In the thunderclouds found a "clot" of antimatter

Lightning is the only visible product of intense electrical activity that occurs in thunderstorm clouds. But scientists have unexpectedly found there something more interesting: a large amount of antimatter, writes the journal Nature. Perhaps this fact will help explain how lightning is formed in the clouds.

Recently it has been known that a powerful thunderstorm generates positrons (antiparticles of electrons). However, on August 21, 2009, Doctor of Physics Joseph Dwyer from the University of New Hampshire and colleagues flew on an airplane with measuring equipment. They were brought directly into a thundercloud - and there the devices registered such a number of positrons that cannot be explained by any physical process.

The fact is that the key property of antimatter is that annihilation occurs upon contact with ordinary matter. The particle and antiparticle cease to exist, giving rise to a number of other particles. That is why antimatter is so rare.
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The phenomenon seemed so strange that Dwyer did not publish the results of observations for several years after the incident.

In the past decade, Dr. Dwyer and his colleagues proved that during a thunderstorm, positrons and high-energy photons are produced. The flight in the vicinity of thunderclouds was made for research purposes. Of course, no one was going to go right inside, just the pilot misinterpreted the radar readings. Dwyer says that when everyone realized the mistake, he said goodbye to life.

For several minutes inside the storm clouds, the plane miraculously escaped an electrical discharge. But the instruments registered three waves of photons with an energy of 511 kilo electronvolts - this is a reinforced concrete sign of the annihilation of three positrons with electrons.

Each burst lasted 0.2 seconds and was accompanied by a subsequent stream of photons with slightly less energy. Scientists suggest that some of the particles have lost part of the energy, breaking a certain distance. Based on this, they calculated that the plane was in a cloud of short-lived positrons with a diameter of about 1-2 km.

For five years, scientists modeled the generation of positrons with such parameters, but could not put forward a theory. For example, if the positrons were of cosmic origin, then the instruments would register other types of radiation due to the motion of the positrons. It was not.

Now Dwyer and colleagues decided to publish. A scientific article was published in the Journal of Plasma Physics (Journal of Plasma Physics). Online it is not.

Colleagues agree that the phenomenon cannot be explained. "These observations seem mysterious," said Michael Briggs, a physicist at NASA's space center, in a comment to Nature. Other physicists doubt the size of the “positron cloud”. Perhaps it was much less. Russian physicist Alexander Gurevich from the Physical Institute. PN Lebedev of the Russian Academy of Sciences was skeptical that the “cloud” was completely limited to the skin of the aircraft, which, at high speed, generated a powerful electromagnetic field around the wings, and the generation of positrons began there.

To test the theory, new experimental data are needed. Fans launch balloons into thunder clouds. American scientists have an idea to launch a particle detector inside the cloud on an A-10 armored anti-tank attack aircraft A-10 'Warthog'.

In any case, something interesting is clearly happening inside the thunderstorm.