New Piece of Antimatter Puzzle
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Text, News From The Universe. February 21, 2020
New Piece of Antimatter Puzzle.
Image, Bright stars hang within a cloud of purple space gas.
Text, This pulsar's vast gamma ray halo may explain a key observation about antimatter near Earth.
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Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, the super-dense remnants of supernovae explosions.
NASA's Fermi mission has observed one nearby pulsar, Geminga, for more than 10 years, collecting detailed data.
Scientists are now able to remove background light sources so that Geminga's gamma-ray halo emerges.
This halo precisely matches computer models that account for positron production.
Positrons are anti-matter versions of electrons. They're found near Earth but have no clear origin.
Scientists suspected pulsars to be positron sources. This study confirms it.
This news was brought to you in part by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD