Antimatter Storms- Antimatter Found In Earth Thunderstorms

Antimatter Storms: A space telescope has accidentally spotted thunderstorms on Earth producing beams of antimatter.

Antimatter storms give rise to fleeting sparks of light called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. Results from the Fermi telescope show they also give out streams of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons.

Thunderstorms are known to create tremendously high electric fields - evidenced by lightning strikes. Electrons in storm regions are accelerated by the fields, reaching speeds near that of light and emitting high-energy light rays - gamma rays - as they are deflected by atoms and molecules they encounter.

For one thousandth of a second, these flashes can produce as many charged particles from one flash as are passing through the entire Earth's atmosphere from all other processes.
antimatter storms - A Thunderstorm and Lightning
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"One of the great things about the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor is that it detects flashes of gamma rays all across the cosmic scale," explained Julie McEnery, Fermi project scientist at Nasa.