Full Thrust Science Digest....(Narn News Network..)

Galaxy unleashes plume of antimatter Mysterious cloud extends 3,000 light
years above Milky Way's core. As viewed from earth, the Milky Way galaxy is a
spiral of stars seen edgewise. The antimatter plume rises perpendicularly from
the center, destroying matter in its path. Â Â Â Â Earth's galaxy, the Milky
Way,
is unleashing a mysterious plume of antimatter - the first such plume
ever seen. Â Â Â Â Extending 3,000 light years above the Milky Way's core, the
newly discovered plume is sending astronomers scrambling to explain why vast
quantities of antimatter are present where they weren't expected to be. Â Â Â
 "The origin of this new and unexpected cloud is a mystery," acknowledges
William Purcell, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University in Evanston,
Ill., and a member of the team that announced the discovery this week. Â Â Â Â
Antimatter first appeared on paper in 1928 as a mathematical necessity of
quantum mechanics. Five years later, physicists
discovered the first antiparticle - the positron - in lab
experiments. Â Â Â Â Positrons, the antimatter counterparts of electrons, have
the same mass and life span as electrons, yet carry an equal but opposite
electrical charge. When the two meet, they annihilate each other in a burst of
gamma radiation. This "annihilation radiation" carries a unique energy
signature that
serves as the tip-off that antimatter is - or was - present.  Â
Researchers found the antimatter plume while using this radiation as a proxy
for mapping the galaxy's inventory of positrons. The radiation registered on
detectors aboard the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, a NASA satellite. Â Â Â Â
Oddly, the plume didn't have a counterpart below the nucleus. It's unusual to
see a feature extending from a galaxy in only one direction, says James
Kurfess, astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington and
lead investigator for the experiment. Â Â Â Â The plume presents two puzzles,
says Charles Dermer, also of the Naval Research Laboratory. "To have
annihilation, you need a source of positrons," he says, "but you also need
regular matter in sufficient density" to give the positrons something to
annihilate. The Milky Way's plume extends into its halo, a region sparsely
populated with matter. Â Â Â Â He suggests that supernovas exploding at the
center of the galaxy are the likely sources of the matter and antimatter in
the plume. Compared with the rest of the galaxy, the nucleus is a hotbed of
stellar explosions. In effect, he says, the core is acting like a volcano,
sending up a plume of matter and antimatter as massive young stars end their
lives in cataclysmic fashion. Â Â Â Â Others suggest the plume has its source
in a black hole known as the "Great Annihilator," which lies a mere 300 light
years from the galactic center. Still others suggest that the plume may be a
remnant of a
fireball - the merging of two neutron stars, themselves the extremely
dense remnants of stars that ended as supernovas.

"This is obviously a new and terrifying weapon being tested by those vile
Centauri Warmongers!!"