Put this one in the "wow" file.

This week, scientists say they've discovered antimatter beams shooting above thunderstorms, a never-before seen phenomenon.

"These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams," said Michael Briggs of the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

The antimatter beams were detected from aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Acting like enormous particle accelerators, the storms emit terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, called "TGFs," along with high-energy electrons and positrons. Scientists now think that most TGFs produce particle beams and antimatter.

Estimates are that 500 such flashes occur each day around the world.

"The Fermi results put us a step closer to understanding how TGFs work," said Steven Cummer of Duke University. "We still have to figure out what is special about these storms and the precise role lightning plays in the process," he added.

According to National Geographic, most so-called normal matter is made of subatomic particles such as electrons and protons. Antimatter, on the other hand, is made of particles that have the same masses and spins as their counterparts but with opposite charges and magnetic properties.

Briggs presented the findings this week at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. A paper on the findings has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.