Anti-gravity
Is the fact that the antimatter heads upwards evidence that antimatter is repulsed by a gravity well?
Top NASA boffins analysing data from a gamma-ray telescope satellite in orbit above the Earth say they have discovered that thunderstorms, in addition to the various other things they do, emit "beams of antimatter" out of their tops. "These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle …
I think it might be more likely that the anti-matter is created in a sphere, but that which is aimed downwards, or horizontally, immediately contacts matter and is destroyed, while the upwardly-mobile anti-matter blasts off through the upper atmosphere and into space, due to the dearth of matter in that direction.
…this will lead to some neat discoveries that boil down to "here is how we can generate antimatter far more efficiently than using an expensive particle accelerator." I know it's unlikely, but I am still going to cross my fingers for commercially viable antimatter generation. Even if half the energy is lost as neutrinos (and gamma rays are a **** to extract energy from) its one step closer to a viable deep space energy source.
Imagine the ion drive you could build with that puppy! Probes to Alpha Centauri with telemetry inside a single human lifespan! The mind, it boggles…
time and again the human race strives to achieve what one was thought impossible, only to find later that something on our planet has been quietly doing it all along.
I think the greatest thing man has achieved that nature hasn't beaten us to must be the humble wheel.
make you wonder why we bother.
Though i don't think I've seen anything in nature using gunpowder in a rifled barrel to propel and object great distances...
Nor anything closely resembling a combustion engine and drive train...
I mean, nature is impressive and all but we can't belittle our greatest achievements.
A natural earth bound event which isn't a nuclear explosion generates an antimatter pulse.
It *might* be worthwhile re-opening any unexplained satellite failures below 1000Km (roughly the inner Van Allen radiation belt) to see if any of their electronics could have been cooked by this.
Note however that satellites in orbit get a fair radiation battering as they pass through the South Atlantic Anomaly due to the weakening of the Earth's magnetic field.
I can't help but feel there's something fundamentally flawed in this latest NASA report.
Positrons are being fleetingly created all the time in terrestrial nature spontaneously anyhow (in oceans for example they come and go through the decay of radio-isotopes) but I don't see how they could make it through the atmosphere without meeting electrons on their way and all being annihilated in lots of small events rather than large single ones.
Did a physics degree 25 years ago and this sounds completely at odds with my understanding of natural processes.
Indeed, barrels are used thoughout nature. As for chemical explosions, much rarer, but they do exsist.
The bombardier beetle releases two chemical simultaniously from its abdomen. If Wickipedia is accurate, hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide, which react violently, deterring predators.
Nature is amazing on many levels, but don't let the hippies fool you. The overwhelming majority of machines we produce are vastly more efficient at their task than natures solutions.
Flight, for example. Your average Boeing uses far less energy to achieve flight than any bird or insect. Nature can't even build a land animal of the same weight, let alone for flight.
In fact, the heaviest animal ever known is the blue whale, tipping in at 180 metric tons, The Antonov An-225 could quite happily fly said whale, with 70 tons spare for provisions to keep our whale alive and in relative comfort during the 2,500 mile journey, faster than any lifeform at 500mph.
This is primarily due to the infinately rotatable axel. Something nature can never achieve.
We have long since outrun nature in everything we strive for.
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason,
how infinite in faculties, in form and moving,
how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension,
how like a god!
that the anti-matter squirts move along the magnetic field lines.Can we correlate them with the earth's orbital trajectory ? And that some impossible percentage of the universe is so-called " dark " matter. What is this system that seems to be be ecliptically sneezing positronic magnetoids from ( solar-powered ) hydraulic events ? Friction, electricity, coriolis, magnetism, wheels made by nature but axles made by ?man?............ More kite flying needed methinks. ( a major lightning-bolt core does something what-a-strophic leading to these discharges ? )
A ten-year old green bottle hangs on the wall....
Where positrons are emitted by radioisotope labelled metabolites for use in Positron Emission Tomography, the positron can usually travel a couple of millimetres through human body tissue before it meets an electron and you get an annhilation event, hence the low resolution of PET scans. You have to remember that mostly atoms are comprised of space and very little matter, and Van De Waals radii (The effective diameter of the whole atom) don't really count here. It brings to mind the old chestnut where a hydrogen atom is described by an orange on the centre spot of Wembly representing the nucleus and a pea in the car park represents the electron. Obviously, air is far more rarefied of electrons than water (The main electron-containing constituent of body tissue), so the positron is free to pass right through the space inside a lot of atoms before it meets an electron. Moreover, the chances of a positron meeting an electron is entirely stochastic, and even in water, if you provide enough positrons, some will travel much further then a couple of mm, so the number of positrons that make it into space is also highly dependent on the number of positrons that are emitted in the first instance.