Anitmatter in Thunderbolts??
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From: eric gisse on 27 Nov 2009 01:21 FrediFizzx wrote: > "eric gisse" <jowr.pi.nospam(a)gmail.com> wrote in message > news:hemtqt$p5r$1(a)news.eternal-september.org... >> funkenstein wrote: >> >>> >> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49288/title/Signature_of_antimatter_detected_in_lightning >>> >>> anybody have any clue what's going on here? Thanks :) >> >> My money is on pair production via the intense electric field that is >> generated briefly at the strike point. > > What is the electric field strength of that case? Can it be high enough > for the Schwinger mechanism? If so, then this could be good evidence > that the Schwinger mechanism is correct. I don't really know. I know my astrophysics far, far better than particle physics and the quantum domain. What I have never seen answered adequately is how much energy you can put into the vacuum before it starts sparking through pair production. A simple guess would be eps_0 E^2 / 2 over a volume such that is above the 1.02MeV threshold energy for pair production, but I haven't the faintest idea how much 'space' is needed for that. I only throw pair production out there because a _lot_ of energy gets put into a relatively small area in a lightning strike and that just might be enough. From a search on the Schwinger mechanism I see that this is the process that should dictate this reaction. However all my institutional access is gone. OTOH this is a good reason to investigate the UW library... > > Best, > > Fred Diether > moderator sci.physics.foundations
From: Androcles on 27 Nov 2009 02:04 "Darwin123" <drosen0000(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message news:e13a0ca4-c84d-44f2-b9f3-2585b3cdc38d(a)k17g2000yqh.googlegroups.com... On Nov 26, 1:30 pm, funkenstein <luke.s...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49288/title/Signature_of_a... > > anybody have any clue what's going on here? Thanks :) Probably electron-positron pair production due to electrons hitting ions and other electrons at high speed. The electric field in the lightening bolt would produse enough acceleration to produce at least some electron-positron pairs. It take at least 511 KeV to produce an electron. It takes at least 1022 KeV to produce an electron hole pair. A typical lightening bolt starts out with a potential difference of a few million volts. One electron, if it accelerated down the entire potential without collision, could easily gain a kinetic energy of a few million electron volts. I doubt the electron could accelerate without collision in a ground to cloud bolt. However, cluds reach pretty high. I suspect way up there, where the air pressure is very low, an electron really could accelerate to 1022 KeV. It then hits an oygen atom, which takes some of the linear momentum out of the electron. And an electron-positron pair is made. Such an electron hole pair could be detected by gamma ray emission. A positron goes into orbit around an electron, forming a positronium. The positronium decays, producing a gamma ray. The spectrum of the gamma rays would be very narrow at 511 KeV, producing an unmistakable signature. The problem with detecting such a thing is that gamma rays don't move very far in the atmosphere. But I suspect there are ways around the problem. Could proton-antiproton pairs be made? Probably. Seems unlikely, but anything is possible. You would need really high voltages in the clouds. ========================================== Could drosen0000 have a clue what he's babbling about? Seems unlikely, but I suspect or doubt anything is possible, probably or probabbley, but his cluds reach pretty high.
From: FrediFizzx on 27 Nov 2009 02:33 "eric gisse" <jowr.pi.nospam(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:henr80$4o0$1(a)news.eternal-september.org... > FrediFizzx wrote: > >> "eric gisse" <jowr.pi.nospam(a)gmail.com> wrote in message >> news:hemtqt$p5r$1(a)news.eternal-september.org... >>> funkenstein wrote: >>> >>>> >>> > http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49288/title/Signature_of_antimatter_detected_in_lightning >>>> >>>> anybody have any clue what's going on here? Thanks :) >>> >>> My money is on pair production via the intense electric field that >>> is >>> generated briefly at the strike point. >> >> What is the electric field strength of that case? Can it be high >> enough >> for the Schwinger mechanism? If so, then this could be good evidence >> that the Schwinger mechanism is correct. > > I don't really know. I know my astrophysics far, far better than > particle > physics and the quantum domain. > > What I have never seen answered adequately is how much energy you can > put > into the vacuum before it starts sparking through pair production. A > simple > guess would be eps_0 E^2 / 2 over a volume such that is above the > 1.02MeV > threshold energy for pair production, but I haven't the faintest idea > how > much 'space' is needed for that. > > I only throw pair production out there because a _lot_ of energy gets > put > into a relatively small area in a lightning strike and that just might > be > enough. > > From a search on the Schwinger mechanism I see that this is the > process that > should dictate this reaction. However all my institutional access is > gone. > OTOH this is a good reason to investigate the UW library... http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0304139 "Boiling the Vacuum with an X-Ray Free Electron Laser" You will find your answer in equation (1). About 1.3*10^18 volts/meter electric field strength is needed to produce e+e- pairs spontaneously from the vacuum. That is quite a bit that is needed. Can 100 million volts of lightning produce that? Perhaps if it was somehow concentrated in a very small space. Seems we are a few orders of magnitude away from that though. :-) However, I suspect we are getting some accelerator action and the positrons are being produced by interaction like how they are produced in labs. Best, Fred Diether moderator sci.physics.foundations
From: John Polasek on 27 Nov 2009 15:01 On Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:33:21 -0800, "FrediFizzx" <fredifizzx(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >"eric gisse" <jowr.pi.nospam(a)gmail.com> wrote in message >news:henr80$4o0$1(a)news.eternal-september.org... >> FrediFizzx wrote: >> >>> "eric gisse" <jowr.pi.nospam(a)gmail.com> wrote in message >>> news:hemtqt$p5r$1(a)news.eternal-september.org... >>>> funkenstein wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>> >> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/49288/title/Signature_of_antimatter_detected_in_lightning >>>>> >>>>> anybody have any clue what's going on here? Thanks :) >>>> >>>> My money is on pair production via the intense electric field that >>>> is >>>> generated briefly at the strike point. >>> >>> What is the electric field strength of that case? Can it be high >>> enough >>> for the Schwinger mechanism? If so, then this could be good evidence >>> that the Schwinger mechanism is correct. >> >> I don't really know. I know my astrophysics far, far better than >> particle >> physics and the quantum domain. >> >> What I have never seen answered adequately is how much energy you can >> put >> into the vacuum before it starts sparking through pair production. A >> simple >> guess would be eps_0 E^2 / 2 over a volume such that is above the >> 1.02MeV >> threshold energy for pair production, but I haven't the faintest idea >> how >> much 'space' is needed for that. >> >> I only throw pair production out there because a _lot_ of energy gets >> put >> into a relatively small area in a lightning strike and that just might >> be >> enough. >> >> From a search on the Schwinger mechanism I see that this is the >> process that >> should dictate this reaction. However all my institutional access is >> gone. >> OTOH this is a good reason to investigate the UW library... > >http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0304139 >"Boiling the Vacuum with an X-Ray Free Electron Laser" > >You will find your answer in equation (1). About 1.3*10^18 volts/meter >electric field strength is needed to produce e+e- pairs spontaneously >from the vacuum. That is quite a bit that is needed. Can 100 million >volts of lightning produce that? Perhaps if it was somehow concentrated >in a very small space. Seems we are a few orders of magnitude away from >that though. :-) However, I suspect we are getting some accelerator >action and the positrons are being produced by interaction like how they >are produced in labs. > >Best, > >Fred Diether >moderator sci.physics.foundations Fred I don't think Schwinger had a mechanism, he only had a hypothesis. IIRC he thought if you had an electric field strong enough to produce energy mec2 with an electron in the length of the Compton wavelength, "space would come apart" or words to that effect (see page 197 in my book). The figure 1.3e8 V/m comes from your reference Melissino, where for some odd reason he used the short form hbar/mc instead of h/mc. Using the proper value h/mc makes it 2.1e17V/m. But in my theory the virtual charges are compressed into cells by alpha 137 times so my critical field comes out 137 times higher: 2.886e19V/m.. Voltage alone won't do it; lightning won't do it; you need this unbelievably high field gradient and it looks like lasers aren't able to do it. John Polasek
From: Tom Roberts on 27 Nov 2009 16:17
FrediFizzx wrote: > About 1.3*10^18 volts/meter > electric field strength is needed to produce e+e- pairs spontaneously > from the vacuum. Hopeless. Electrons are pulled from the surface of a metal at a few MV/meter, and atoms are pulled from the surface at a few GV/meter. These will short out the field at values almost a billion times smaller. I agree that e+ e- pair production is almost surely the mechanism for generating antimatter in lightning. At the tops of clouds, around 25,000 feet, air density is about 0.3 - 0.6 mg/cm^3. The range of a 1 MeV electron in air at such densities is about 6 - 15 meters. So it must be extremely rare for an electron to be accelerated to such an energy by the few kV/meter fields of clouds. But out of something like 10^25 electrons in a lightning bolt, rare processes can occur. Especially if some mechanism greatly reduces the air density within the bolt (which transiently occurs while generating thunder) -- of course this is a rather different time scale than the electric currents. Note that the bolt is a plasma, and I don't know how possible it might be for there to be local fields sufficient to accelerate a few electrons to a few MeV; plasma wakefield acceleration might be possible, but I don't know enough about it to evaluate whether a lightning bolt could use it to reach such an energy. I do know that GV/meter fields have been achieved, but in conditions far removed from a lightning bolt (20 GeV electrons in a plasma at SLAC). There are enough unknowns here that I don't think that antimatter observation in lightning seriously challenges our current theories of physics -- there are obviously megavolt potentials present. But it likely does challenge our knowledge of the details inside a lightning bolt. Tom Roberts |