Scientists investigate dark lightning threat to aircraft passengers

US Navy scientists are going to rig aircraft with radiation detectors to check if a phenomenon known as dark lightning could be killing aircraft passengers.

Dark lightning is the product of the electrical activity caused by thunderstorms and produces intense bursts of omnidirectional terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) up to half a mile wide, as electrons and positrons are forced to interact by the atmospheric disturbance such storms produce.