Citizen Science Project in Japan Aims to Produce Gamma Rays

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Citizen science project aims to detect gamma rays from thunderstorms in Japan. The team has placed ten co gamo detectors in people's gardens and homes. Later this year, after recruiting more participants the team hopes to have 50 detectors in operation with a hundred next year. Members of the public will be able to use the weather news web system to up load photos during storms.

Researchers in Japan are trying to understand why thunderstorms fire out bursts of powerful radiation.

Gamma rays – the highest-energy electromagnetic radiation in the universe – are typically created in extreme outer space environments like supernovae. But back in the 1980s and 1990s, physicists discovered a source of gamma rays much closer to home: thunderstorms here on Earth.

Now, researchers in Japan are enlisting an army of citizen scientists to help understand the mysterious process going on inside storm clouds that leads to them creating extreme bursts of radiation.

This is an audio version of our feature: Thunderstorms spew out gamma rays — these scientists want to know why

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