This has been covered widely today, here is a sampling of stories and reference:
From the BBC:
Antimatter belt around Earth discovered by Pamela craft
A thin band of antimatter particles called antiprotons enveloping the Earth has been spotted for the first time.
The find, described in Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth’s magnetic field could trap antimatter.
The team says a small number of antiprotons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped “normal” matter.
The researchers say there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft.
The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite (an acronym for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) – launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and from beyond our Solar System – so-called cosmic rays.
These cosmic ray particles can slam into molecules that make up the Earth’s atmosphere, creating showers of particles.
Many of the cosmic ray particles or these “daughter” particles they create are caught in the Van Allen belts, doughnut-shaped regions where the Earth’s magnetic field traps them.
Among Pamela’s goals was to specifically look for small numbers of antimatter particles among the far more abundant normal matter particles such as protons and the nuclei of helium atoms.
‘Abundant source’
The new analysis, described in an online preprint, shows that when Pamela passes through a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, it sees thousands of times more antiprotons than are expected to come from normal particle decays, or from elsewhere in the cosmos.
Read more here
From CERN:
PAMELA pins down cosmic antiproton flux
The satellite experiment Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics (PAMELA) has made a new measurement of the antiproton-to-proton flux ratio in cosmic rays with energies up to 100 GeV. The results, which represent a great improvement in statistics compared with data published previously, provide significant constraints on exotic sources of cosmic antimatter.
The PAMELA experiment has been in low Earth-orbit on the Resurs-DK1 satellite since its launch in June 2006 (CERN Courier September 2006 p8). During 500 days of data collection it has identified 1000 antiprotons with energies in the range 1–100 GeV, including 100 antiprotons with an energy above 20 GeV. This is a larger data sample at higher energies than any other experiment has obtained.
Cosmic antiprotons can be made in particle (mainly proton) collisions with interstellar gas but they could also have more exotic origins, for example, in the annihilation of dark-matter particles. Finding out more about the actual production mechanisms requires detailed studies of the antiproton energy spectrum over a wide energy range, which in turn depend on data with good statistics, as PAMELA now provides.
Analysis of the data from PAMELA show that the antiproton-to-proton flux ratio rises smoothly to about 10 GeV, before tending to level off. The results match well with theoretical calculations that assume only secondary production of antiprotons by cosmic rays propagating through the galaxy. This places limits on contributions from other, more exotic sources
From http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4882
The discovery of geomagnetically trapped cosmic ray antiprotons
The existence of a significant flux of antiprotons confined to Earth’s magnetosphere has been considered in several theoretical works. These antiparticles are produced in nuclear interactions of energetic cosmic rays with the terrestrial atmosphere and accumulate in the geomagnetic field at altitudes of several hundred kilometers. A contribution from the decay of albedo antineutrons has been hypothesized in analogy to proton production by neutron decay, which constitutes the main source of trapped protons at energies above some tens of MeV. This Letter reports the discovery of an antiproton radiation belt around the Earth. The trapped antiproton energy spectrum in the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) region has been measured by the PAMELA experiment for the kinetic energy range 60–750 MeV. A measurement of the atmospheric sub-cutoff antiproton spectrum outside the radiation belts is also reported. PAMELA data show that the magnetospheric antiproton flux in the SAA exceeds the cosmic-ray antiproton flux by three orders of magnitude at the present solar minimum, and exceeds the sub-cutoff antiproton flux outside radiation belts by four orders of magnitude, constituting the most abundant source of antiprotons near the Earth.
The South Atlantic Anomaly being a geomagnetic mcguffin directly above the centre of high strangeness in the middle of all those Bimini ruins. #atlantis #EdgarCayce
Wooo-eee-ooo
I love it. Beam me up, warp factor 10:)
How does antimatter exist? How does antimatter help unify the magnetic/gravity theories?
Antimatter is like unclematter, just different. This is due to Relativity.
this is the part that just makes me sigh:
“The researchers say there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft.”
scheme/skēm/
Noun: A large-scale systematic plan or arrangement for attaining some particular object or putting a particular idea into effect.
Verb: Make plans, esp. in a devious way or with intent to do something illegal or wrong.
I am so tired of hearing the word “scheme” lately, as if it was a good thing. Fascinating though the existance of antimatter particles around the earth may be, I feel its unbecoming to claim this is a fuel source when theres no way to collect, store, manipulate, or otherwise control these particles. Speaking for myself, I feel this sort of far out claim made to the public just goes to show how poorly scientists are conducting themselves today.
At last, faster than light travel is possible.
Antimatter for fuel? Sounds exotic, in about 1000 years from now?
George Tetley says:
August 9, 2011 at 12:01 am
At last, faster than light travel is possible.
No it is not. And it never will be with our current level of knowledge, perhaps if we discover some super physics in the future. But at the moment just below lightspeed is the maximum speed for us, And it will take several decades to even launch a interstellar probe with speeds up to 20-30% of the lightspeed. Manned interstellar travel is even centuries away, And it is still a big uncertainty if we will ever make that interstellar jump.
Just a Way Station. Out in the back of no where.
Can we charge carbon taxes?
(To other carbon based life forms)
Sarc :-{
What’s really amazing to me is that apparently these antimatter particles can be contained – or at least constrained with such a weak magnetic force, like what we have from the Earth.
If I recall correctly, watching a well known factual science show years ago, the Chief Engineer was always pointing out that “I canneee give ya any more thrust Capp’n, the matter-antimatter core just canneee take it!” Or words to that effect!!!! He was of course always able to re-route something or other through the Jeffries Tube or whatever to save the day! On another well known British one, (no really) which really was a science programme, “was” being the opertative word here, Horizon showed that the speed of light was almost unobtainable as the mass increased disproportionately as they approached every closer to the speed of light, making it all rather, well, err…………difficult!
PS Forgot to say, aren’t we all supposed to be twiddling out thumbs & sitting on our brains until 2063 or whenever, when a passing Vulcan star ship passes by???? :-))
Rhoda, antimatter is just like matter. Thing is, it’s quite explosive when it encounters normal matter ;).
Pamela craft. I think I went to school with her.
I’m still waiting for someone to:
Pay the bills down here.
Allow people to get the energy we need now to warm the house, with shale fracking and other 60 year old technologies.
After we get some of these boring things done, then we can tap into antimatter clouds for space travel.
Here’s a thought provoking article about man’s impact on the earth:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903454504576486421307171028.html
Forget about antimatter, what about all those worms brought over to North America from Europe? Impact of that is still unknown as those worms go about their business.
@george Tetley says:
August 9, 2011 at 12:01 am
At last, faster than light travel is possible.
Old news. FTL has been around for some time. Invented by D. Adams. 😉
“The Infinite Improbability Drive is a faster-than-light drive. The most prominent usage of the drive is in the starship Heart of Gold. It is based on a particular perception of quantum theory: a subatomic particle is most likely to be in a particular place, such as near the nucleus of an atom, but there is also a small probability of it being found very far from its point of origin (for example close to a distant star). Thus, a body could travel from place to place without passing through the intervening space (or hyperspace, for that matter), if you had sufficient control of probability. According to the Guide, in this way the drive “passes through every conceivable point in every conceivable universe almost simultaneously,” meaning the traveler is “never sure where they’ll end up or even what species they’ll be when they get there,” therefore it’s important to dress accordingly.”
Now we have an idea what happened to those Ancient Space Aliens the so-called History Channel talks about. While hopping into and out of the earth’s atmosphere, they might have gotten caught in an anti-matter proton storm.
It could happen! Where is George Noory when you need him?
Cool. I knew those dilithium crystals I’ve been saving on a dusty shelf in my garage would be worth something some day.
No sweat. We can just use a magnetic bottle similar to the ones we use to contain our fusion reactors … Oh, wait…
Well, now we have an answer to the question “How many astrophysicists does it take to count the anti-protons?”
.. and before this discovery we knew all about anti-matter belts … the science was settled (was in, a consensus existed … pick your poison).
I want one.
The nuclear bomb came about fairly rapidly. We were light years ahead of all others and had severely limited the ability of others getting such technology while we were cooking up the bomb. Back then, we had successful security up to the explosion. These days, any such large scale research project designed to make fuel out of antimatter has no chance of remaining secret, even for a nanosecond. No chance. And because we therefor cannot be the sole proprietor of such technology, even for a very limited amount of time, there is no incentive to make it happen.
The world’s citizenry are not keen on governmental secrets anymore.
Robert says:
August 9, 2011 at 12:21 am
“And it is still a big uncertainty if we will ever make that interstellar jump.”
It’s been a long time since mankind has ventured past about 2% of the distance to the Moon.
Since we have now taken ourselves out of the running and decided to cripple ourselves with bloated bureaucratic financial endeavors…. it sure as hell isn’t going to be the US. We will be lucky if we can last past about 5 years as an actual country.
The Roman empire was also “Too big to fail.”