NASA Discovers Thunderstorms Emitting Antimatter Into Space

The orbiting Fermi gamma-ray observatory belonging to NASA has discovered ‎thunderstorms that are emitting powerful bursts of antimatter into space.‎

Antimatter, are the mirror images of normal matter but with unusual properties — ‎protons have negative charges, and electrons exhibit positive charges. Antimatter was available in ‎equal abundance to normal matter during the formation of the universe, but got destroyed ‎on contact with the normal matter.
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Only very minute amounts have been produced using powerful particle accelerators so ‎far, but they remain captured for only tiny fractions of a second. Hence scientists are amazed ‎to see antimatter being produced by lightning. This is the first time it has been detected.‎

Fermi, is capable of detecting gamma rays, a kind of electromagnetic wave that includes ‎light rays. When a positron from a thunderstorm strikes an electron, gamma rays with a ‎characteristic energy of 511,000 electron-volts get released. Fermi has detected 130 such ‎events so far.‎