld also spoke well of the publicity.

"I'm glad NOVA came, and if they help more students find out about what we do at Tech, that's a wonderful thing for us," he said.

Dean Irwin, a producer for NOVA science NOW, spoke of the many unknowns about lightning and said Tech scientists are looking for information.

"And if they're successful, it will answer this very, very ancient question of how lightning starts in clouds," he said.

Eack said PBS learned of his research through an article by another scientist who had read a piece on lightning from Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research.

Shooting footage for NOVA took two days in July.

Irwin said no one was sure if a storm would come when they wanted to film researchers launching a weather balloon with instruments into a storm to collect data.

Sonnenfeld said the television crew was professional and understanding. They waited for three or four hours and "looked worried and morose" before a storm came, he said.

Irwin said the first balloon researchers tried to launch burst, but Eack quickly filled and launched another.

"It was actually quite dramatic," he said.

He added the work was also dangerous because of the proximity of the storm.

Gaopeng Lu, a doctoral student involved in the research, said he was initially excited about the filming, his first time on television. However, he said the experience is actually very common and he is no longer excited.

He said work was harder with the television crew there.

"You can't put all your heart into your work," he said. "Someone is watching you with their video camera."

Eack, however, spoke well of the experience.

"I found it pretty easy to work with them," he said, adding it was interesting to see how television crews work and how much of the footage the final product contains.

Sonnenfeld said he was pleased the show aired with correct science.

In his research, Sonnenfeld focuses on trying to learn where electrons, which provide the charge, are in a lightning stroke. To do this, he attaches instruments he has developed to weather balloons and launches them into storm clouds.

He said his work helps students because they learn by doing real research.

Sonnenfeld said the measurements he collects might ultimately be useful in proving whether the theory Eack has been studying is true.

For 10 years, Eack has been testing the Runaway Breakdown Theory, which proposes that cosmic rays, fast-moving charged particles from space, cause lightning when enough come and collide with air particles to give them a charge and make the air conduct electricity.

"In thunder storms and lightning, there are a number of big unknowns," he said.

Among these is why lightning behaves much differently than, for instance, a spark from touching something after sliding across carpet.

Among the information he gathers, Eack said he uses equipment on the ground at Langmuir and on weather balloons to detect the presence of X-rays and gamma rays, which cosmic rays produce. X-rays and gamma rays, fast-moving light, are easier to detect than cosmic rays, he said.

His and others' research has supported but not proven the theory. He said Tech researchers are still working to learn more.

Although his research may not have practical applications itself, the more people understand about how lightning works, the more they can know how to protect against and get warnings of it, Eack said.

aduncan@dchieftain.com

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