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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."
He'll want to know he was right...
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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
With 1.21 gigawatts you can even go back to the future
Jamie want big boom!
Harvesting antimatter is incredibly hard. It's not like you can just stuff it in a shoe box. You need to make sure that it doesn't come into contact with any normal matter. This means putting it in a vacuum and using magnetic fields to make sure that it doesn't touch the sides of the container. Scientists only managed to make a stable antimatter container for the first time a few months back.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Well, what might only create one or two antiprotons in the US can actually create a whole beam of them in Europe, because of unit conversion.
which is totally what she said
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...
we'll first need to breed anti-sharks to carry them.
Oh, good. I was worried I was the only one that smelled that...
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.
Maybe where you're living (US ?). But at CERN, scientists of the LEAR experiment have managed to produce, trap, and store antimatter as far back as 1995. And even to create anti-hydrogen atoms out of it.
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?
The anti-hydrogen atoms were only stable in the particle-physicist sense - IIRC they lasted about 5 seconds. If someone's built an antimatter container that can keep it around for, say, long enough to fly it across the atlantic, that really is a new achievement.
I am trolling
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."
Really? I seem to recall a few particle accelerators - LEP and Tevatron come to mind - that can (or could, in LEP's case) keep stable antimatter beams for hours. I'd agree that it's only antiprotons or antielectrons, but it's still antimatter, and stable for tens of hours. Also, you can make a death ray, instead of a silly bomb!
Scientists only managed to make a stable antimatter container for the first time a few months back.
To clarify, they have been able to store charged antimatter particles using magnetic containment for quite some time. It is only recently that they have been able to store neutral antimatter particles, like complete hydrogen atoms.
The anti-matter is probably what made the monster kill.
No, as mentioned elsewhere, the antimatter annihilates with electrons causing gamma rays.
The gamma rays made the monster angry, and the townspeople didn't like the monster when it got angry.
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
Then bearded Fonzie can jump the anti-sharks with lasers.
loose: not fitting closely or tightly != lose: to suffer the deprivation of