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| Antimatter can be seen in the pink region. Credit: Aaron KaaseNasa/Goddard |
A thin band of antimatter particles known as antiprotons covering the earth have been discovered for the first time.
The discovery described in the Astrophysical journal letters proves theoritical work that predicted Earth's magnetic field could trap antimatter.
The group claims that a small no. of antiprotons that lie betweem the Van Allen belts of trapped normal matter.
The researchers say that there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft.The antiprotons were discovered by Pamela satellite which was launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the sun and the cosmic rays beyond our solar system.
These cosmic ray particles can hit into particles that make up for the Earth's atmosphere causing showers of particles.
Plenty of the cosmic ray particles or their "daughter" particles are caught in the Van Allen belts doughnut-shaped regions where the Earth's magnetic field traps them.
Among Pamela's achievements were specifically look for small nos. of antimatter particles among the far more abundant normal matter particles such as protons and the nuclei of helium atoms.
The new study,described in the online preprint shos that when Pamela goes through a region known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, it notices 1000s times more antiprotons than are expected of normal particle decays or somewhere else in th cosmos.
The team claims that this is proof that streams of antiprotons,analogous to the Van Allen Belts,hold the antiprotons in a region atlesat they encounter the normal matter of the atmosphere when they anihilate in a flash of light.Although normal matter particles outweigh the antiprotons by thousands to one, the band is "the most abundant source of antiprotons near the Earth", said Alessandro Bruno of the University of Bari, a co-author of the work.
"Trapped antiprotons can be lost in the interactions with atmospheric constituents, especially at low altitudes where the annihilation becomes the main loss mechanism," he told BBC News.
"Above the altitudes above hundreds of the kilometres,the loss rate is significantly lower, allowing a large supply of antiprotons to be produced."
Dr Bruno said that, aside from confirming theoretical work that had long predicted the existence of these antimatter bands, the particles could also prove to be a novel fuel source for future spacecraft - an idea explored in a report for Nasa's Institute for Advanced Concepts.
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