Deep Impact Probe.

reply to post by anhinga


I think Soylent Green hit it dead on. There is little evidence that I can find for anti-matter anywhere except in the math that it must exist. While there seems to be a lot of talk, so far I haven't found any "in the wild", so to speak.

How about it folks? Does anti-matter ever show up in the space that we occupy?

reply to post by NGC2736


I got this Space.com article -- tying antimatter into solar flares, and I'm still not convinced what else antimatter could exist in:

A solar flare in July 2002 created about a pound of antimatter, or half a kilo, according to new NASA-led research. That's enough to power the United States for two days.

Laboratory particle accelerators can produce high-energy antimatter particles, too, but only in tiny quantities. Something on the order of a billionth of a gram or less is produced every year.

Meanwhile, antimatter has proved vitally useful for medical purposes. The fleeting particles of antimatter are also created by the decay of radioactive material, which can be injected into a patient in order to perform Positron Emission Tomography, or PET scan of the brain.

Though scientists like to see antimatter as a natural thing, much about it remains highly mysterious.

Theory argues that antimatter would behave identical to regular matter gravitationally.

"However, there must be some boundary where antimatter atoms from the antimatter galaxies or stars will come into contact with normal atoms," Share notes. "When that happens a large amount of energy in the form of gamma rays would be produced. To date we have not detected these gamma rays even though there have been very sensitive instruments in space to observe them."

www.space.com...

reply to post by anhinga


I love how people here can find things. I didn't turn up any "wild" anti-matter, but it seems you found it in connection with solar flares.

Another good job.

Originally posted by anhinga
Like I sorta laced my post with speculation, plus (blindly?) believing that site I posted as well as a couple of other look-sees, I, as well, don't tie antimatter into comet composition -- I'll have to turn to our newly-appointed expert on the matter since there's contradicting info afloat... and thanks NGC2736 for digging my post!

[edit on 13-11-2007 by anhinga]

No worries

This is all cool stuff. Almost everything scientist know is just a "Theory" anyway -- which is simply an 'educated guess' that happens to be backed up by scientific observations and experimentation.

Free thinking and brainstorming should be encouraged!

Thanks NGC2736, Soylent Green.... I absolutely loooove this topic and the potential crossover w/ antimatter is really interesting... and aside from that, the DI probe seems to be a technologically sound instrument, I'm looking forward to more science to come from this! Rarely am I praising NASA, but I like this mission...