People have always given great attention thunderstorms. It was they who were associated with most of the dominant mythological images, conjectures were built around their appearance. Science understood this relatively recently - in the 18th century. Many are still tormented by the question: why is there no thunderstorm in winter? We will deal with this later in the article.

How does a thunderstorm happen?

This is where ordinary physics comes into play. Storm - a natural phenomenon in the layers of the atmosphere. It differs from an ordinary downpour in that during any thunderstorm, strongest electrical discharges occur, uniting cumulus rain clouds with each other or with the ground. These discharges are also accompanied by loud sounds of thunder. The wind often intensifies, sometimes reaching a squall-hurricane threshold, hail is falling. Shortly before the start, the air, as a rule, becomes stuffy and humid, reaching a high temperature.

Thunderstorm types

There are two main types of thunderstorms:

intramass;

frontal.

Intra-mass thunderstorms occur as a result of abundant heating of the air and, accordingly, the collision of hot air near the earth's surface with cold air above. Because of this feature, they are quite strictly tied to the time and, as a rule, begin in the afternoon. They can also pass over the sea at night, while moving over the surface of the water that gives off heat.

Frontal thunderstorms occur when two air fronts - warm and cold - collide. They do not have a definite dependence on the time of day.

The frequency of thunderstorms depends on the average temperatures in the region where they occur. The lower the temperature, the less often they will happen. At the poles, they can be found only once every few years, and they end extremely quickly. Indonesia, for example, is famous for frequent prolonged thunderstorms, which can begin more than two hundred times a year. They do, however, bypass deserts and other areas where it rarely rains.

Why do thunderstorms happen?

The key reason for the origin of a thunderstorm is just the uneven heating of the air. The higher the temperature difference near the ground and at altitude, the stronger and more often thunderstorms will occur. The question remains open: why is there no thunderstorm in winter?

The mechanism of how this phenomenon occurs is as follows: according to the law of heat transfer, warm air from the earth tends upwards, while cold air from the upper part of the cloud, together with the ice particles contained in it, descends. As a result of this cycle, in parts of the cloud that maintain different temperatures, two opposite-pole electric charges arise: positively charged particles accumulate at the bottom, and negatively at the top.

Each time they collide, a huge spark jumps between the two parts of the cloud, which, in fact, is lightning. The sound of the explosion, with which this spark breaks the hot air, is the well-known thunder. The speed of light is faster than the speed of sound, so lightning and thunder do not reach us at the same time.

Types of lightning

Everyone has seen the usual lightning-spark more than once and certainly heard about it. Nevertheless, the whole variety of lightning caused by thunderstorms is not exhausted by this.

There are four main types in total:

1. Lightning-sparks, beating among the clouds and not touching the ground.
2. Ribbon, connecting clouds and earth, are the most dangerous lightning that should be feared the most.
3. Horizontal lightning that cuts through the sky below cloud level. They are considered especially dangerous for the inhabitants of the upper floors, since they can go down quite low, but do not come into contact with the ground.
4. Ball lightning.

The answer to this question is quite simple. Why is there no thunderstorm in winter? Due to the low temperatures near earth's surface. There is no sharp contrast between the warm air warmed up below and the cold air from the upper atmosphere, so the electrical charge contained in the clouds is always negative. That is why there is no thunderstorm in winter.

Of course, it follows from this that in hot countries, where the temperature remains positive in winter, they continue to occur regardless of the time of year. Accordingly, in the coldest parts of the world, for example, in the Arctic or in Antarctica, a thunderstorm is the greatest rarity, comparable to rain in the desert.

A spring thunderstorm usually begins at the end of March or April, when the snow almost completely melts. Its appearance means that the earth has warmed up sufficiently to give off heat and be ready for crops. Therefore, many folk signs are associated with spring thunderstorms.

An early spring thunderstorm can be harmful to the earth: as a rule, it occurs during abnormally warm days, when the weather has not yet settled down, and brings with it unnecessary humidity. After that, the land is often iced up, it freezes and provides a poor harvest.

Precautions during a thunderstorm

To avoid a lightning strike, you should not stop near high objects, especially single ones - trees, pipes and others. If possible, it is generally better not to be on a hill.

Water is an excellent conductor of electricity, so the first rule for those who are caught in a thunderstorm is not to be in the water. After all, if lightning strikes a pond even at a considerable distance, the discharge will easily reach a person standing in it. The same applies to damp ground, so contact with them should be minimal, and clothing and body should be as dry as possible.

Do not come into contact with household electrical appliances or mobile phones.

If a thunderstorm caught in the car - it is better not to leave it, rubber tires provide good insulation.

ANTIMATTER, a substance consisting of atoms whose nuclei have a negative electric charge and are surrounded by positrons - electrons with a positive electric charge. In ordinary matter, from which the world around us is built, positively charged nuclei are surrounded by negatively charged electrons. Ordinary matter, in order to distinguish it from antimatter, is sometimes called co-substance (from the Greek. koinos- ordinary). However, in Russian literature this term is practically not used. It should be emphasized that the term "antimatter" is not entirely correct, since antimatter is also matter, its kind. Antimatter has the same inertial properties and creates the same gravitational attraction as ordinary matter.

Speaking of matter and antimatter, it is logical to start with elementary (subatomic) particles. Each elementary particle corresponds to an antiparticle; both have almost the same characteristics, except that they have the opposite electrical charge. (If the particle is neutral, then the antiparticle is also neutral, but they may differ in other characteristics. In some cases, the particle and antiparticle are identical to each other.) Thus, an electron - a negatively charged particle - corresponds to a positron, and the antiparticle of a proton with a positive charge is a negatively charged antiproton. The positron was discovered in 1932, and the antiproton in 1955; these were the first of the discovered antiparticles. The existence of antiparticles was predicted in 1928 based on quantum mechanics English physicist P. Dirac.

When an electron and a positron collide, they annihilate, i.e. both particles disappear, and two gamma quanta are emitted from the point of their collision. If the colliding particles move at a low speed, then the energy of each gamma ray is 0.51 MeV. This energy is the "rest energy" of the electron, or its rest mass expressed in units of energy. If the colliding particles move at high speed, then the energy of gamma rays will be greater due to their kinetic energy. Annihilation also occurs when a proton collides with an antiproton, but the process in this case is much more complicated. A number of short-lived particles are born as intermediate products of the interaction; however, after a few microseconds, neutrinos, gamma quanta, and a small number of electron-positron pairs remain as the final products of transformations. These pairs can eventually annihilate, creating additional gamma rays. Annihilation also occurs when an antineutron collides with a neutron or proton.

Since antiparticles exist, the question arises whether antinuclei can be formed from antiparticles. The nuclei of atoms of ordinary matter consist of protons and neutrons. The simplest nucleus is the nucleus of the ordinary hydrogen isotope 1 H; it is a single proton. The deuterium nucleus 2 H consists of one proton and one neutron; it's called a deuteron. Another example of a simple nucleus is the 3 He nucleus, which consists of two protons and one neutron. The antideuteron, consisting of an antiproton and an antineutron, was obtained in the laboratory in 1966; The anti-3He nucleus, consisting of two antiprotons and one antineutron, was first obtained in 1970.

According to modern physics elementary particles, in the presence of appropriate technical means it would be possible to obtain the antinuclei of all ordinary nuclei. If these antinuclei are surrounded by the proper number of positrons, they form antiatoms. Anti-atoms would have almost exactly the same properties as ordinary atoms; they would form molecules, they could form solid bodies, liquids and gases, including organic matter. For example, two antiprotons and one anti-oxygen nucleus, together with eight positrons, could form an anti-water molecule similar to ordinary water H 2 O, each molecule of which consists of two protons of hydrogen nuclei, one oxygen nucleus and eight electrons. Modern theory elementary particles are able to predict that anti-water will freeze at 0°C, boil at 100°C, and otherwise behave like regular water. Continuing such reasoning, we can come to the conclusion that the anti-matter built from antimatter would be extremely similar to the ordinary world around us. This conclusion serves as the starting point for theories of a symmetrical universe based on the assumption that the universe has an equal amount of ordinary matter and antimatter. We live in that part of it, which consists of ordinary matter.

If two identical pieces of substances of the opposite type are brought into contact, then annihilation of electrons with positrons and nuclei with antinuclei will occur. In this case, gamma quanta will arise, by the appearance of which one can judge what is happening. Since the Earth, by definition, is composed of ordinary matter, there is no appreciable amount of antimatter in it, except for the tiny number of antiparticles produced at large accelerators and in cosmic rays. The same applies to the entire solar system.

Observations show that only a limited amount of gamma radiation occurs within our galaxy. From this, a number of researchers conclude that there are no noticeable amounts of antimatter in it. But this conclusion is not indisputable. There is currently no way to determine, for example, whether a given nearby star is composed of matter or antimatter; an antimatter star emits exactly the same spectrum as an ordinary star. Further, it is quite possible that the rarefied matter that fills the space around the star and is identical to the matter of the star itself is separated from the regions filled with matter of the opposite type - very thin high-temperature "Leidenfrost layers". Thus, one can speak of a "cellular" structure of interstellar and intergalactic space, in which each cell contains either matter or antimatter. This hypothesis is supported by modern research showing that the magnetosphere and heliosphere (interplanetary space) have a cellular structure. Cells with different magnetizations and sometimes also with different temperatures and density are separated by very thin current shells. Hence follows the paradoxical conclusion that these observations do not contradict the existence of antimatter even within our Galaxy.

If earlier there were no convincing arguments in favor of the existence of antimatter, now the successes of X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy have changed the situation. Phenomena associated with a huge and often in the highest degree random release of energy. Most likely, the source of such energy release was annihilation.

The Swedish physicist O.Klein developed a cosmological theory based on the hypothesis of symmetry between matter and antimatter, and came to the conclusion that annihilation processes play a decisive role in the evolution of the Universe and the formation of the structure of galaxies.

It is becoming more and more obvious that the main alternative theory to it is the theory of " big bang” - seriously contradicts the observational data and the central place in solving cosmological problems in the near future is likely to be occupied by “symmetric cosmology”.

Antimatter is matter composed entirely of antiparticles. In nature, each elementary particle is an antiparticle. For an electron, this will be a positron, and for a positively charged proton, it will be an antiproton. Atoms of ordinary matter - otherwise it is called coinsubstance They consist of a positively charged nucleus around which electrons move. And the negatively charged nuclei of antimatter atoms, in turn, are surrounded by antielectrons.

The forces that determine the structure of matter are the same for both particles and antiparticles. Simply put, the particles differ only in the sign of the charge. Characteristically, "antimatter" is not quite the right name. It is essentially just a kind of substance that has the same properties and is capable of creating attraction.

Annihilation

In fact, this is the process of collision of a positron and an electron. As a result, mutual annihilation (annihilation) of both particles occurs with the release of enormous energy. The annihilation of 1 gram of antimatter is equivalent to the explosion of a TNT charge of 10 kilotons!

Synthesis

In 1995, it was announced that the first nine atoms of antihydrogen had been synthesized. They lived for 40 nanoseconds and died, releasing energy. And already in 2002, the number of obtained atoms was in the hundreds. But all the resulting antiparticles could live only nanoseconds. Things changed with the launch of the Hadron Collider: it was possible to synthesize 38 antihydrogen atoms and hold them for a whole second. During this period of time, it became possible to conduct some studies of the structure of antimatter. They learned to hold particles after the creation of a special magnetic trap. In it, to achieve the desired effect, a very low temperature is created. True, such a trap is a very cumbersome, complicated and expensive matter.

In S. Snegov's trilogy "People are like gods", the annihilation process is used for intergalactic flights. The heroes of the novel, using it, turn stars and planets into dust. But in our time to obtain antimatter is much more difficult and expensive than to feed humanity.

How much does antimatter cost

One milligram of positrons should cost $25 billion. And for one gram of antihydrogen, you will have to pay 62.5 trillion dollars.

Such a generous person has not yet appeared that he could buy at least one hundredth of a gram. Several hundred million Swiss francs had to be paid for one billionth of a gram in order to obtain material for experimental work collision of particles and antiparticles. So far, there is no such substance in nature that would be more expensive than antimatter.

But with the question of the weight of antimatter, everything is quite simple. Since it differs from ordinary matter only in its charge, all other characteristics are the same. It turns out that one gram of antimatter will weigh exactly one gram.

World of antimatter

If we accept as true what was, then as a result of this process, an equal amount of both matter and antimatter should have arisen. So why don't we observe nearby objects consisting of antimatter? The answer is quite simple: two types of matter cannot coexist together. They will definitely cancel each other out. It is likely that galaxies and even antimatter universes exist. and we even see some of them. But they emit the same radiation, the same light comes from them, as from ordinary galaxies. Therefore, it is still impossible to say for sure whether there is an anti-world or whether this is a beautiful fairy tale.

Is it dangerous?

Mankind turned many useful discoveries into means of destruction. Antimatter in this sense cannot be an exception. A more powerful weapon than one based on the principle of annihilation cannot yet be imagined. Perhaps it's not so bad that so far it has not been possible to extract and preserve antimatter? Will it not be a fatal bell that humanity will hear on its last day?