While researching lightning, I came across the idea that antimatter is produced when lightning strikes. Antimatter is matter made up of antiparticles, and antiparticles seem to have the opposite properties of particles. The antiparticle of a negatively charged electron is a particle called an antielectron (positron), which has a positive charge. I’d always thought of antimatter and antiparticles as something from the world of science fiction, but it turns out they have actually been observed in large quantities in reality.
When the high voltage of lightning accelerates electrons, it seems that gamma rays, which are high-energy electromagnetic waves, are generated, and are called terrestrial gamma ray flashes. These gamma rays cause elementary particles to be kicked out like billiards, and ultimately positrons are generated. The positrons that are generated collide with electrons in the atmosphere and annihilate each other. When I heard about annihilation, I thought that they would become completely nothing, but they actually become photons with energy equal to the sum of the energies of each particle.
https://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/ja/research-news/2017-11-24
There are many mysteries surrounding this annihilation. It is believed that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the early universe, but the fact that only matter remains in the present universe is an unsolved mystery. I wonder where the antimatter went. If annihilation results in photons, photons do not seem to have a lifespan, so perhaps the world is full of light.
https://www.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/news/8389
Although antimatter annihilates itself, it seems to continue to be produced, and surviving antimatter exists around the Earth, such as in geospace. In the Van Allen belt, a doughnut-shaped ring of charged particles, there is an area called the South Atlantic Anomaly, where the geomagnetic field is abnormally weak, and multiple antiprotons have been found there. The density of antiprotons is said to be more than 1,000 times the predicted average for the universe. It can also be said that the Earth is surrounded by a thin antimatter belt. Does this also function as some kind of barrier?
https://natgeo.nikkeibp.co.jp/nng/article/news/14/4711
Antimatter seems to be a very mysterious substance, but if it occurs in the everyday meteorological phenomenon of lightning, it may be a phenomenon that is surprisingly familiar to us. Antimatter seems to fall under the influence of gravity just like normal matter.
https://www.natureasia.com/ja-jp/nature/pr-highlights/14664
The quantum world is full of mysteries, but I think there must be some significance in the existence of the principle of duality between matter and antimatter. There are many mysteries surrounding basic principles such as positive and negative electric charges, north and south magnetic poles, attraction and repulsion, up and down quantum spin, and right-handed and left-handed chiral molecules. Perhaps matter exists because of antimatter. Antimatter is amazing. It’s amazing that antimatter is an everyday occurrence on Earth.
