A Recent Hurricane Shot a Bolt of Antimatter Toward Earth

[Judi Lynn]

By Ryan F. Mandelbaum on 23 May 2018 at 3:00PM

When you think of an alien world, you might think of a strange, stormy place with an inhospitable environment, frequent lightning strikes, and extreme radiation. But who needs an imagination when the storms here on Earth already beam radiation, including antimatter, down toward the ground?

Hurricane Patricia in 2015 was the second most intense tropical cyclone ever on record, travelling up the Pacific coast of Mexico with winds topping out at 215 miles-per-hour. Despite the fierce conditions, scientists still had science to do, and they flew in a plane through its eyewall on 23 October 2015. The plane’s instruments measured gamma-rays blasted from lightning inside the hurricane, as well as what seemed to be beam of positrons, the antimatter opposite of electrons. Events like these are probably more common than you’d think.

“These terrestrial gamma-ray flashes can happen in any storm that makes lightning,” David Smith, one of the study’s authors from the University of California, Santa Cruz, told Gizmodo.

The detector on board the plane measured a phenomenon that scientists have been interested in for decades: terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. It’s unclear exactly how it happens, but lightning in storms seems to accelerate electrons to nearly light speed. These electrons collide with the particles in the atmosphere, resulting in high-energy x-rays and gamma rays that scientists have measured in satellites and on the ground. The rays could also result from collisions between electrons and their antimatter partners, positrons.

More:
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/05/a-recent-hurricane-shot-a-bolt-of-antimatter-toward-earth/

[FirstLight]

1. Jaysus Christ!

I swear, the world really is coming to some catastrophic demise! (I know, the science makes it sound less dangerous, but the headline is seriously a trigger these days!)


Maybe the "anti-matter" affected our timeline and that why we are stuck in this fucked up reality?