Abstract
The lifetime of antimatter fragments which may enter the Earth's atmosphere in the form of meteors is determined in this paper, for cases in which the annihilation may be accompanied by the evaporation process. The antimatter object can be penetrated by the nucleon - antinucleon annihilation products, which can be generated by interactions of atoms of antimatter fragments with the atmospheric molecules. Vaporization of its own antiatoms may be followed, in case of a high rate of annihilation, so that the lifetime of the antimatter object may become shorter, compared with the case of annihilation without vapor production of the meteor. The lifetime of the antimatter fragment is dependent upon the temperature of the object and thus vaporization of such an object would last for as long asδτ =Rδ/ξ, whereξ is the intensity of evaporation,δ its density andR its radius.
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Papaelias, P.M. Lifetime of antimatter meteors. Earth Moon Planet 65, 71–77 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00572200
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00572200