Thunderstorms have been shown to create positrons and send them to space. As the late, great, Johnny Carson of the Tonight Show used to say, “That is some weird, wild, stuff“.
NASA’s Fermi Catches Thunderstorms Hurling Antimatter into Space
Scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.
Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF), a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 TGFs occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected.
“These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams,” said Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He presented the findings Monday, during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.
| NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected beams of antimatter launched by thunderstorms. Acting like enormous particle accelerators, the storms can emit gamma-ray flashes, called TGFs, and high-energy electrons and positrons. Scientists now think that most TGFs produce particle beams and antimatter. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center |
Fermi is designed to monitor gamma rays, the highest energy form of light. When antimatter striking Fermi collides with a particle of normal matter, both particles immediately are annihilated and transformed into gamma rays. The GBM has detected gamma rays with energies of 511,000 electron volts, a signal indicating an electron has met its antimatter counterpart, a positron.
Although Fermi’s GBM is designed to observe high-energy events in the universe, it’s also providing valuable insights into this strange phenomenon. The GBM constantly monitors the entire celestial sky above and the Earth below. The GBM team has identified 130 TGFs since Fermi’s launch in 2008.
“In orbit for less than three years, the Fermi mission has proven to be an amazing tool to probe the universe. Now we learn that it can discover mysteries much, much closer to home,” said Ilana Harrus, Fermi program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
| Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor detected 130 TGFs from August 2008 to the end of 2010. Thanks to instrument tweaks, the team has been able to improve the detection rate to several TGFs per week. Credit: NASA |
The spacecraft was located immediately above a thunderstorm for most of the observed TGFs, but in four cases, storms were far from Fermi. In addition, lightning-generated radio signals detected by a global monitoring network indicated the only lightning at the time was hundreds or more miles away. During one TGF, which occurred on Dec. 14, 2009, Fermi was located over Egypt. But the active storm was in Zambia, some 2,800 miles to the south. The distant storm was below Fermi’s horizon, so any gamma rays it produced could not have been detected.
“Even though Fermi couldn’t see the storm, the spacecraft nevertheless was magnetically connected to it,” said Joseph Dwyer at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla. “The TGF produced high-speed electrons and positrons, which then rode up Earth’s magnetic field to strike the spacecraft.”
The beam continued past Fermi, reached a location, known as a mirror point, where its motion was reversed, and then hit the spacecraft a second time just 23 milliseconds later. Each time, positrons in the beam collided with electrons in the spacecraft. The particles annihilated each other, emitting gamma rays detected by Fermi’s GBM.
On Dec. 14, 2009, while NASA’s Fermi flew over Egypt, the spacecraft intercepted a particle beam from a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF) that occurred over its horizon. Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor detected the signal of positrons annihilating on the spacecraft — not once, but twice. After passing Fermi, some of the particles reflected off of a magnetic “mirror” point and returned. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientists long have suspected TGFs arise from the strong electric fields near the tops of thunderstorms. Under the right conditions, they say, the field becomes strong enough that it drives an upward avalanche of electrons. Reaching speeds nearly as fast as light, the high-energy electrons give off gamma rays when they’re deflected by air molecules. Normally, these gamma rays are detected as a TGF.
But the cascading electrons produce so many gamma rays that they blast electrons and positrons clear out of the atmosphere. This happens when the gamma-ray energy transforms into a pair of particles: an electron and a positron. It’s these particles that reach Fermi’s orbit.
| A TGF produces gamma rays (magenta) as well as high-energy electrons (yellow) and positrons (green). This simulation tracks a TGF and its particle beams from their origin altitude of 9.3 miles (15 km) to 373 miles (600 km), beyond Fermi’s orbit. Credit: Joe Dwyer/Florida Inst. of Technology |
The detection of positrons shows many high-energy particles are being ejected from the atmosphere. In fact, scientists now think that all TGFs emit electron/positron beams. A paper on the findings has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.
“The Fermi results put us a step closer to understanding how TGFs work,” said Steven Cummer at Duke University. “We still have to figure out what is special about these storms and the precise role lightning plays in the process.”
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership. It is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.
The GBM Instrument Operations Center is located at the National Space Science Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala. The team includes a collaboration of scientists from UAH, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and other institutions.
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See movies and images here
h/t WUWT reader James Barker
Keep in mind that the CO2 alarm is based on the Stefan-Boltzmann law and average surface temperatures, which likewise say that the planet can’t emit in the visible spectrum, much less in the UV, much less emit gamma rays and anti-matter. This doesn’t alarm me because my laptop screen also wildly violates Stefan-Boltzmann, which is good because otherwise it would probably burn the flesh off my fingers.
The land/ocean difference is interesting, because it reminds me of my gut suspicion that the South-Atlantic Anomaly where the Van Allen Belt touches the atmosphere (and which irradiates satellites and astronauts whenever they pass through it) is perhaps an important factor in the atmosphere’s electrical circuit. Would changing the size of the anomally (and thus the resistance) change cloud patterns, thunderstorm activity? If so, wouldn’t that affect albedo, precipitation patterns, water vapor distribution and intensity, the greenhouse effect due to water vapor, surface winds, and countless other things? Since the anomally is a result in a slight asymmetry in the Van Allen Belt due to the slight off-centering of the Earth’s magnetic field, wouldn’t it be affected by the way that field wanders around over long time scales? Likewise, wouldn’t the location of the anomally slowly move across land and ocean? Wouldn’t this be a way that climate might link to the periodic wanderings of the magnetic field, with further input from solar cycles which charge the Van Allen Belts?
So far as I know, these questions haven’t even been asked, much less answered, but then again, they are wildly speculative and based on not much of anything except gut feeling.
However, gamma ray and anti-matter burts are probably why the Enterprise can’t use the transporters on every third or fourth episode.
sailing off the coast of southern mexico one night about 25 years ago we were chased by a thunderstorm like I’ve never seen since. It formed up at sunset and had an opening underneath where forked lightning raced out under the cloud layer. Every minute or so a single, thick, very long-lasting, solid bolt of lightning came out of the hole to strike the water directly below. It was so unlike normal lightning that I called it the “finger of god” because I was certain it would smote us if it hit the boat. It certainly put the fear of god into us. The bolt striking the sea was not forked. It was simply a solid line of electricity extending vertically to the water from the opening under the thundercloud. After chasig us for an hour the storm passed a mile astern and marched out to sea. The description of “positive” lightning connected with sprites brought this to mind.
Would this pattern of flashes be useful in the evaluation of extrasolar planets? Do our gas giants exhibit these flashes in their storms – or is the formation “linked” to atmospheric chemistry?
In the Equatorial regions there is close ‘relationship’ between ionosphere and thunderstorms. Ionosphere can provide all the charges and electric currents, no great deal there. This relationship is far more profound for climatic changes than for few grains of ‘anti-mater’. See part relating to the equatorial storms with images 4,5 and 6 in:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC20.htm
I knew it! That’s why UFOs are always hovering around – the earth is a refueling station for anti-matter warp drives.
On the larger scale the energy radiated out is probably peanuts but still, it is yet another way earths heat gets radiated to space. Another brick in the wall missing in the models, begs once more the question if there is actually a wall of sound science behind the models.
That’s nice but it was discussed in the blogosphere in 2009, right?
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/11/fermi-lightnings-produce-positrons.html
George Turner says:
January 10, 2011 at 11:45 pm
Keep in mind that the CO2 alarm is based on the Stefan-Boltzmann law and average surface temperatures, which likewise say that the planet can’t emit in the visible spectrum, much less in the UV, much less emit gamma rays and anti-matter. This doesn’t alarm me because my laptop screen also wildly violates Stefan-Boltzmann, which is good because otherwise it would probably burn the flesh off my fingers.
Can you elaborate on the last sentence above please George?
Many thanks
I just don’t buy this.
What is the mean free path of a positron in the upper atmosphere? And what magnetic field strength is required to deflect (or even reflect) a highly energetic positron?
Nah. (But I have neen known to be wrong before!)
Piers said
“It might be worth mentioning, what needs to be a standard cautionary note: This phenomena (in this case TGFs) is nothing to do with CO2 although I daresay such ascribing is on the way.”
I read once that if Co2 ‘particles’ can acquire enough speed they can be ejected out of the atmosphere.
No one has ever been able to tell me what that speed was and how much- if
any- Co2 gets pushed into space.
If we are saying that Thunderstorms are a ‘gun’ are they also a mechanism for ejecting Co2 into space-if so how much?
tonyb
A couple of years ago I was flying in my trike ( microlight/ultralight ) under a large storm cloud. It wasn’t raining and I was only about 10 minutes away from my strip doing about 60 mph about 800 feet above the ground.
I was hit by lightening which maxed out my radio and GPS , the screens just went black. The radio was separated from the wiring loom by a battery but the GPS wasn’t.
Now everybody tells me that this isn’t possible because of the need for earthing but I can assure you it happened to me. Now how did that energy get into my nav/com setup I wonder? Not that I think it was anti-matter by the way. 🙂
Other than that Anthony this is a fascinating article about a phenomenon ( lightening ) that we know almost nothing about other than we shouldn’t play golf whilst it’s around.
Chris Reeve says: January 10, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Bill DiPuccio says: January 10, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Piers Corbyn says: January 10, 2011 at 6:52 pm
Hoser says: January 10, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Zeke the Sneak says: January 10, 2011 at 7:46 pm
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: January 10, 2011 at 11:35 pm
vukcevic says: January 11, 2011 at 1:22 am
Already a crop of telling comments, and some fascinating pics from Vukcevik. I’ve only recently looked as closely at the Electric Universe hypothesis as is needed to start to hold opinions that are both scientifically informed from the EU perspective and aware of EU debunkers. So far I see it fitting like the legendary Cinderella’s Shoe. I have looked briefly, and shall attend to Leif’s references properly, in time, but right now I do not anticipate much more there than the EU equivalent of Abrahams or John Cook or Gavin Schmidt.
Though the EU hypothesis is the one supported by mavericks, eccentrics, skeptics and cranks, it bodes well as a very natural way of making sense of the universe in the farther reaches and beyond our familiar atmosphere. It is worth repeating that electrical power is 36 orders of magnitude greater than the power of gravity (IIRC), and that whereas with gravity and electrostatic charges, the force decreases with the SQUARE of distance, with magnetism, the force decreases in LINEAR correspondence with distance. Therefore, at mega-distances, its power starts to outstrip that of gravity.
Keith Battye says:
January 11, 2011 at 4:47 am
“Now everybody tells me that this isn’t possible because of the need for earthing but I can assure you it happened to me. Now how did that energy get into my nav/com setup I wonder? Not that I think it was anti-matter by the way. :-)”
“Everybody”, whoever that really is, is a moron. Aircraft are generally protected from lightning by 1) avoiding it and 2) having a metal skin and a few extra bits to help the lightening take a path that avoids fuel tanks and sensitive electronics. Recreational aircraft seldom have metal skins and obviously you didn’t avoid the storm.
http://www.lightningtech.com/d~ta/faq1.html
From Science Daily…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091111142518.htm
‘………………………..Thanks to a serendipitous discovery by Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Colin Price, head of TAU’s Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science, and his graduate student Yuval Reuveni, science now has a more definitive and reliable tool for measuring the Sun’s rotation when Sunspots aren’t visible — and even when they are. The research, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research — Space Physics, could have important implications for understanding the interactions between the Sun and Earth. Best of all, it’s based on observations of common, garden-variety lightning strikes here on Earth.
Waxing and waning, every 27 days
Using Very Low Frequency (VLF) wire antennas that resemble clotheslines, Prof. Price and his team monitored distant lightning strikes from a field station in Israel’s Negev Desert. Observing lightning signals from Africa, they noticed a strange phenomenon in the lightning strike data — a phenomenon that slowly appeared and disappeared every 27 days, the length of a single full rotation of the Sun.
“Even though Africa is thousands of miles from Israel, lightning signals there bounce off Earth’s ionosphere — the envelope surrounding Earth — as they move from Africa to Israel,” Prof. Price explains. “We noticed that this bouncing was modulated by the Sun, changing throughout its 27-day cycle. The variability of the lightning activity occurring in sync with the Sun’s rotation suggested that the Sun somehow regulates the lightning pattern.”
He describes it as akin to hearing music or voices from across a lake: depending on the humidity, temperature and wind, sometimes they’re crystal clear and sometimes they’re inaudible. He discovered a similar anomaly in the lightning data due to the changes in Earth’s ionosphere — signals waxed and waned on a 27-day cycle. Prof. Price was able to show that this variability in the data was not due to changes in the lightning activity itself, but to changes in Earth’s ionosphere, suspiciously in tandem with the Sun’s rotation.
Taking the pulse of the Sun
The discovery describes a phenomenon not clearly understood by scientists. Prof. Price, an acclaimed climate change scientist, believes it may help scientists formulate new questions about the Sun’s effect on our climate. “This is such a basic parameter and not much is known about it,” says Prof. Price. “We know that Earth rotates once every 24 hours, and the moon once every 27.3 days. But we haven’t been able to precisely measure the rotation rate of the Sun, which is a ball of gas rather than a solid object; 27 days is only an approximation. Our findings provide a more accurate way of knowing the real rotation rate, and how it changes over time,” he says.
Prof. Price cannot yet say how this finding will impact life on Earth. “It’s an interesting field to explore,” he says, “because nothing has been done to investigate the links between changing weather patterns and the rotation of the Sun.
“Short-term changes in solar activity can also impact satellite performance, navigational accuracy, the health of astronauts, and even electrical power grid failures here on Earth. Many scientists claim that the Sun’s variability is linked to changes in climate and weather patterns, so the small changes we observed every 27 days could also be related to small variations in weather patterns.
“Our data may help researchers examine short-term connections between weather, climate, and Sun cycles. With this tool, we now have a good system for measuring the pulse of the Sun.”………………………………………………’
Perhaps this is relevant to the discussion…the rotation of the sun driving occurences of lightning in Africa which is being measured in Israel. What do y’all think of that????
@Piers Corbyn
I will quibble (very slightly) with Piers by asserting that TGF and CO2 are both are examples of electromagnetic energy (photons) interacting with ordinary matter.
In the case of CO2, we all know (by now) that CO2 molecules absorb energy from impinging infra-red photons. (What happens after that is a matter of great debate).
TGF involves an analogous interaction: gamma ray photons (instead of IR) interact with atoms (instead of molecules) absorbing and re-emitting enormous amounts of energy (millions of electron volts) compared to the remarkably low IR energies (on the order of a few electron volts).
Depending on the energy of the gamma ray several types of absorption/emission (“scattering”) occur. Low energy xray/gamma rays scatter elastically, with no loss of energy (“photoelectric effect”). Higher energies are inelastic and transfer energy to the atoms (“Compton effect”) . At the highest energies an amazing interaction occurs, the production of an electron-positron pair, virtually out of thin air!
Pair production is a well-know phenomenon, first predicted by Dirac in 1928 and first observed by Anderson in 1932 (while watching cosmic rays in a cloud chamber). It has even been observed in counter-propagating laser beams:
http://iopscience.iop.org/0741-3335/51/8/085008
What’s interesting here is Prof. Joe Dwyer’s research at Florida Tech into the causes of lightning. His team was the first to verify x-ray production in lightning in 2004. Joe is a kind of modern-day Ben Franklin. But instead of flying kites with metal strings, he does it more safely by shooting wires attached to rockets into the clouds, thus generating man-made bolts, from which he has successfully imaged high energy x-rays in the bolts. He is trying to find the cause of lightning in terms of fundamental physics. He thinks ultimately lightning is linked to cosmic rays.
Zeke the Sneak says:
January 10, 2011 at 7:46 pm
Such a lot of energy around and some Green Beings wanna sell us Windmills?
See the Tesla Patent below (Click on patent #96):
http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Biographies/TeslaBio-Patents.htm
Slightly off topic but about this penchant for the misuse of “this begs the question” when what is actually meant is “this raises the question” see: http://begthequestion.info/ for some great info as well as t-shirts and mugs (I kid you not).
To beg the question is to commit a logical fallacy. Raising a question comes from the consideration of a particular event or data set.
Awesome post though and very “electrical” apparently.
– cheers
Lucy Skywalker says:
January 11, 2011 at 5:56 am
Though the EU hypothesis is the one supported by mavericks, eccentrics, skeptics and cranks,….
All together with Dante Alighieri and his “Fedeli D’Amore” (Those faithful to Love, or lovers of love) who taught that Love: attraction, repulsion of opposites charges, not forgetting the neutral force separating them, rules the universe.
Beautiful…isn’t it?
Lucy Skywalker says:
January 11, 2011 at 5:56 am
………….
Most of the events I consider and write about are well within bounds of the classic electro – magnetic theory and do not require any additional elements of the EU hypothesis.
@Keith. Battye: there doesn’t need to be a conductive path between the lightning strike and your gear. The lighting strike creates a huge magnetic field as it conducts many amps of current between clouds and ground. This varying magnetic field can induce currents in any nearby conductors. That’s probably what got your gear.
I’ve had lightning near misses wipe out ports on networking switches, simply due to the connected wiring acting as antennas.
johnnythelowery says:
January 11, 2011 at 6:29 am
Prof.Colin Price web-page:
http://www.tau.ac.il/~colin/
@ur momisugly Keith Battye
Anyone telling someone that lightning doesn’t hit planes is full of it. Lightning hits planes all the time – big or small. As for the effects on the vehicles, it’s quite random. When I was still fixing avionics for small aircraft, we had a plane come in for repairs after a lightning strike. The bolt came in through the leading edge of the prop, through the engine, right through the firewall, down the aisle and into the floor before exiting through an antenna. We had to replace the antenna. Other than that, the only damage besides scorching was the exploded bottle of Coke that had be laying in the aisle. All passengers and electronics were unharmed. So I’ve seen firsthand how freaky lightning can be.
“Even though Africa is thousands of miles from Israel”
Eh ???
Bugger, should have stayed awake in geography classes.
Can’t believe it!
One of the most important greenhouse gases is Ozone. The ozone in the lower atmosphere is “bad” ozone since it traps heat emitted from the earth, enhancing the greenhouse effect. The ozone in the upper atmopshere is “good” ozone, since it blocks out the harmful UV radiation from the sun. One of the main precursors for ozone formation in the lower atmosphere is NOx (nitrogen oxides), and lightning is one of the major natural sources of NOx.
http://www.tau.ac.il/~colin/research/research.html
Cairo is only 250 miles from Jerusalem, but Capetown is almost 5000 miles away. So, on average, Prof. Price is right.