I've started threads for a lot of other subjects, might as well include antimatter in the mix.

Thunderstorms hurling antimatter into space caught by Fermi (w/ Video)

 

Interesting tidbit, although perhaps not terribly surprising when one considers a single lightning bolt can involve a peak power of 1 TW and electric fields in the MV regions (i.e., plenty of energy available to give the particles the requisite energy).

If I understand the process correctly, it's that the large fields at the top of the thunderstorm accelerate electrons to near speed of light and this produces gamma rays by either synchrotron radiation or bremsstrahlung. These gamma rays then go further and cause pair production near a nucleus, which yields the electron-positron pairs that go into low orbit to follow the earth's magnetic field. Then, of course, it's the 0.511 MeV signature of the positron annihilation that the spacecraft's detectors are seeing.

A lesson is that new measurement tools frequently uncover interesting facts about nature that we didn't know before.

 

CERN scientists confine antihydrogen atoms for 1000 seconds

Slow incremental improvements, that's the ticket.

 

Fundamental matter-antimatter symmetry confirmed

 

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-antiproton-belt-earth.html

So we have a ready source of anti-hydrogen at our disposal?