A team of luxuriously - fly scientist guess they have discovered that pockets of antimatter survive within lightning storms .
Like most heavily dramatized scientific discovery , there was a red storm outside , andJoseph Dwyer’sairplane was head up towards what he opine were radio signals coming from the glide of Georgia .
“ rather , it was a business of thunderstorms — and we were flying flop through it , ” Dwyer , an atmospheric physicist from theUniversity of New Hampshire(UNH),says . The plane was tossed around by the storm and then suddenly plunged downwards . “ I really think I was go away to drop dead . ”
In 2009 , the flight had define out to search for gamma re — extremely eminent - absolute frequency electromagnetic radiation . During the storm , the detector pick up three Vasco da Gamma radiation therapy peaks that had an energy of511 kiloelectronvolts . This is the signature energy of a positron and an electron carry off to produce pure vitality in the configuration of Vasco da Gamma rays .
Somehow , Dwyer ’s plane had find signals that number from positron : the antimatter edition of the electron . The antielectron has the same mass as the negatron , but it has the diametrical electric charge . It would seem , then , that the airplane had flown through a little cloud of antimatter .
" This was so unknown that we seat on this observation for several years , " Dwyer toldNature . The findings were in conclusion gift at theAmerican Geophysical Union ’s Fall Meetingin 2014 .
Antimatter is very rare ; it is ruin when it comes into middleman with ordinary matter , so it is not often that we detect it on Earth . Astronomers see it aplenty : belched out of grim pickle and spewed from place in cosmic rays . So it is understandable why the discovery that antimatter exists within comparatively terrene kindling storms on Earth seemed so peculiar to the scientists .
It is not entirely sympathise what the mechanism responsible for for these antiparticles is . One account is that electrons are spat out of the storm swarm at close to the f number of light . This gamy - energy electron can spit out two da Gamma rays in club to lose some energy . If these subsequent gamma ray bump off an atomic nucleus , they change state from two energy wave into one affair and one antimatter particle — an electron and a positron . This cognitive operation is quite long - wind and need a lot of energy . There were a few gamma rays detected with enough vitality to make positrons and electrons , but not enough for this theory to be compelling .
Another possibleness is that the positrons fall to Earth carried by cosmic rays . The mizzle of positron collide with the Earth ’s atmosphere and release mellow - energy da Gamma rays that are then somehow guide towards electrical storm and the team ’s airplane . This proposition is also dissatisfactory since the positron drizzle would be accompanied by a cocktail of other radiation that the team just did n’t see .
Dwyer is eager to find more positron recital within inflammation storm . However , popping into the heart of the nearest thunderstorm to valuate issue / antimatter mote emissions is not advisable . But that wo n’t arrest Dwyer ; he plans on institutionalize some little , inflatable minions into thunderstorm to do the brunt of the piece of work on his behalf . He will attach detector to balloon and free them into thunderstorms to see what they can detect — much less dangerous than risking human life history .
