Antimatter falls down, not up: CERN experiment confirms theory
Antimatter falls down, not up: CERN experiment confirms theory
Observing this simple phenomenon had eluded physicists for decades.
Huh I didn't know antimatter was a completely confirmed thing.
After making a thin gas of thousands of antihydrogen atoms, researchers pushed it up a 3-metre-tall vertical shaft surrounded by superconducting electromagnetic coils. These can create a kind of magnetic ‘tin can’ to keep the antimatter from coming into contact with matter and annihilating. Next, the researchers let some of the hotter antiatoms escape, so that the gas in the can got colder, down to just 0.5 °C above absolute zero — and the remaining antiatoms were moving slowly.
The researchers then gradually weakened the magnetic fields at the top and bottom of their trap — akin to removing the lid and base of the can — and detected the antiatoms using two sensors as they escaped and annihilated. When opening any gas container, the contents tend to expand in all directions, but in this case the antiatoms’ low velocities meant that gravity had an observable effect: most of them came out of the bottom opening, and only one-quarter out of the top.
You may have heard of a "PET scan" used in medicine. This uses a type of antimatter called a positron.
https://bigthink.com/hard-science/positron-emission-tomography-antimatter-cancer/
That might be dark matter you're thinking about
Maybe!
Not only does it exist, but bananas give off a fair bit of antimatter due to their decaying potassium isotopes.
Allegedly, im not smart enough to verify it
Bananas produce antimatter, but just barely. The main radioactive material in bananas is Potassium-40. A banana is about 0.358% potassium in all. About 0.012% of naturally occurring potassium is the radioactive Potassium-40. Only 0.001% of all radioactive decay events in postassium-40 produce an antiparticle (a positron).
An average banana produces a single positron about every 75 minutes.
El psy kongroo
They say if you microwave bananas, you will get green gel bananas
^dont ^actually ^try ^that
Antimatter was first observed physically back in 1932. A positron, more specifically. Its existence has been confirmed, and accepted, for ages, and some of our technology already operates using antimatter to do its tasks.
anti-matter? ya, we have been observing it for quite a while (testing is difficult for reasons), it naturally accumulates in parts of the Van Allen belt.
Dark matter on the other hand is still completely up for question
But from the antimatter's perspective, it falls up.
Then it really is lost!
What happens to Australian antimatter?
it falls to the earth, like you would expect normal matter to do above the equator
Hmm interesting. I wondered if it would be attracted or repelled by matter. It does annihilate when it comes in contact with mater, right?
The reason antimatter is "anti" is that an antiparticle has the opposite charge of its non-anti counterpart. Electrons have a negative charge, while their antiparticles, positrons have a positive charge. And since opposite charges attract, well, I think you can figure it out from there.
And yes, matter/antimatter interactions result in annihilation.
Isn’t “falling up” just another way of saying that it’s repelled by matter?
Yes
So then it is not really antimatter in the sense that it is completely opposite?
So antimatter still has positive mass?
Duh. Negative mass doesn't exist. Antiparticles just have an opposite charge.
Why would anyone think it would fall up?
Because there is no theory of quantum gravity we have no idea how gravity could interact with anti matter. By showing that antimatter behaves just like matter when interacting with gravity we can learn a lot about it and cut the number of possible theories of quantum gravity in half.
Because things exist
(the antigravity hypothesis was an attempt to explain why matter and antimatter haven't annihilated each other)
Because one common assumption was that the universe might contain as much antimatter as matter.
Which begs the question: Where did it go? We would notice a huge amount of annihilation reactions in the solar system.
"Antimatter falls up" (is gravitationally repelled instead of attracted by normal matter) was an easy hypothesis to explain that.
