Lightning Holds Fingerprint of Antimatter

[BURNING MAN]

Gamma ray bursts that stem from lightning
storms appear to be powerful enough to
annihilate matter.


Positrons, the antimatter equivalent to electrons, were detected in gamma ray bursts during lightning storms.

A satellite dispatched to scout out high-energy gamma rays streaming from the cosmos found that not only were flashes of gamma rays oddly close to home, but they were also powerful enough to annihilate matter.

The radiation stemmed from lightning storms on Earth. Scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope recorded 17 gamma ray flashes coming from Earth that matched up with lightning tracked by the World Wide Lightning Location Network, operated out of the University of Washington in Seattle.

Previous gamma ray telescopes had detected the terrestrial gamma radiation, which was a huge surprise when it was first discovered in 1994.

Most of the gamma rays observed by Fermi and other telescopes come from the destruction of supermassive stars and other cataclysmic events far beyond the galaxy.

"Probably the last place we ever expected to see gamma rays was from Earth or Earth's atmosphere," Gerald Fishman, an astrophysicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., told Discovery News.

"It was a serendipitous discovery," he added. "For 10 or 12 years, it was treated as a scientific curiosity. No one knew what to make of it."

LINK

[Terminator]

This NASA Astrophysics link is a visual representation of Burning Man's link (above).

I was trying to pair this up with the NASA video of UFOs above raging storm clouds...but I couldn't find it.

Perhaps they stopped off for a positronic recharge.......(?)

[raves475]

I just watched this clip last night, and I was wondering the same thing.