NASA discovers antimatter beams shooting above thunderstorms

Looking for some antimatter to power the warp engines of a Federation starship? Perhaps not. If you were, however, scientists have determined we can look no further than above thunderstorms for some fuel for the starship Enterprise.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and its Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) detected the antimatter, beams shooting above thunderstorms. The phenomenon has never been seen before. Here's what NASA thinks is happening:

Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF), a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. [...]

Fermi is designed to monitor gamma rays, the highest energy form of light. When antimatter striking Fermi collides with a particle of normal matter, both particles immediately are annihilated and transformed into gamma rays. The GBM has detected gamma rays with energies of 511,000 electron volts, a signal indicating an electron has met its antimatter counterpart, a positron.

This discovery means that starship commanders won't have to head over to CERN to borrow (take) some of their antimatter from the Large Hadron Collider.