First detection of antimatter produced by lightning

On 10 January 2011, scientists published the first scientific evidence that lightning can produce antimatter. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, launched in 2008, was designed to detect the production of very high energy gamma radiation from distant cosmic events but it also detected gamma-ray flashes from thunderstorms on Earth. This terrestrial gamma radiation had energies of 511,000 electron volts, which indicated that electrons and their antimatter counterparts (positrons) had annihilated each other. It is believed that electrical fields above a storm can cause an upward flow of electrons, some of which emit gamma rays that, in turn, produce positrons when they encounter atomic nuclei in the atmosphere.