Antimatter comet
Encyclopedia
Antimatter comets are hypothetical comet
s (meteorite
s) composed solely of antimatter
instead of ordinary matter
. Although never actually observed, and now believed (from experimental data) to be unlikely to exist anywhere within the Milky Way
, they have been hypothesized to exist, and their existence (on the presumption that that hypothesis is correct) has been put forward as one (of usually several) possible explanations for different observed natural phenomena over the years.
proposed, in his paper The Hypothesis of the Existence of Contraterrene Matter the possibility that some comets and meteorites could be made from "contraterrene" matter (i.e. antimatter). Such objects, Rojanski stated, would (if they existed at all) have their origins outside the solar system. He hypothesized that if there were an antimatter object in orbit in the solar system, it would exhibit the behavior of comets observed in the 1940s: As its atoms annihilated with "terrene" matter from other bodies and solar wind
, it would generate volatile compounds and undergo a change of composition to elements with lower atomic mass
es. From this basis he propounded the hypothesis that some objects that had been identified as comets may, in fact, be contraterrene objects, suggesting, based upon calculations using the Stefan-Boltzmann law, that it would be possible to determine the existence of such objects within the solar system by observing their temperatures. A contraterrene body subjected to normal levels of meteoric bombardment (per 1940s figures), and absorbing half of the energy created by the annihilation of terrene and contraterrene matter, would have a temperature of 120 kelvin (-153.2 °C) for bombardment figures calculated by Wylie or 1200 kelvins (926.9 °C) for calculations by Nininger. In the 1970s, when comet Kohoutek
was observed, Rojanski again suggested hypothesis of anti-matter comets in a letter in Physical Review Letters
, and suggested that gamma-ray observations be made of the comet to test this hypothesis.
Rojansky's original 1940 hypothesis was that perhaps the only bodies within the solar system that could be contraterrene were comets and meteorites, all others being almost certainly terrene. Experimental evidence gathered since then has not only borne out this restriction but has made the existence of actual antimatter comets and meteorites themselves seem ever more unlikely. Gary Steigman, assistant professor of Astronomy at Yale University
observed in 1976 that space probes had proven — by the fact that they were not annihilated upon impact — that bodies such as Mars, Venus, and the Moon were not contraterrene. He also noted that had any of the planets or similar bodies been contraterrene, their interaction with the terrene solar wind
and the sheer strength of the gamma ray emissions that would have resulted would have made them readily noticeable long since. He noted that not even contraterrene cosmic rays had been found, with all of the nuclei found in studies having been uniformly terrene, the experimental data in several studies made from 1961 onwards by various people excluding the presence of a fractional antimatter composition of cosmic rays any larger than 10−4 of the total. Further, the uniformly terrene nature of the cosmic ray flux indicates that nowhere in the Milky Way are there any sources of heavier contraterrene elements (such as carbon), since (although it is not proven) it is a likely assumption that they represent the overall composition of the entire galaxy. They are representative of the galaxy as a whole — goes the logic — and since they do contain terrene carbon and other atoms, but have not been observed to contain any contraterrene atoms, therefore there is no reasonable source for extrasolar contraterrene comets, meteorites, or any other large scale heavy element objects to originate from, within this galaxy.
In discussing the Papaelias formula about the "Velocity-height relation of antimatter meteors" Martin Beech from the University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario, Canada) referred to the various hypotheses and experimental results that support non existence of antimatter in the Universe. He argues that any contraterrene comets and meteors that exist must be (at least) extrasolar in origin because the nebular hypothesis for the formation of the solar system precludes their being solar. Any antimatter in a pre-formation nebula or planetary accretion disc has a comparatively short lifetime, astronomically speaking, before annihilation with the terrene matter that it is mixed with. This lifetime is measured in the hundreds of years, and so any solar antimatter present at the time that the system was formed will have long since been annihilated. Any antimatter comets and meteors must therefore come from another, contraterrene, solar system, and be extrasolar. Furthermore, not only must contraterrene meteors be extrasolar in origin, they must have been recently (i.e. within the past 104 ~ 105 years) captured by the solar system. Most meteoroids are broken down to sizes of 10−5g within that timeframe, because of meteoroid-upon-meteoroid collisions. Thus any contraterrene meteor must be either extrasolar in origin itself, or broken off from a contraterrene comet that is extrasolar in origin. The former are unlikely to exist from observational evidence. Any extrasolar meteoroid would have a hyperbolic orbit, but less than 1% of the observed meteoroids have such, and the process of perturbation of ordinary (terrene) solar objects, by planetary encounters, into hyperbolic trajectories accounts for all of those. Beech concluded that a continued null result, however, does not constitute a proof ('Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence', M. Rees) and a single positive detection negates the arguments presented.
The Physics that governs an antimatter meteor fall is published by Philip M. Papaelias (assistant professor at the National University of Athens, Greece) who derived a set of formulae that explains how its cosmic velocity and original mass are decreasing and for how long its remaining mass may survive.This framework of Physics helped Ken Bullough from Sheffield (UK), to realize that a few of comets he was studying were in fact made of antimatter, since they were showing uncommon characteristics to distinguish them from the greater part of the comets. This study was radar observations at 73MHz made in June 1953 at Jodrell Bank as part of the meteor/radio-aurora observational programme. Publication of these data was suppressed because, at that time, no interpretation was possible within the then existing framework of physics and, in addition, the radar echoes were not detected on nominally similar equipment operating at 72MHz. Decades later, when he was aware about the physics of antimatter meteors and comets, he returned at the Jodrell Bank Observatory (Manchester) to search for the list of those comets and forty two years after the first observations he published the results. The short period (6.37 year) comet 7P/Pons–Winnecke and the 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann
are included amongst dozens of this catalog of antimatter comets. In this new study, Bullough also analyzed extensively the Tunguska event and concluded that the explosion was generated by the annihilation of an antimatter meteor in the atmosphere.
and research associate at the Institute of Meteoretics in the University of New Mexico
, put forward the hypothesis that antimatter comets or meteorites were responsible for tektite
s . However, this explanation, out of the many proposed explanations for tektites, is considered to be one of the more improbable.
, suggested that the Tunguska event
may have been a meteorite made of antimatter . Willard Libby
and Clyde Cowan
took Wyatt's idea further , having studied worldwide levels of carbon-14 in tree rings and noticing unusually high levels for the year 1909. However, even in 1958 the theoretical flaws in the hypothesis were observed, aside from the evidence that was coming in at the same time from the first gamma ray measurement satellites. For one, the hypothesis did not explain how a contraterrene meteor could have managed to survive that low into the Earth's atmosphere, without being annihilated as soon as it encountered terrene matter at the upper levels.
, as a possible cause for ball lightning
. They monitored the sky with gamma-ray detection apparatus, and reported unusually high numbers at 511 keV (kilo-electron volts) which is the characteristic gamma ray frequency of a collision between an electron
and a positron
. There were natural explanations for such readings. In particular positrons can be produced indirectly by the action of a thunderstorm, as it creates the unstable isotopes nitrogen-13 and oxygen-15. However, Ashby and Whitehead noted that there were no thunderstorms present at the times that the gamma-ray readings were observed. They instead presented the hypothesis of antimatter meteorites as an interesting one that did explain all of what their observations had recorded, and suggested that it merited further investigation.
Ashby and Whitehead's hypothesis, which Dr. Neil Charman (lecturer at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) in his 1972 roundup of the several hypothetical explanations of ball lightning characterized as one of the more bizarre explanations, was based upon the (unproven) supposition that there was a potential barrier between contraterrene and terrene matter. This barrier allowed micrometeorites and meteorid fragments that entered the Earth's atmosphere from space to survive for comparatively lengthy periods, because the terrene atmospheric molecules would not always possess enough energy to overcome the barrier and annihilate the antimatter fragments. Contraterrene atoms in micrometeorites would instead become negatively charged
antimatter ions, as a result of positrons being stripped from them by the photoelectric effect
(and also as a result of secondary effects from annihilation of matter around them). These negatively charged antimatter ions would be electrically attracted to the ground in stormy weather, and, gaining enough kinetic energy
to finally overcome the (supposed) repulsive barrier would finally annihilate with terrene matter to form what is observed as ball lightning.
In a series of papers, Philip M. Papaelias described how an antimatter meteor can produce the ball lightning phenomena. Papaelias also suggested that an antimatter meteor is continually heated by the annihilation products that pass through it. Depending on the dimensions of it, they depose part or all of their energy, increasing in that way its temperature. As a result, the residual mass of the antimatter meteor would reach its melting point and liquid drops would start to escape from the parental object. He calculated processes for 10, 100 or 1000 individual drops, each one glowing separately. Twenty two years later, a ball lightning of about 10-15 m in diameter apeared over Alexanderplatz, a central location of Berlin, Germany. This bright object, which was hovering for about 10 minutes at a height which was estimated between 400 and 250 m slowly evolved into a luminous sphere of about 1 m in diameter. It was emitting intense light, maybe equivalent to 10-25 kW of sodium street lighting lamps and the penomenon was observed shortly before a thunderstorm on July 29th, 2006 at 3:10 AM by Wilfried Heil and Noemi Zudor. According to the observers, the phenomenon was captured by two web cameras and is showing the ball lightning slowly changing shape and color. The luminus object was gradually divided into 100 independently glowing smaller objects that were seen as escaping from the central one.
were in the 1990s hypothesized as one possible explanation for gamma ray burst
s. These bursts can be explained by the annihilation
of matter and antimatter microcomets. The explosion would create powerful gamma ray bursts and accelerate matter to near light speeds. These antimatter microcomets are thought to reside at distances of more than 1000 AU. Calculations have shown that comets of around 1 km in radius would shrink by 100 cm if they passed the sun with a perihelion of 1 AU. Microcomets, due to the stresses of solar heating, shatter and burn up much more quickly because the forces are more concentrated within their small masses. Antimatter microcomets would burn up even more rapidly because the annihilation of solar wind with the surface of the microcomet would produce additional heat. As more gamma-ray bursts were detected in subsequent years, this theory failed to explain the observed distribution of gamma-ray bursts about host galaxies and detections of x-ray
lines associated with gamma-ray bursts. The discovery of a supernova
associated with a gamma-ray burst in 2002 provided compelling evidence that massive star
s are the origin of gamma-ray bursts. Since 2002, more supernovae have been observed to be associated with gamma-ray bursts, and massive stars as the origin of gamma-ray bursts has been firmly established.
photons cm−2 sec−1. This formula predicts a gamma ray flux for the planet Jupiter that is some six orders of magnitude larger than it is actually observed to be. That is, furthermore, without taking into account the fact that other solar system material in addition to the solar wind infalls to Jupiter.
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...
s (meteorite
Meteorite
A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives impact with the Earth's surface. Meteorites can be big or small. Most meteorites derive from small astronomical objects called meteoroids, but they are also sometimes produced by impacts of asteroids...
s) composed solely of antimatter
Antimatter
In particle physics, antimatter is the extension of the concept of the antiparticle to matter, where antimatter is composed of antiparticles in the same way that normal matter is composed of particles...
instead of ordinary matter
Matter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
. Although never actually observed, and now believed (from experimental data) to be unlikely to exist anywhere within the Milky Way
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System. This name derives from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky...
, they have been hypothesized to exist, and their existence (on the presumption that that hypothesis is correct) has been put forward as one (of usually several) possible explanations for different observed natural phenomena over the years.
Hypothesized existence
The hypothesis of comets made of anti-matter can be traced back to the 1940s, when physicist Vladimir RojanskyVladimir Rojansky
Vladimir Borisovich Rojansky was an American physicist, author and educator. He was born in Bologoye, a small town outside St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a railroad construction engineer and one of his grandfathers was a general.At the outbreak of the Russian Civil War he enlisted in...
proposed, in his paper The Hypothesis of the Existence of Contraterrene Matter the possibility that some comets and meteorites could be made from "contraterrene" matter (i.e. antimatter). Such objects, Rojanski stated, would (if they existed at all) have their origins outside the solar system. He hypothesized that if there were an antimatter object in orbit in the solar system, it would exhibit the behavior of comets observed in the 1940s: As its atoms annihilated with "terrene" matter from other bodies and solar wind
Solar wind
The solar wind is a stream of charged particles ejected from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. It mostly consists of electrons and protons with energies usually between 1.5 and 10 keV. The stream of particles varies in temperature and speed over time...
, it would generate volatile compounds and undergo a change of composition to elements with lower atomic mass
Atomic mass
The atomic mass is the mass of a specific isotope, most often expressed in unified atomic mass units. The atomic mass is the total mass of protons, neutrons and electrons in a single atom....
es. From this basis he propounded the hypothesis that some objects that had been identified as comets may, in fact, be contraterrene objects, suggesting, based upon calculations using the Stefan-Boltzmann law, that it would be possible to determine the existence of such objects within the solar system by observing their temperatures. A contraterrene body subjected to normal levels of meteoric bombardment (per 1940s figures), and absorbing half of the energy created by the annihilation of terrene and contraterrene matter, would have a temperature of 120 kelvin (-153.2 °C) for bombardment figures calculated by Wylie or 1200 kelvins (926.9 °C) for calculations by Nininger. In the 1970s, when comet Kohoutek
Comet Kohoutek
Comet Kohoutek, formally designated C/1973 E1, 1973 XII, and 1973f, was first sighted on 7 March 1973 by Czech astronomer Luboš Kohoutek. It attained perihelion on 28 December that same year....
was observed, Rojanski again suggested hypothesis of anti-matter comets in a letter in Physical Review Letters
Physical Review Letters
Physical Review Letters , established in 1958, is a peer reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society...
, and suggested that gamma-ray observations be made of the comet to test this hypothesis.
Rojansky's original 1940 hypothesis was that perhaps the only bodies within the solar system that could be contraterrene were comets and meteorites, all others being almost certainly terrene. Experimental evidence gathered since then has not only borne out this restriction but has made the existence of actual antimatter comets and meteorites themselves seem ever more unlikely. Gary Steigman, assistant professor of Astronomy at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
observed in 1976 that space probes had proven — by the fact that they were not annihilated upon impact — that bodies such as Mars, Venus, and the Moon were not contraterrene. He also noted that had any of the planets or similar bodies been contraterrene, their interaction with the terrene solar wind
Solar wind
The solar wind is a stream of charged particles ejected from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. It mostly consists of electrons and protons with energies usually between 1.5 and 10 keV. The stream of particles varies in temperature and speed over time...
and the sheer strength of the gamma ray emissions that would have resulted would have made them readily noticeable long since. He noted that not even contraterrene cosmic rays had been found, with all of the nuclei found in studies having been uniformly terrene, the experimental data in several studies made from 1961 onwards by various people excluding the presence of a fractional antimatter composition of cosmic rays any larger than 10−4 of the total. Further, the uniformly terrene nature of the cosmic ray flux indicates that nowhere in the Milky Way are there any sources of heavier contraterrene elements (such as carbon), since (although it is not proven) it is a likely assumption that they represent the overall composition of the entire galaxy. They are representative of the galaxy as a whole — goes the logic — and since they do contain terrene carbon and other atoms, but have not been observed to contain any contraterrene atoms, therefore there is no reasonable source for extrasolar contraterrene comets, meteorites, or any other large scale heavy element objects to originate from, within this galaxy.
In discussing the Papaelias formula about the "Velocity-height relation of antimatter meteors" Martin Beech from the University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario, Canada) referred to the various hypotheses and experimental results that support non existence of antimatter in the Universe. He argues that any contraterrene comets and meteors that exist must be (at least) extrasolar in origin because the nebular hypothesis for the formation of the solar system precludes their being solar. Any antimatter in a pre-formation nebula or planetary accretion disc has a comparatively short lifetime, astronomically speaking, before annihilation with the terrene matter that it is mixed with. This lifetime is measured in the hundreds of years, and so any solar antimatter present at the time that the system was formed will have long since been annihilated. Any antimatter comets and meteors must therefore come from another, contraterrene, solar system, and be extrasolar. Furthermore, not only must contraterrene meteors be extrasolar in origin, they must have been recently (i.e. within the past 104 ~ 105 years) captured by the solar system. Most meteoroids are broken down to sizes of 10−5g within that timeframe, because of meteoroid-upon-meteoroid collisions. Thus any contraterrene meteor must be either extrasolar in origin itself, or broken off from a contraterrene comet that is extrasolar in origin. The former are unlikely to exist from observational evidence. Any extrasolar meteoroid would have a hyperbolic orbit, but less than 1% of the observed meteoroids have such, and the process of perturbation of ordinary (terrene) solar objects, by planetary encounters, into hyperbolic trajectories accounts for all of those. Beech concluded that a continued null result, however, does not constitute a proof ('Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence', M. Rees) and a single positive detection negates the arguments presented.
The Physics that governs an antimatter meteor fall is published by Philip M. Papaelias (assistant professor at the National University of Athens, Greece) who derived a set of formulae that explains how its cosmic velocity and original mass are decreasing and for how long its remaining mass may survive.This framework of Physics helped Ken Bullough from Sheffield (UK), to realize that a few of comets he was studying were in fact made of antimatter, since they were showing uncommon characteristics to distinguish them from the greater part of the comets. This study was radar observations at 73MHz made in June 1953 at Jodrell Bank as part of the meteor/radio-aurora observational programme. Publication of these data was suppressed because, at that time, no interpretation was possible within the then existing framework of physics and, in addition, the radar echoes were not detected on nominally similar equipment operating at 72MHz. Decades later, when he was aware about the physics of antimatter meteors and comets, he returned at the Jodrell Bank Observatory (Manchester) to search for the list of those comets and forty two years after the first observations he published the results. The short period (6.37 year) comet 7P/Pons–Winnecke and the 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann
29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann
Comet 29P/Schwassmann–Wachmann, also known as Schwassmann–Wachmann 1, was discovered on November 15, 1927, by Arnold Schwassmann and Arno Arthur Wachmann at the Hamburg Observatory in Bergedorf, Germany. It was discovered photographically, when the comet was in outburst and the magnitude was about 13...
are included amongst dozens of this catalog of antimatter comets. In this new study, Bullough also analyzed extensively the Tunguska event and concluded that the explosion was generated by the annihilation of an antimatter meteor in the atmosphere.
Tektites
In 1947, Mohammad Abdur Rahman Khan, professor at Osmania UniversityOsmania University
Osmania University , , since 1918, is a public university located in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India. It was established and named after the last Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan. It is one of the oldest modern universities in India. It is the first Indian University to have Urdu and...
and research associate at the Institute of Meteoretics in the University of New Mexico
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico at Albuquerque is a public research university located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States. It is the state's flagship research institution...
, put forward the hypothesis that antimatter comets or meteorites were responsible for tektite
Tektite
Tektites are natural glass rocks up to a few centimeters in size, which most scientists argue were formed by the impact of large meteorites on Earth's surface. Tektites are typically black or olive-green, and their shape varies from rounded to irregular.Tektites are among the "driest" rocks, with...
s . However, this explanation, out of the many proposed explanations for tektites, is considered to be one of the more improbable.
Tunguska event of 1908
By the 1950s, speculating about contraterrene comets and meteorites was a commonplace exercise for astrophysicists. One such, Philip J. Wyatt of Florida State UniversityFlorida State University
The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
, suggested that the Tunguska event
Tunguska event
The Tunguska event, or Tunguska blast or Tunguska explosion, was an enormously powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at about 7:14 a.m...
may have been a meteorite made of antimatter . Willard Libby
Willard Libby
Willard Frank Libby was an American physical chemist noted for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology....
and Clyde Cowan
Clyde Cowan
Clyde Lorrain Cowan Jr was the co-discoverer of the neutrino, along with Frederick Reines. The discovery was made in 1956, detected in the neutrino experiment....
took Wyatt's idea further , having studied worldwide levels of carbon-14 in tree rings and noticing unusually high levels for the year 1909. However, even in 1958 the theoretical flaws in the hypothesis were observed, aside from the evidence that was coming in at the same time from the first gamma ray measurement satellites. For one, the hypothesis did not explain how a contraterrene meteor could have managed to survive that low into the Earth's atmosphere, without being annihilated as soon as it encountered terrene matter at the upper levels.
Ball lightning
In 1971, fragments of antimatter comets or meteorites were hypothesized, by David E. T. F. Ashby of Culham Laboratory and Colin Whitehead of the U.K. Atomic Energy Research EstablishmentAtomic Energy Research Establishment
The Atomic Energy Research Establishment near Harwell, Oxfordshire, was the main centre for atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from the 1940s to the 1990s.-Founding:...
, as a possible cause for ball lightning
Ball lightning
Ball lightning is an unexplained atmospheric electrical phenomenon. The term refers to reports of luminous, usually spherical objects which vary from pea-sized to several metres in diameter. It is usually associated with thunderstorms, but lasts considerably longer than the split-second flash of a...
. They monitored the sky with gamma-ray detection apparatus, and reported unusually high numbers at 511 keV (kilo-electron volts) which is the characteristic gamma ray frequency of a collision between an electron
Electron
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...
and a positron
Positron
The positron or antielectron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. The positron has an electric charge of +1e, a spin of ½, and has the same mass as an electron...
. There were natural explanations for such readings. In particular positrons can be produced indirectly by the action of a thunderstorm, as it creates the unstable isotopes nitrogen-13 and oxygen-15. However, Ashby and Whitehead noted that there were no thunderstorms present at the times that the gamma-ray readings were observed. They instead presented the hypothesis of antimatter meteorites as an interesting one that did explain all of what their observations had recorded, and suggested that it merited further investigation.
Ashby and Whitehead's hypothesis, which Dr. Neil Charman (lecturer at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) in his 1972 roundup of the several hypothetical explanations of ball lightning characterized as one of the more bizarre explanations, was based upon the (unproven) supposition that there was a potential barrier between contraterrene and terrene matter. This barrier allowed micrometeorites and meteorid fragments that entered the Earth's atmosphere from space to survive for comparatively lengthy periods, because the terrene atmospheric molecules would not always possess enough energy to overcome the barrier and annihilate the antimatter fragments. Contraterrene atoms in micrometeorites would instead become negatively charged
Electric charge
Electric charge is a physical property of matter that causes it to experience a force when near other electrically charged matter. Electric charge comes in two types, called positive and negative. Two positively charged substances, or objects, experience a mutual repulsive force, as do two...
antimatter ions, as a result of positrons being stripped from them by the photoelectric effect
Photoelectric effect
In the photoelectric effect, electrons are emitted from matter as a consequence of their absorption of energy from electromagnetic radiation of very short wavelength, such as visible or ultraviolet light. Electrons emitted in this manner may be referred to as photoelectrons...
(and also as a result of secondary effects from annihilation of matter around them). These negatively charged antimatter ions would be electrically attracted to the ground in stormy weather, and, gaining enough kinetic energy
Kinetic energy
The kinetic energy of an object is the energy which it possesses due to its motion.It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its acceleration, the body maintains this kinetic energy unless its speed changes...
to finally overcome the (supposed) repulsive barrier would finally annihilate with terrene matter to form what is observed as ball lightning.
In a series of papers, Philip M. Papaelias described how an antimatter meteor can produce the ball lightning phenomena. Papaelias also suggested that an antimatter meteor is continually heated by the annihilation products that pass through it. Depending on the dimensions of it, they depose part or all of their energy, increasing in that way its temperature. As a result, the residual mass of the antimatter meteor would reach its melting point and liquid drops would start to escape from the parental object. He calculated processes for 10, 100 or 1000 individual drops, each one glowing separately. Twenty two years later, a ball lightning of about 10-15 m in diameter apeared over Alexanderplatz, a central location of Berlin, Germany. This bright object, which was hovering for about 10 minutes at a height which was estimated between 400 and 250 m slowly evolved into a luminous sphere of about 1 m in diameter. It was emitting intense light, maybe equivalent to 10-25 kW of sodium street lighting lamps and the penomenon was observed shortly before a thunderstorm on July 29th, 2006 at 3:10 AM by Wilfried Heil and Noemi Zudor. According to the observers, the phenomenon was captured by two web cameras and is showing the ball lightning slowly changing shape and color. The luminus object was gradually divided into 100 independently glowing smaller objects that were seen as escaping from the central one.
Gamma-ray bursts
Antimatter comets thought to exist in the Oort cloudOort cloud
The Oort cloud , or the Öpik–Oort cloud , is a hypothesized spherical cloud of comets which may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun. This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun...
were in the 1990s hypothesized as one possible explanation for gamma ray burst
Gamma ray burst
Gamma-ray bursts are flashes of gamma rays associated with extremely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the most luminous electromagnetic events known to occur in the universe. Bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several minutes, although a typical...
s. These bursts can be explained by the annihilation
Annihilation
Annihilation is defined as "total destruction" or "complete obliteration" of an object; having its root in the Latin nihil . A literal translation is "to make into nothing"....
of matter and antimatter microcomets. The explosion would create powerful gamma ray bursts and accelerate matter to near light speeds. These antimatter microcomets are thought to reside at distances of more than 1000 AU. Calculations have shown that comets of around 1 km in radius would shrink by 100 cm if they passed the sun with a perihelion of 1 AU. Microcomets, due to the stresses of solar heating, shatter and burn up much more quickly because the forces are more concentrated within their small masses. Antimatter microcomets would burn up even more rapidly because the annihilation of solar wind with the surface of the microcomet would produce additional heat. As more gamma-ray bursts were detected in subsequent years, this theory failed to explain the observed distribution of gamma-ray bursts about host galaxies and detections of x-ray
X-ray
X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
lines associated with gamma-ray bursts. The discovery of a supernova
Supernova
A supernova is a stellar explosion that is more energetic than a nova. It is pronounced with the plural supernovae or supernovas. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months...
associated with a gamma-ray burst in 2002 provided compelling evidence that massive star
Star
A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...
s are the origin of gamma-ray bursts. Since 2002, more supernovae have been observed to be associated with gamma-ray bursts, and massive stars as the origin of gamma-ray bursts has been firmly established.
Footnotes
The formula for the predicted gamma ray flux, resulting from annihilation of solar wind particles (taken to be roughly 2×108 cm−2 sec−1), from a contraterrene planet or other solar system body of radius r at distance d is photons cm−2 sec−1. This formula predicts a gamma ray flux for the planet Jupiter that is some six orders of magnitude larger than it is actually observed to be. That is, furthermore, without taking into account the fact that other solar system material in addition to the solar wind infalls to Jupiter.Other
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- English translation: