1. gregladen
  2. Thunderstorm Antimatter and the Big Green blob

Thunderstorm Antimatter and the Big Green blob

By gregladen on January 11, 2011.

No, these things are not related.

It was not that many years ago when observations were made, incidentally as I recall, of radioactivity in the upper atmosphere above large thunderstorms. I remember this being sneered at like it was a claim of cold fusion or something. Within a couple of years, however, this phenomenon was better observed and better understood, and we now know that thunderstorms sometimes produce gamma rays in the upper atmosphere. Most recently, however, something even more astonishing and amazing has been observed: These upper atmosphere high energy loci actually produce antimatter.

Astonishing.

Speaking of astonishing things, do you remember Hanny's Voorwerp? The giant green blob discovered as part of a citizen science project by a Dutch teacher in 2007? The giant green blob has been confirmed and imaged by Hubble. It is apparently a quasar that is no longer active.

Tags
Cosmos

More like this

I'm sure you remember cold fusion, but do you remember gamma ray producing clouds?
Cold Fusion was first reported in 1989. The original experiment was supposed to have produced extra heat that could not be explained wiht chemistry or electronics, so naturally, fusion was considered. Contrary to popular belief, that original experiment has been replicated successfully. The…
Down the barrel of a thousand cosmic cannons!
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" -Albert Einstein Our galaxy is but one among hundreds of billions in the cosmos, nearly all of which contain supermassive black holes at the center. Ours happens to be "only" a few million times as massive as our Sun…
The Physics of why the e-Cat's Cold Fusion Claims Collapse
"Every time you look up at the sky, every one of those points of light is a reminder that fusion power is extractable from hydrogen and other light elements, and it is an everyday reality throughout the Milky Way Galaxy." -Carl Sagan (This post is coauthored by Dr. Peter Thieberger, Senior…
I get email: looking for a geophysicist
I got a strange phone call today, from a fellow who was very polite, so I was polite in return, but it was weird — he kept asking me strange questions about the energy involved in breaking up supercontinents, and how much water could be stored under a supercontinent (which had me suspicious right…

i made a comment on another sci blog about this but i'll say that i'll never look at a big midwest thunderstorm the same way again...beams!!!..antimatter beams!!..