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Thunderstorms Proven To Create Antimatter
radioweather writes "Scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter from thunderstorms in the form of positrons hurled into space. Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash, a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. 'These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams,' said Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor team. He presented the findings at a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle."
How long before somebody thinks of harvesting the antimatter part and turning it into a ...
So, when can we place those beams on shark heads?
He'll want to know he was right...
--
http://www.twilightcampaign.net/
So this is exactly like the LHC, right? How can clouds be so irresponsible to create ANTIMATTER that will destroy the entire planet, just because they can! I saw what happened when Neo let a single drop of antimatter fall out of the Millennium Falcon to destroy the elves' homeworld. Why won't Obama do something about this "lightning"? He's in the pocket of the lightning rod industry!
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Does this process potentially make the world more massive, in creating particle pairs - one of which escapes into space? Would this potentially be a way of testing gravity theories in controlled circumstances?
Ryan Fenton
You mean like 5 metres by 150mm by 100mm
I thought antimatter would only be created one or 2 antiprotons and positrons at a time.
Anti-matter is probably created all the time in the room you are sitting in. Just hard to detect.
With 1.21 gigawatts you can even go back to the future
I am wondering if there might be some way we can use lightning to launch spacecraft or other vehicles/matter into orbit?
Jamie want big boom!
Now when we're invaded by aliens, we'll just induce a couple of thunderstorms directly beneath their ships as they approach!
An lightning flash has an enery of about 500 Megajoule, which wil drive your electric car for 2000 km. No other fuel required, just put an iron rod on top and have a reload time of a few seconds...
"Does it mean it doesn't matter?"
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Now we really know what powers the Flux Capacitor! It had nothing to do with the gigawatts, that was just a cover. Doc Brown really needed the antimatter from the lightning to flow through the flux capacitor to create a micro-wormhole and send them forward in.
Must have been the same with the Mr. Fusion conversion.
Still haven't worked out the 88 MPH bit, and getting parts for my Delorean is getting harder and harder... but hope there is...
This is most likely related to the phenomena known as Sprites, Jets or Elves, that have been captured coming from the tops of thunderclouds. Better explanations here http://www.sky-fire.tv/index.cgi/spritesbluejetselves.html
- This sig deliberately left blank. Nothing to see, move along.
I think that he simply assumed that the creation of positrons implied the creation of electrons. Given our current understanding of anti-matter, I think it is a valid assumption to make.
What gave them the idea to look for these antimatter bursts? Did some scientist theorize it was possible and ask them to look? Or did the spacecraft start receiving bursts that they eventually tracked down to thunderstorms on earth?
"Its a laser of pure antimatter."
Keeping antimatter safe is easy; you can just stuff it in a shoe box, as long as the shoe box is made of antimatter.
"Lost time is not found again."
Shot from the ISS. A storm look from above...!
Rob-
Thanks for the BATSE plug.
For the past ~14 years (~1993 to 2007), I couldn't get anyone else, even on our own team, interested in TGFs, theory or obervations. It took the RHESSI observations, and the efforts of the fine scientists, David Smith and Joe Dwyer, along with the RHESSI observations, to invigorate the field. (Bob Malozzi and Berl Peterson were the only two persons who worked with me on TGFs in ~1999. Now its a big deal.
Jerry
Are you telling me that we are that much closer to getting our warp drives???
Charge up the anti-matter engine and prepare for an infusion of 1.21 Gigawatts! We're going BACK... ...to the future!
Which you then house in a larger antimatter shoe box and put it under your antimatter bed in your antimatter house.
Does not compute! if all you want is death just stuff the antimatter into a shoe box - BOOM! Of course the downside is you go with it
Is that at all related to Evil Kirk & Evil Spock?
Give me your agonizer.... your agonizer PLEASE!
This is what happens when physicists get stoned during a thunder storm...
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
And in English, this means?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I heard you can also put antimatter in a magnetic bottle, cuz no one really knows how magnets work.
What? No mention of Dr. Frankenstein's ground breaking experiments? The anti-matter is probably what made the monster kill.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
I wonder how much antimatter is created by your average lightning bolt. And if it is a significant amount Would there be a way to collect it. I'm imagining several large lightning rod tower in a region with a lot of thunderstorm activity. The rods direct the lightning into a subsurface tunnel with conductive element surrounded by a gas (to be converted into antimatter) and then a powerful magnetic containment system to collect the antimatter. Even if it could produce a few grains per year it it could be enough to eventually power a small Antimatter initiated Nuclear Fusion Rocket for an interstellar probe.
The Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on board the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory made many observations of TGFs from low-Earth orbit between 1991 and 2000. In fact, our second event after turning on the instrument was located to the Earth; very surprising, in view of the fact that we didn't expect *any*! The ironic part is that our main objects of study, gamma-ray bursts, were discovered by a series of satellites (Vela) that were monitoring the Earth (and the far side of the Moon) for gamma-rays indicating violations of the nuclear test ban treaty with the (then) Soviet Union. Seeing nothing from the Earth, the Los Alamos scientists looked for any other signal...
This line no sig
That he'll probably now be able to get a research grant to study this more closely after 14 years of trying to get people interested in what is, to him (and many of us on Slashdot), a fascinating phenomenon.
Who has peer reviewed this claim? Who has tested it? This is Science by Press Release.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
the positrons are not escaping into space... TFA has it right
No, TFA says "When antimatter striking [the spacecraft named] Fermi collides with a particle of normal matter, both particles immediately are annihilated and transformed into gamma rays... The TGF produced high-speed electrons and positrons, which then rode up Earth’s magnetic field to strike the spacecraft."
So, either TFA doesn't have it right, or the positrons are traveling all the way up to the altitude of the spacecraft. (I agree with you that that seems unlikely, given the mean free path in the atmosphere.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Does this process potentially make the world more massive, in creating particle pairs - one of which escapes into space?
Nope. Makes the planet lighter by the amount of mass + (kinetic energy / csquared) that escaped.
That's because the energy that created them came from the Earth, where it had been for a while (even if it had previously come from sunlight rather than geothermal or combustion sources) and the energy itself - either as energy or as the difference of mass between two forms (before and after) of matter that liberated it - had mass itself.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If electrical discharges in a thunderstorm can concentrate energy enough to create gammas energetic enough to create electron-positron pairs (2 x 511 keV), I'd expect that (given the large concentrations of hydrogen in the cloud's water) they can also produce initiation energy for nontrivial amounts of nuclear fusion. (D D or D T at about 15 keV or P B at about 123 keV.) These reactions produce tens of MeV of output energy, some of which could appear as the gammas that produce electron-positron pairs.
It would be interesting to look for the signatures of that. Especially given that the mechanism of the dense plasma focus is a plasma instability that I'd expect to be sometimes produced in a free-air electrical discharge such as a lightning bolt or sprite.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Do these bursts have anything to do with the recently (past 10 years) documented phenomena of lightning that goes from the cloud tops out into space?
Pilots, stewardesses, and frequent fliers are already exposed to cosmic rays. Are people who fly through thunderstorms compounding their exposure to gamma rays in a significant way? Are pilots who fly hurricane recon missions at greater risk for cancer than say commercial airline pilots?
"... the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams"
Does this mean that elementary school teachers may need to revise their assertions that lightning does not make noise?