Thunderstorms Produce Antimatter

[Aggie]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12158718

"We see gamma-ray bursts, one of the most distant phenomena we know about in the Universe, we see bursts from soft gamma-ray repeaters in our galaxy, flashes of gamma rays from solar flares, our solar neighbourhood - and now we're also seeing gamma rays from thunderstorms right here on Earth," she told BBC News.

Since Fermi launched in mid-2008, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) has spotted 130 terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), picking up on the gamma rays in low Earth orbit as storms came within its scope.

But within that gamma-ray data lies an even more interesting result described at the meeting by Dr McEnery and her collaborators Michael Briggs of the University of Alabama Huntsville and Joseph Dwyer of the Florida Institute of Technology.

"We expected to see TGFs; they had been seen by the GBM's predecessor," Dr McEnery explained.

"But what absolutely intrigues us is the discovery that TGFs produce not just gamma rays but also produce positrons, the antimatter equivalent to electrons."

When gamma rays pass near the nuclei of atoms, they can turn their energy into two particles: an electron-positron pair.

Because electrons and positrons are charged, they align along the Earth's magnetic field lines and can travel vast distances, gathered into tightly focused beams of matter and antimatter heading in opposite directions.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Makes you wonder what else is being created in those storms that we're not aware of yet.