Antimatter Caught Streaming from Thunderstorms on Earth

Great catch artsmith!

My limited comprehension is that the earth's magnetic field directs these streams away from earth. I wonder if this is the case at the poles?

Gee,

Those are sure pretty colors.

What do it mean??

Like Unredundant, my comprehensive skills do not go to that level.

But, I do remember when telephones had wires and rotary dials.

As long as it's only producing electron-positron pairs, I'm not too worried. They'll soon annihilate each other.

Well... it says:

"Because electrons and positrons are charged, they align along the Earth's magnetic field lines and can travel vast distances, gathered into tightly focused beams of matter and antimatter heading in opposite directions."

"..when positrons encounter electrons again; they recombine and produce a flash of light of a precise and characteristic colour.....The magnetic field can transport the particles vast distances before this characteristic flash.."

Yep, pretty colours... probably sums it up. If you see that flash out of nowhere, you know what's up. Some weather-related tightly focused antimatter beam, that's been annihilated (thank heavens) by some handy electrons.

I wonder if this could have anything to do with ball lightning?

Interesting. I was initially questioning why this was news worthy. It has been known for some time that positron(antimatter)/electron(matter) pairs can be spontaneously created from gamma photons and that the pairs can combine back into gamma photons. Example description here ...

http://www.answers.com/topic/electron-positron-pair-production

I guess the actual detection far above a thunderstorm is the new "news".

The purplish domes of light have been seen by pilots if flying at a considerable distance from thunderstorms so being able to look nearly parallel to the upper cloud layer.

These have been reported in red color but the blue part will be absorbed and strayed more rapidly at passing through some 200 or so km of air.

The generating mechanism of the gamma ray bursts on Earth are thought this way:

A high electric field (up to 2MV/m) that is existing before a lightning starts is generated by intense rubbing and hitting and splitting of drops and ice particles in the clouds.

This high voltage is accelerating any charged particles - so electrons, ions and other.

Electrons are lightest so get the highest velocity.

Usually there is considerable drag by air molecules (not viscous drag but the chance to hit a molecule and being captured or strayed out of the original direction).

By this effect the energy of the electrons will be usually limited to 200KeV.

This is changed inside the ion channel of a lightning in a poorly understood manner, so that electrons of many MeV-energy are produced.

This non-understanding may be from the interaction of the high magnetic field (surrounding in circles any conductor that carries current - so being very strong in and around the square-inch cross-section of a lightning of may be 300 KA of current.)

Charged particles (ions and electrons) are forced into the center of the lightning. As electrons are much faster (the mass of an electron is near 30,000 times smaller than atomic oxygen) there may be much more electrons near the center than ions. And the density of neutral gas molecules and atoms (split by the lightning) is much lower than in neighbouring air.

More electrons and less ions and molecules will give longer "survival" time between two hits thus allowing higher energy gain by the electric field.

By this the "friction" that limit the electrons velocity is lowered resulting in high (MeV) electrons that can hit gas molecules and emit x-rays at being stopped.

The chance to hit gas molecules is highest where the pathway of the lightning is changing abruptly its direction - a well known phenomenon in lightnings that results from the rest points of the discharge in early stages of lightning formation.

This is a very rough and only partially true explanation, so be curious and dig out explain the real thing!

RHABE

It's all pretty pictures to me. Reading the article I couldn't help but wonder if these beams originate in the poorly understood sprites, blue jets, and elves often seen above thunder storms. The location seems to be about right.

Very nice - but what about the electron-positron pair production? Your reply hasn't addressed the issue of antimatter (the first word in the title of this thread).

You are right, lots of questions remaining.

Electron-Positron pair production by gamma-rays (and vice versa) is a well known process. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron%E2%80%93positron_annihilation

So one likely pathway may be:

The lightning is producing large numbers of electrons.

These are accelerated by the electric field to MeV energies. (Why is the electric field still able to accelerate it should have vanished as soon as the lightning is established, so very likely this process is going on in the very first stages of lightning formation within the invisible forerunners.)

These fast electrons have ample energy so at collisions will produce a lot of other particles and gamma-rays. In-between the produced particles are a lot of electron-positron pairs. And 2 gamma rays above 511 KeV may produce an electron-positron pair). Electrons are accelerated down positrons up.

(Why is there a possibility to accelerate as a cloud of charged particles that is neutral to the outside will only be marginally affected by an electric field, and : is the accelerating field the same as preceding the lightning or is it from the Earth's charge?)

Positrons will hit electrons if in the uppermost parts of the atmosphere, may be as high as some 100Km in the vanAllen belts. There are vast amounts of electrons captured by the Earth's magnetic field spiraling around the magnetic field lines from pole to pole and back.

Any hit will produce gamma-rays.

(Why is this (laser-like) parallel and not as a shower?).

In short: matter and antimatter is produced at high energy collisions between fast electrons and molecules/atoms. Separation is done by electric (and magnetic?) fields.

RHABE

I've got to catch up on my reading. I was thinking that they were still trying to prove that antimatter existed.

Correction. Not that anyone cares, but I was thinking of dark matter, not anti matter. Doh!!

I care! I had and Aunt named Matter, who was mad as a hatter.

Antimatter, its about the positrons. Differently charged -antielectrons.

The dark matter is just matter we detect (by eg gravitational effects) but cannot see. Probly sitting behind some kind of cloaking object or phenomenon (that would just show those clever metamaterials guys, if it turned out to occur in nature after all....)

This "Scientists estimate that we can only see 4% of the real mass and energy in the universe. Also, 22% of the universe's mass and energy is estimated to be dark matter, while the remaining 74% is thought to be a related concept, dark energy"

makes it sound like invisibility is pretty much the rule!! We are the outcasts, here in the ordinary visible material world! Conspicuous as hell! (at least, to ourselves).

Antimatter would have enormous potential as an energy resource if it could be tapped - but we don't have anything like a technology to handle this energy. The only interesting point here is that the antimatter beams follow earth's magnetic field lines. It's not inconceivable that this behaviour could (one day?) be used to trap antimatter from the natural source: thunderstorms. Whereas lightning - also too much for us to handle - strikes randomly.

"Scientists estimate that we can only see 4% of the real mass and energy in the universe. Also, 22% of the universe's mass and energy is estimated to be dark matter, while the remaining 74% is thought to be a related concept, dark energy"

Perhaps there are dark people out there measuring an unexplained 4% mass of the universe that they theorize as "bright matter".