Anti-matter around earth ‘discovered’
Actress Shriya Saran walks the ramp displaying Swarovski jewellery in Mumbai on Sunday. PHOTO: PTI
Planetary scientists claim to have for the first time spotted a thin band of anti-matter particles, called anti-protons, enveloping the earth.
The find, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirms theoretical work that predicted the earth’s magnetic field could trap antimatter, according to a team led by the University of Bari. The astronomers say that a small number of anti-protons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped “normal” matter. The anti-protons were spotted by the Pamela satellite launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the sun and from beyond the solar system.
These cosmic ray particles can slam into molecules that make up the earth’s atmosphere, creating showers of particles. Many of the cosmic ray particles or “daughter” particles they create are caught in Van Allen belts, doughnut-shaped regions where earth’s magnetic field traps them. The analysis shows that when Pamela passes through a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, it sees thousands of times more anti-protons than are expected to come from normal particle decays, or from elsewhere in the cosmos. Astronomers say this is proof that bands of anti-protons, analogous to Van Allen belts, hold anti-protons in place — at least until they encounter the normal matter of atmosphere, when they “annihilate” in a flash of light. “Trapped anti-protons can be lost in the interactions with atmospheric constituents, especially at low altitudes where the annihilation becomes the main loss mechanism. Above altitudes of several hundred kilometre, the loss rate is significantly lower,” he said.
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