| Submit your comments on this article |
| Science & Technology |
| Origin of antimatter discovered |
| 2008-01-10 |
| Ok, maybe. Now where do those dilithium crystals fit in? (ANSA) - Rome, January 10 - The puzzle of where the mysterious antimatter at the heart of our galaxy comes from has finally been solved, according to a top Italian space expert. Giovanni Fabrizio Bignami, head of the Italian Space Agency, collaborated with the international group of scientists which has just published a paper outlining the answer. He said the cloud of antimatter at the centre of the Milky Way, which scientists have known about for 30 years, appears to derive from 'binary' star systems distributed in the same area. Binary star systems are ones in which a normal star is gradually being sucked towards a black hole or a neutron star. Neutron stars are stars that have collapsed under their own gravity and become incredibly dense. ''We have taken a big step forwards in understanding the antimatter at the centre of our galaxy,'' he said, noting that the findings were the result of four years of data supplied by the European Space Agency's satellite Integral. ''We used to think that the source of the anti-matter was a single point, like a black hole,'' Bignami said. The Integral satellite showed that positrons - one of the key components of antimatter - are spread out over a wide area around the centre and that there are more on one side than the other. ''This seemed very strange and it gave us a big clue, putting us on the trail of the possible source of antimatter''. The group then noticed that the distribution of binary systems in the galaxy matched the distribution of positrons almost perfectly. The researchers immediately made the connection and concluded that at least half of the antimatter comes from these binaries. The findings of the international team, led by Georg Weidenspointer of the Max Planck Institute, were published this week in Nature. The principle they deduced may well be valid elsewhere in the universe but for now there are no instruments powerful enough to let scientists observe other galaxies in enough detail to tell. Antimatter is made up of three sorts of subatomic particles: positrons, antiprotons and antineutrons. Their equivalents in normal matter are the negatively charged electrons, positively charged protons and neutral neutrons. When two like particles of matter and antimatter meet they 'annihilate', disappearing in an explosion. The existence of antimatter was deduced by British physicist Paul Dirac in the 1920s. Later scientists managed to create it in laboratories. Then astronomers found a mysterious cloud of it at the centre of the Milky Way. Because Dirac's theory is that matter and antimatter are produced in equal amounts from energy, a question that intrigues many is whether other places exist in the universe which are almost entirely antimatter. |
| Posted by:mrp |
| #21 I hope you can read it, my keyboard is acting up again. Darn. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2008-01-10 23:47 |
| #20 Mike, Neutron nd antineutron are neutrally charged components, they differ in tat the firt is made rom quarks, the second from antiquarks. No charge, no bang. What anihilates are electrons/positrons and protons/antiprotons, with some built in assymetry in favor of the former of these two pairs (no one knows why). Neutrons and antineutrons remain, but get a good kick out of it. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2008-01-10 23:46 |
| #19 I have a question about annihilation for anyone who understands this better than I do. Which is for shit. If a neutron is neutrally charged, what how could the antineutron annihilate it? What the hell could be the opposite neutral? |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2008-01-10 23:21 |
| #18 You're serving Toblerone, mom? I'm coming over to your house! Spiny GI, it sounds like your coffee is being poured. Would you like cream and sugar? *happy sigh* I do love watching those who know more than I about something discuss it! It doesn't matter what, actually -- there's so much y'all know that I don't. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-01-10 23:01 |
| #17 James, yes, spikes at 511 KeV have been recorded. But that still does not indicate antimatter cloud, just some matter/antimater anihilation, a secondary effect of high energy discharge. There have been even much larger values recoded in other areas. What does that mean? A possible fury of darkwing duck? I am serious. I see sciencedaily.com, but mayhaps if it was called mythologydaily.com, it would be a more close to reality. extremely intense magnetic fields projected to exist What does that tell you? Just pretend that you don't know any "current" astrophysics and use common sense. Yep, a "current" is involved, but not that of the time. around neutron stars and black holes. Mythology. We can see jets of matter coming from ordinary stars, and jets coming from galaxies What does that tell you? Go to a plasma physics lab and see it in a scaled down version. As above, so below. Scale it up, scale it down, the same phenomenon. (current theory suggesting that a supermassive black hole resides there) Mythology again. and it seems like a good guess that neutron stars originate some other jets we see. No, it does not seem like, from here where I am. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2008-01-10 22:44 |
| #16 Spiny and TW, break out the toblerone and sit down for a klatsch with James on this topic; he's been hunting subatomic particles for a living for nearly 30 years. I'll make the coffee/tea/lemonade. |
| Posted by: mom (mrs. James) 2008-01-10 21:43 |
| #15 truthfully, I hate tea, but if you have some otherperformance enhancer...like coffee....ok...and BTW i dont need no stinkin experts to figure out when A is A. God Bless America just rock on. |
| Posted by: Spiny Gl 2511 2008-01-10 20:40 |
| #14 nonsense......there is motion in this cloudy space, and that means the antimatter component would by random occurrance pass through a matter bearing area. at some time and annilihation would occur. meaning there would be no cloud or remnants of the anti matter. This hypothesis is null of intellect. |
| Posted by: Spiny Gl 2511 2008-01-10 20:37 |
| #13 Spiny Gl 2511, on the scale of zero to the universe, your errors (and mine, fortunately!) don't look very big. ;-) Would you care for a cup of tea while we watch the Rantburg professors take this thing apart? I think Beethoven's Fifth is appropriate background music, unless you can think of something better. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-01-10 20:02 |
| #12 twobyfour, it really isn't that hard to conclude there is a "positron cloud." There are plenty of gamma rays around, true. But when you see a spike in the energy distribution at 512KeV, you can be pretty sure that there was some e+ e- annihilation going on. There being plenty of e- around already, the unique thing this tells you is that in the direction these excess 512KeV gammas come from, you can find some positrons. "What makes them?" is the interesting question. It isn't hard to think of some mechanisms: pair production from high energy gammas, for instance; or the end of a decay chain of a pi+. The gammas can arise quite naturally from pi0 decays, and pions of all varieties can be produced when a "cosmic ray" proton hits some bit of interstellar gas. (Most cosmic rays that reach the Earth's surface are muons resulting from primary cosmic rays interacting in the atmosphere.) So far so straightforward. We know these cosmic ray protons exist, the question is they how they are produced. One "simple" production method involves the extremely intense magnetic fields projected to exist around neutron stars and black holes. We can see jets of matter coming from ordinary stars, and jets coming from galaxies (current theory suggesting that a supermassive black hole resides there), and it seems like a good guess that neutron stars originate some other jets we see. If the magnetic fields are intense enough there should be a component of very high energy protons in a jet. This report merely means that these scientists think they've measured the cloud position to be closer to what they think are neutron-star plus ordinary star binaries than to the black hole estimated to be at the galactic core. That means multiple small sources rather than a single big source. |
| Posted by: James 2008-01-10 19:25 |
| #11 trailing wife, yes hypothesis would have been the correct characterization, and thank you so much for reminding me...... the error ive made and the errors to come, from this whole hypothesis, deserve to be weighed on a scale......please advise time and location. why do i love the burg so much....? because its fast moving, fluid, accurate, and well endowed with humility and comity. rock on |
| Posted by: Spiny Gl 2511 2008-01-10 18:35 |
| #10 has finally been solved appears to derive from And why I'm not going to get excited about a single publication. If another several groups of physicists and astronomers can substantiate that hypothesis, then I'll think about believing them. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-01-10 18:30 |
| #9 Spiny Gl 2511 dear, in science the Theory comes after the data either proves or disproves the hypothesis... which is why Einstein was so excited when the solar eclipse showed he was right about gravity bending light. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-01-10 18:24 |
| #8 2by4 says I think that the whole "antimatter cloud" is an usubstantiated speculation. " Copy that big brother......... this teams output, moves in leaps and generalizations. If the cloud exists and is antimatter related and its interacted with matter completing its annihilation, than the cloud does not really eixst..........does it now! So , the team is wrong, and should stumble along to some other well funded data output program, ensuring the community of myths a long and fruitful life. |
| Posted by: Spiny Gl 2511 2008-01-10 18:02 |
| #7 PIMF: Probably even less energy is requied under some circumstances. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2008-01-10 16:59 |
| #6 I think that the whole "antimatter cloud" is an usubstantiated speculation. Gamma rays are more easily produced by electrical discharges. You can get gamma rays even with your garden variety (ok, with some of these more energetic ones) lightning bolts at the point of their discharge origin. Beside gmma rays, there is really nothing else in that location that would indicate antimatter. And you know what? With mere 1 keV you can even trasmutate lighter elements--you don't need a star's nukular furnace to do that. Probably even less energy is requied nder om circumstances. Did read a paper recently that seemed to imply that plants can manufacture trace elements needed for their well-being even if these are not supplied from the environment--e.g. the experimentators made sure these trace elements were utterly missing, yet they were later found to be present in their test plants. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2008-01-10 16:58 |
| #5 Binary star systems are ones in which a normal star is gradually being sucked towards a black hole or a neutron star. There are plenty of binary systems of stars without either a black hole or neutron star involved. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-01-10 16:40 |
| #4 Thanks, lotp ... I think :) |
| Posted by: mrp 2008-01-10 16:30 |
| #3 There's a bit more detail here. |
| Posted by: lotp 2008-01-10 16:18 |
| #2 This raises more questions than it answers: How are the positrons being produced, and are any other forms of antimatter being produced? (Keep in mind it takes a lot less energy to make a positron than it does to make an antiproton). |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2008-01-10 15:40 |
| #1 Antimatter is made up of three sorts of subatomic particles: positrons, antiprotons and antineutrons. Their equivalents in normal matter are the negatively charged electrons, positively charged protons and neutral neutrons. When two like particles of matter and antimatter meet they 'annihilate', disappearing in an explosion. if so, than those pictures these guys have been aware of for 30 years are not what is being described here. These folks should spend more time explainging things they can actually get right, then rationalizing hypotheicals to prop up a theory. Oil for instance, is not a fossill fuel, its from meteor impacts, the pictures of shoemaker levy impacting jupiter prove it....so why the systemic obfuscation?.........me thinks science rather deal with unproveable hypotheicals that dont disturb the myths, and yet because of wide spread ignorance, they can appear like they are geniuses. |
| Posted by: Spiny Gl 2511 2008-01-10 15:31 |