News

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.

CWI granted two PhD positions in Shell-NWO programme

Funding for research on cosmic lightning

Researchers from CWI and KVI received funding in the FOM projectruimte for their proposal ‘Cosmic lightning’.

Faster computation times for numerical solutions

Shock waves are difficult to simulate on a computer. Due to the large, rapid changes, often oscillations occur in the mathematical solutions.