What do Earth's thunderstorms and the Federation Starship Enterprise have in common?

[hmelton]

Anti-matter.
hmelton
God Bless

[Bob Schroeck]

Ah! So it wasn't the lightning so much as the antimatter that the deLorean needed in Back To The Future!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Wiregeek]

this just goes to prove that SCIENCE!

is freaking awesome.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[Black Aeronaut]

Oh now that is just AWESOME! My mother is going to totally flip out over the fact that Antimatter is naturally occurring... and in our own atmosphere to boot!

Now the big 64,000 credit question is... Can it be harnessed?

[hmelton]

When I read the article I had a flash of a scene where the time traveling Scotty accidentally lets slip some comment about harvesting anti-matter from thunderstorms in front of several engineers and within 20 years they have used the money made from transparent aluminum production to developed Blimps that actually harvest economically significant amounts of anti-matter from thunderstorms.
I've never really liked the standard TV plot device depiction of the time traveler's paradox, that is probably why I never thought of Bob's idea of "Back to the future", but it would have been cool to have Marty casually make some mention of just harvesting some anti-matter from the next thunderstorm.  Alternately have the Doc from the past/future make some statement about his steam train time machine being run off of anti-matter harvested from thunderstorms.
hmelton
God bless

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

It's marginally less awesome once you realize they're only talking about positrons, not entire anti-atoms.
But still nifty!
--Sam
"Vhat good iz zcience if no vun gets HURT?!"