Sentences with phrase «aerosol nucleation»

The team started by looking at the formation of the very small particles — a process called aerosol nucleation — by mimicking atmospheric conditions inside an ultraclean steel «cloud chamber», which Kirkby says is the cleanest ever created.

The paper, by Kirkby et al, describes changes in aerosol nucleation as a function of increasing sulphates, ammonia and ionisation in the CERN - based «CLOUD» chamber.

To test their effect on aerosol nucleation, Kirkby's team fired beams similar to cosmic rays through the chamber and found it increased nucleation between 2 and 10 times.

Cleanliness is vital since contaminants can themselves become sites of aerosol nucleation.

Aerosol nucleation is known to require sulphuric acid, but Kirkby's team found that it is not enough by itself at low altitudes — the presence of an additional organic trace vapour is needed (Nature, DOI: 10.1038 / nature10343).

Prior to the publication of the aerosol nucleation results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN in Nature several weeks ago Kirkby et al, 2011, I was asked by Nature Geoscience to write a «News and Views» on the CLOUD results for a general science audience.

Regarding the CERN / CLOUD results suggesting an aerosol nucleation link with cosmic - rays, I was wondering why the focus is always on clouds?

Perhaps surprisingly, the key innovation in this experimental set up is not the presence of the controllable ionisation source (from the Proton Synchrotron accelerator), but rather the state - of - the - art instrumentation of the chamber that has allowed them to see in unprecedented detail what is going on in the aerosol nucleation process (this is according to a couple of aerosol people I've spoken about this with).