Farnell Barqué, a researcher on the Meteorological Service of Catalonia in Spain, took an orthodontist pal’s recommendation: Why not use a CT scanner to disclose the entire inner construction of hailstones?
“The primary outcome was spectacular,” mentioned Barqué in an interview with New Scientist. “Wow! We are able to see the inside of the stone with out breaking it. We may see totally different layers, with totally different densities.”
Barqué and her colleagues collected 14 hailstones, as much as 8.5 centimetres in diameter, after a extreme storm hit northeastern Spain in 2022. The storm tragically killed one baby, injured dozens, and brought on thousands and thousands of {dollars} in harm.
To review the expansion course of, they wanted to analyse the hailstones’ form and inner layers. Historically, researchers slice hailstones with a sizzling knife to look at them. Utilizing the dental scanner provided a brand new, non-invasive method.
Impressed by this, Julian Brimelow on the Northern Hail Challenge in Canada has scanned smaller hailstones this fashion, because of a dentist’s suggestion.