This NASA illustration is a still from an animation depicting how thunderstorms on Earth can create beams of antimatter particles and hurl them into space.
CREDIT: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

SEATTLE – Powerful thunderstorms on Earth can fling beams of antimatter into space, a new study finds.

Scientists picked up on the never-before-seen phenomenon by peering at thunderstorms with NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The antimatter particles were likely created by what scientists call a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF), a brief burst of gamma rays produced inside thunderstorms and known to be associated with lightning, researchers said.

"These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams," study lead author Michael Briggs, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said in a statement. Briggs presented his team's results here today (Jan. 10) at the 217th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.