Australian National University | 2017 May 22
[img3="Milky Way by Roanish on Flickr"]https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6025/5968 ... e325_o.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]A team of international astrophysicists led by The Australian National University (ANU) has shown how most of the antimatter in the Milky Way forms.
Antimatter is material composed of the antiparticle partners of ordinary matter – when antimatter meets with matter, they quickly annihilate each other to form a burst of energy in the form of gamma-rays.
Scientists have known since the early 1970s that the inner parts of the Milky Way galaxy are a strong source of gamma-rays, indicating the existence of antimatter, but there had been no settled view on where the antimatter came from.
ANU researcher Dr Roland Crocker said the team had shown that the cause was a series of weak supernova explosions over millions of years, each created by the convergence of two white dwarfs which are ultra-compact remnants of stars no larger than two suns. ...
Diffuse Galactic Antimatter from Faint Thermonuclear Supernovae in Old Stellar Populations - Roland M. Crocker et al
- Nature Astronomy 1:0135 (online 22 May 2017) DOI: 10.1038/s41550-017-0135