Does Lightning Create Antimatter?

A short video explaining how lightning and antimatter work, and how lightning is able to create antimatter on Earth! I hope that you guys all learned something new from this video :) Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:16 What is lightning? 01:02 What is antimatter? 01:58 How does lightning create antimatter? 02:38 Summary Music:    • K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends | Legends of ...   Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends Artist: Legends of Runeterra Courtesy of Riot Games: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb... Sources: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-019-01... https://doi.org/10.1038/nature24630 https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-... https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/... https://home.cern/science/physics/mat... https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-ex... https://science.nasa.gov/universe/wha... Transcript: Antimatter sounds like works of fiction, but surprisingly, the Earth has the right tools to make them using something as common as lightning! In this video, we will briefly go over what lightning is, what antimatter is, and how it is possible to create antimatter using lightning. As water evaporates, the water vapour rises into the sky, which then cools into water droplets or ice crystals at high altitudes, forming clouds. Within the clouds, dust, ice crystals, and water droplets rub against each other from the strong winds, separating the positive and negative charges. The negative charges are usually at the bottom of clouds, while positive charges stay near the up. Since opposite charges attract, as the two charges build up, an electrical discharge may leap between them. This is what lightning is, pretty much static electricity at a very large scale. Most lightning occurs within or in between clouds, but as the negative charges at the bottom build up, the positive charges in the ground below also get attracted, causing a cloud-ground lightning strike that we often see. And now, on a very unrelated note, let’s talk about antimatter. Antiparticles have the same mass as regular particles, but just an opposite charge. So the antiparticle of a proton has a negative charge, while the antiparticle of an electron, or positron, has a positive charge. A neutral particle like the neutron still has no charge, an antineutron just has opposite charges in its composition. These combined together form antimatter just like regular matter, so two antiprotons, two antineutrons, and two positrons form an antihelium. When regular matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other, or get rid of each other, as they convert into energy in the forms of gamma radiation. And vice versa, we can just convert enough energy into antimatter by smashing particles very fast in a particle accelerator. We are able to convert between energy and mass as described by the famous E = MC squared. And finally, how does lightning create antimatter? Because lightning carries so much energy, it can rush electrons near the speed of light, creating a natural particle accelerator. As this accelerated electron smashes into an air molecule, they emit quick bursts of gamma rays called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. This intense flash of gamma rays is able to force nitrogen molecules to release positrons, which then immediately annihilates to create more gamma rays. Those rays are only known to be emitted under extreme conditions, such as in black holes and supernovae, so not only can lightning create antimatter, it is mind-boggling to how nature can just create gamma rays on Earth too.. And there we have it! As the charges in a thundercloud separate, electrical discharges are formed between them, causing lightning. As nature’s original particle accelerator, antimatter is created by the gamma rays produced by the sheer amount of energy present in those thunderclouds. Antimatter is theorized to behave just like regular matter with the opposite charges, and they will annihilate regular matter upon contact, releasing gamma rays in the process. The explanations for lightning and antimatter are kept quite brief, and I left out a lot of the nuisances associated with those topics, so I will most likely do separate videos on each of them. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated! #lightning #physics #nature