Glow of Heavy Dust Particles in Earth’s Atmosphere during an Earthquake

Abstract

The search for ways to predict earthquakes, including predicting the point in time when they will occur and their possible coordinates and energy, is a global scientific problem. Researchers have discovered a number of natural phenomena that can be considered their precursors. Changes that occur in Earth’s ionosphere due to the emissions of radioactive radon in the compression regions are also related to earthquakes. They lead to the creation of an additional glow of heavy dust particles in a wide range of wavelengths (including the microwave and infrared ranges). The physical origin of this phenomenon is that sufficiently fast alpha particles interact with neutral air molecules and cause their ionization. The resulting ions charge heavy dust particles in the air with sufficient electric field strength to ionize the air. At the same time, these processes are accompanied by the neutralization of charged dust particles by air ions due to the recombination process. The published experimental data on the size of the region in which heavy dust particles glow and the observed times of glowing make it possible to estimate the typical sizes of these particles.