Comments on: Thunderstorms Shoot Beams of Antimatter Into Space. Really!

By: Jim Mooney

Jim Mooney — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 23:46:00 +0000

Even better – Isaac Asimov’s positronic brains for robots, who can then do all our work (oops, that’s already happened to a great degree, but didn’t work out as planned, with a twenty hour work week and universal prosperity. It seems they anticipated the science but not our horrible economic system.)

By: Merijn Vogel

Merijn Vogel — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:16:38 +0000

@Jim: ah, thanks for pointing that out. Indeed, some naturally occuring decays can create positrons. See for instance the wikipedia page about Positron emission. Cabon-11, Potassium-40 and a bunch of other isotopes will produce them.

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:00:58 +0000

So how are the positrons emitted? I thought positron creation required some sort of nuclear process, like decay or pair production or something?

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 18:44:27 +0000

@Merijn: that is not new information. Positrons were first detected in the 1930s. And lots of radioisotopes decay by emitting a positron, so that’s been happening for billions of years.

By: Merijn Vogel

Merijn Vogel — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 10:32:46 +0000

@TMC: indeed, but I hope / assume naively that this quite extraordinary claim is based on solid evidence. I very much look forward to the follow-up on this as well.

By: Merijn Vogel

Merijn Vogel — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 10:23:13 +0000

The train of thought required is amazing. I’m just guessing, but something along these lines must have happened. They detect positrons, they look for where those came from. They apparently exclused space, they excluded a direct thunderstorm, they verfied their data, tens of times. Then calculated what path a beam of positrons could be I guess. Then found a matching thunderstorm and had their source.
Then, they dared to conclude, the positrons could come from the gamma-ray events called lightning.

I find it totally awesome that you can conclude something like this. And, we can now also conclude that anti-matter exists in nature. Really cool, thanks for sharing this Phil.

By: TMC

TMC — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 05:17:57 +0000

@Dee and Mike:
Why does that make you think the conclusions are wrong? I see it the other way around…sure, there were probably a lot of free electrons along the way and probably a whole bunch of positrons annihilated with them. The fact that the Fermi telescope was able to detect the positrons suggests that there were a LOT of positrons produced because they were able to survive until hitting the telescope .

Additionally, it could have been a statistical fluke. Maybe the Fermi telescope was just in the right place at the right time and will never be able to detect lightning produced positrons ever again.

By: Random

Random — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 05:01:25 +0000

Well, maybe not trap the lightning. But, maybe figure out exactly what is causing it. Harness that effective and move on.

By: Dee

Dee — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:10:19 +0000

I agree with Mike; there are undoubtedly free electrons at some point along this proposed journey.

By: Berander

Berander — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:17:49 +0000

@2, Oli: *LOL*

By: Leerf

Leerf — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 20:29:08 +0000

Dear Human Race.
Please be very careful with antimatter.
Xx

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:51:34 +0000

The positrons did not interact with any matter between the storm and Fermi?

By: Darth Vader

Darth Vader — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:36:55 +0000

If only we could aim the antimatter beams at people…

By: Spencer K

Spencer K — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:29:32 +0000

@AJAR:
Only if we can figure out a way to contain the fuel without destroying the container!

By: Interesting

Interesting — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:23:47 +0000

This is very exciting! But, are we sure there are no other explanations? Can we reproduce the event in any way?

By: Oli

Oli — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:18:33 +0000

“When the traveling positrons reached Fermi they interacted with the spacecraft’s electrons and annihiliated, creating a flash of gamma rays.”

So Fermi is now a big ion?

By: AJAR

AJAR — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:15:08 +0000

Does this mean we now have a fuel source for antimatter engines?