studies that look into some mysteries among astronomy, and… Aliens.
In 1972, scientists observed a gamma ray source, coming from something seemingly invisible. Our
tech wasn’t advanced enough at the time to establish what it was, but about 10 years after
discovering the gamma ray, we traced the source to an empty point of space approximately 800
lightyears away. This source also had an unusual repetition about every 200 milliseconds, which
led us to conclude that it was some sort of neutron star or pulsar, and sure enough it was. Known
as the Geminga Pulsar, it is one of the most studied pulsars that we’ve found, and one of the few
given an actual name. This pulsar is certainly interesting, given the weird cloud or halo that’s
formed around it. This cloud is a source of gamma and other high energy rays as well as a strange
source of antimatter.
In very high energy environments, we expect to find a lot of matter and antimatter produced at all
times. Antimatter isn’t as taboo as it might sound. In fact, it’s being produced by you and me,
right this very moment. When some molecules break down, they create radiation, and around 1%
of the time they create a positron, the antimatter version of an electron. When there is a lot of
energy present somewhere, a lot of antimatter exists in that place.
Scientists detected an unusual amount of antimatter coming from what seemed to be nowhere, or at
least an empty region of space. We had discovered a few potential sources and a recent study has
confirmed that pulsars are more than likely the source, or more specifically, the large halo generated
by the gamma rays of the Geminga Pulsar.
We can’t see this large cloud in the sky, or the pulsar because the energies we perceive are much