Hacker News Reader

Comment by tuxxy | Hacker News Reader

I'm not very keen on these things, but I do understand some of nuclear physics and the reactions thereof.

Maybe I'm in over my head, but how come satellites made for detecting radiation or nuclear explosions didn't pick up on any of this before?

If not, is it possible that satellites could detect this and produce more data for everyone on these lightning gamma ray flashes?

View on HN

I'm no expert but I'd assume it has to do with sensor sensitivity. A nuclear bomb involves far more nuclear reactions than a lightning storm. It's as though you calibrated a scale to measure "things that have mass" but set it to 10kg, assuming everything under was weightless.

Changing those calibrations might be a physical (instead of digital) process, so maybe not.

Such satellites are cloaked in secrecy and so this may well be an fully understood phenomenon in TS & Classified circles; but just not published for us mere mortals to see.

I seem to remember from the Las Vegas Atomic Museum that lightning would indeed trigger false positives in early gamma ray detecting satellites.

Edit: The article does note that it was picked up by satellites before but there's conclusive evidence now.

So were those false positives in fact real signal? It wouldn’t be the first time that ‘noise’ turned out to be signal.

Yes, but the intent was to monitor Russian nuclear testing, not just measure gamma radiation in general.

> Maybe I'm in over my head, but how come satellites made for detecting radiation or nuclear explosions didn't pick up on any of this before?

The article explains this in detail.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com