Fermi-thunderstorms
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- Posts: 262
- Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2006 8:51 pm
- Real name: George Schmermund
- Location: Carlsbad, CA
Fermi-thunderstorms
Anything obvious in high vacuum is probably wrong.
Re: Fermi-thunderstorms
That was a good write up & worth reading...thanks for sharing!
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but technically speaking, the photons released from an annihilation event are not gamma rays since they do not originate from the nucleus.
The article say calls them gamma rays in this excerpt:
"When antimatter striking Fermi collides with a particle of normal matter, both particles immediately are annihilated and transformed into gamma rays."
It's best just to refer to it as annihilation radiation / annihilation photons or simply refer to the energy of the photons in eV. Photons in these high energy levels are classified based on their origin, not energy (X-Rays > electronic origin, gamma rays > nuclear origin, etc.).
So it's called the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, thus it detects photons within a range of energy levels, but can the photon detectors themselves discriminate between what event generated the photons: No. Obviously the magic number of 0.511MeV is what they are looking for as far as this event is concerned and the detectors registered that.
Sorry...I'm new. Feel free to correct any information I may have misinterpreted or not faithfully represented.
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but technically speaking, the photons released from an annihilation event are not gamma rays since they do not originate from the nucleus.
The article say calls them gamma rays in this excerpt:
"When antimatter striking Fermi collides with a particle of normal matter, both particles immediately are annihilated and transformed into gamma rays."
It's best just to refer to it as annihilation radiation / annihilation photons or simply refer to the energy of the photons in eV. Photons in these high energy levels are classified based on their origin, not energy (X-Rays > electronic origin, gamma rays > nuclear origin, etc.).
So it's called the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, thus it detects photons within a range of energy levels, but can the photon detectors themselves discriminate between what event generated the photons: No. Obviously the magic number of 0.511MeV is what they are looking for as far as this event is concerned and the detectors registered that.
Sorry...I'm new. Feel free to correct any information I may have misinterpreted or not faithfully represented.