Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
I am skeptical  .
I am skeptical because I don't understand the concept of anti matter firstly  but this aside I ask a question I suspect must have been asked before now....and it is this...
If there is anti matter (or if it has existed at any point in time) why is it that we now have so little (if any) and the predominance is of matter  .
Should the concept of anti matter be limited to Star Trek and other similar fictional approaches to our Universe?
It seems rather fanciful that given the difficulties of producing anti matter in the lab (I know they found it years ago so they say) we now find in nature it is produced somewhat as a matter of course "in the clouds".
Now if we have anti matter being produced as suggested what happens next? What matter does our lightning produced anti matter cancel out?
Does anti matter and matter cancel out? What is left?nothing?
Given the incidence of lightening and the suggestion of this most recent discovery could one not conclude the universe is being eroded a little each time we have "lightning"...what matter does this anti matter destroy? or is it gathered up to power extraterrestrial space craft?
If nothing else how can the hypothesis (I know it was found etc) of anti matter have any basis in reality? otherwise there must be a compelling argument to explain why matter rules in the absence of anti matter.
Must we content ourselves with an answer that the reason for its absence is a matter of economics??
Yes it is still raining here but really is it not time to throw out this extremely fanciful concept that leaves us with no explanation as to the now apparent absence of anti matter in our observable universe.
alex  |
Alex, the whole reason why you're skeptical
is because of your lack of understanding. However there's nothing arcane about what antimatter is.
You know how an electron has a negative polarity (charge). The anti-electron (positron) has a positive polarity (charge). That's basically all the difference is....the antimatter particle has the opposite characteristics of its matter counterpart.
The reason why matter predominates over antimatter is because there was a slight abundance of matter over antimatter at the time of the Big Bang. Even if there was only 1 particle in 1000000 overabundance of matter over antimatter at the time, that's all it took. What you now see is the dregs of what's left after the two annihilated one another. All that high energy gamma radiation that was produced at the time is now part of the very weak CMB which you see everywhere you look.
The fact that they've found rather large quantities of the stuff being produced by thunderstorms is not something I am surprised by. Simple fact of the matter is that thunderstorms generate enormous amounts of energy and whilst it may take a lot of effort for us to produce small quantities of the stuff, a large storm has far more power than your particle accelerator. Not only that, the form of antimatter being produced, positrons, isn't all that hard to create....if you have enough energy to do so. And enough target material to produce a decent quantity of the stuff. In any case, we still know very little about the physical processes that occur within thunderstorms and the energies involved, so it's not surprising that something like this should turn up.
They suspected for quite some time that the electrical discharges in thunderstorms were powerful enough to produce bursts of antimatter. They've detected gamma ray burst from thunderstorms, from space, since about 1998, but haven't been able to pin down the actual mechanisms until now.