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Antimatter In Lightning

Posted by Soulskill on from the doc-brown-can-now-power-his-warp-drive dept.

AMESN writes "The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, launched last year, detects gamma rays from light years away, but recently it detected gamma rays from lightning on Earth. And the energy of the gamma rays is specific to the decay of positrons, which are the antimatter flavor of electrons. Finding antimatter in lightning surprised researchers and suggests the electric field of the lightning somehow got reversed."

2 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Not that surprising by tylersoze · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Apparently they've detected gamma ray energies up to 20 MeV from thunderstorms, so given that amount of energy involved I wouldn't think it's that surprising that electron-positron pairs might be created in the process since an electron only has a mass of .511 MeV. The thunderstorms are basically operating like natural linear accelerators.

  2. Cross section of lightning? by jasno · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does anyone know what the cross section of a lightning bolt looks like? I've always wondered if forces akin to the skin-effect are trying to spread out the electrons while it's constrained in a tube of plasma. Is it round? Is it a sheet? What's the electron density like? What sorts of pressures would you expect in the center of a bolt?

    Just curious... but I'm unable to find a google hit and too dumb to simulate it.

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