Does Antimatter Fall Up? 255
New submitter Doug Otto sends word that researchers working on the ALPHA experiment at CERN are trying to figure out whether antimatter interacts with gravity in the same way that normal matter does. The ALPHA experiment wasn't designed to test for this, but they realized part of it — an antihydrogen trap — is suitable to collect some data. Their preliminary results: uncertain, but they can't rule it out. From the article:
"Antihydrogen provides a particularly useful means of testing gravitational effects on antimatter, as it's electrically neutral. Gravity is by far the weakest force in nature, so it's very easy for its effects to be swamped by other interactions. Even with neutral particles or atoms, the antimatter must be moving slowly enough to perform measurements. And slow rates of motion increase the likelihood of encountering matter particles, leading to mutual annihilation and an end to the experiment. However, it's a challenge to maintain any antihydrogen long enough to perform meaningful experiments on it, regardless of its speed. ... The authors of the current study realized that [antiatoms trapped in ALPHA] eventually escaped or were released from this magnetic trap. At that point, they were momentarily in free-fall, experiencing no force other than gravity. The detectors on the outside of ALPHA could then determine if the antihydrogen was rising or falling under gravity's influence, and whether the magnitude of the force was equivalent to the effect on matter."
Re:Maybe our universe is a 'matter bubble' (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually measuring them accurately is a challenge, although no one in the physics community really expects the answer to be "they fall up" at this point. It would be a huge upset if they did.
There's a (possibly apocryphal) story about a physics professor. Whenever he dropped his chalk, writing equations on the board, he would look upwards. When one of the students finally asked him why he did this, he replied, "If one day it fell upwards, I wouldn't want to miss it."
E.E. "Doc" Smith got it right (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe our universe is a 'matter bubble' (Score:5, Funny)
OK, then consider the minimum supersymmetric extension of the spherical cow model [wikipedia.org], in which all spherical cows have supersymmetric 'scow' partners. In practice, this should allow to work out similar results to the unpaired spherical cow model in the low energy cow scattering regime, while preserving the cow-pairing symmetry that you prefer.
Ion Trapper is an awesome job title (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ion Trapper is an awesome job title (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Maybe our universe is a 'matter bubble' (Score:5, Funny)
You would still have mass, inside the ship. If you exceeded the speed of light, you'd blow up and take the ship with you in a blaze of matter/antimatter glory.
Yeah, but there might be a downside, too. It's hard to tell with these things.