Lightning Turns out there's antimatter in there. Who knew?

Whilst carrying out its normal workaday duties of scanning corners of the universe billions of light years from Earth, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope has made a discovery that hits decidedly closer to home: lightning strikes on Earth carry the signature of antimatter.

Gamma ray flashes detected in terrestrial storms were of the decaying-positron variety, indicating not only that lightning can produce the antimatter equivalent of electrons, but also that somehow the electric field normally produced by a lightning storm somehow reversed.

The 17 gamma-ray flashes picked up by the orbiting Fermi occurred just before, during and right after lightning strikes during two recent storms, marking the first time positrons have been observed in lightning. For now, the discovery raises more questions than it answers: how did the orientation of the electric field get turned on its head? What does the existence of antimatter particles in lightning mean?

Gamma-ray flashes have been observed in lightning flashes before, as energetic electrons moving toward observational spacecraft slowed down, but the unique signature found by Fermi has researchers puzzled. Modelers are trying to work out exactly what happened during the strikes to reverse the electric field.

[Science News]

7 Comments

That's cooler than xray tape.

If it were possible to re create the conditions that cause this strange occurance could it be possible to generate positrons on demand , what would that lead to ? Ok back to my collection of star trek dvds to get the answers , lol .

Still waiting for my lighting gun. Which when created will quickly be named Antimatter gun!

lol @steve28

my thoughts exactly.

SCIENTISTS KNOW TOO MUCH! SOON THE WHOLE WORLD WILL GO INTO A STATE OF PANIC BECAUSE OF WHAT THEY THINK IS "LIFE-CHANGING"

Power must be handled responsibly.

Some of the big guys finnaly figured out what I have been yelling about for years now. Check out my blog "thors anvil revealed" and see a picture of what anti-matter looks like. It is brokem down into two different parts. One part positive and the other negative. When the matter is burnt to ash in a red sprite it turns into helium 3 isotope space dust generated in earth's atmosphere. Kite Lightning is what starts the red sprite process. It generates the hot plasma cloud and also catapults it high into the atmosphere. The plasma cloud takes with it many miles of the anti-matter with it. Charles E Schirmer


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