News
Multiscale Dynamics group news
Cum laude for 3D modelling of pulsed discharges in air
PhD student Jannis Teunissen from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) has made major progress in modelling the early stages of electric discharges as they occur in lightning, high voltage electricity nets and …
Jannis Teunissen wins GEC15 Student Award of Excellence
Jannis Teunissen from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, won the Student Award of Excellence of the GEC for his talk 'Advances in the three-dimensional simulation of streamer discharges' …
Start of lightning explained: hail and cosmic particles
For the first time researchers demonstrate how lightning is started: by a combination of hail and high energy particles from space, originating from exploding stars. A cosmic ray produces a shower of …
Exploding stars help to understand thunderclouds on Earth
How is lightning initiated in thunderclouds? This is difficult to answer – how do you measure electric fields inside large, dangerously charged clouds? It was discovered, more or less by coincidence, that …
Creation of antimatter from lightning simulated for the first time
In severe thunderstorms electric fields can become so high, that high energy radiation – such as X-rays and gamma rays - can be generated. Even antimatter can be formed. The highly complex …
CWI improves discharge models for technical applications
Pulsed electric discharges have important applications, such as purifying polluted air in highway tunnels, disinfection and wound healing. As physical and chemical processes in pulsed discharges occur on a large variety of …
Streamers in lightning better understood by new mathematical model
Streamers - electrically conducting channels in gases like air - occur in the early stages of lightning, and in industrial applications.
