Comet Enthusiast

Italian researchers, led by Piergiorgio Picozza from the University of Rome, using data from the satellite PAMELA have proven that theories showing there ought to be a ring of antiprotons, called the Van Allen radiation belt, encircling the Earth due to cosmic rays colliding with nuclei in the upper atmosphere are correct.

Physicists have theorized that the constant stream of cosmic rays generated by the sun and other little understand sources must produce a shower of sorts of smaller particles when they collide with other nuclei in the Earth’s upper atmosphere and break apart. Some of those smaller particles have been assumed to be antiprotons, many of which would be annihilated when colliding with particles of ordinary matter.