Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Hidden Realm of Thunderstorms

According to an article from the BBC, scientists and researchers working with the Fermi telescope have discovered (accidentally, I might add) that thunderstorms actually produce positrons (antimatter).

The best part of the linked article is a quote from Steven Cummer of Duke University:
"It has some very important implications for our understanding of lightning itself. We don't really understand a lot of the detail about how lightning works. It's a little bit premature to say what the implications of this are going to be going forward, but I'm very confident this is an important piece of the puzzle."
 The question I have is, how many pieces of the puzzle are there? You might want to check the box to be sure. ;)