Does Antimatter Fall Up Or Down?

KentuckyFC writes "There are enough loopholes in the general theory of relativity to allow antimatter to fall up rather than down in a gravitational field. We've never been able to make enough of the stuff to do the experiment. But at the European particle physics laboratory at CERN, where scientists have been refining the technique for making antihydrogen, researchers are designing an experiment called AEGIS that will finally settle the matter. The idea is simple — fire a beam of antihydrogen atoms and watch which way they fall — but the details are fiendish (abstract). The answer should help solve a number of important conundrums such as why there is so little antimatter in our part of the universe and what the value of the cosmological constant is."

Comments

Confused

[wasted]

"There are enough loopholes in the general theory of relativity to allow antimatter to fall up rather than down in a gravitational field. We've never been able to make enough of the stuff to do the experiment. But at the European particle physics laboratory at CERN, where scientists have been refining the technique for making antihydrogen, researchers are designing an experiment called AEGIS that will finally settle the matter.

Or will it settle (or unsettle) the anti-matter?

Re:Confused

[glas_gow]

Yes, absolutely. Thanks! :-) Can you prove that it works for you mathematically?

Re:Confused

[Sygnus]

Can you prove that it works for you mathematically?

|It works|

Re:Gravitons and Graviolis

[andyh3930]

Futurama quote

Professor: And the microwave radiation, combined with the gravitons and graviolis from the supernova, blasted us through time itself.

Obvious?

[neokushan]

It doesn't-matter.

Re:I hate "news" like this.

[Travis Mansbridge]

Brought to you by: Molten Boron
Nobody doesn't like Molten Boron!

The cosmological constant,

[Bromskloss]

my relativity teacher told his class, is a function of time: At first, it was non-zero, then people said it was zero, then it might be non-zero after all.

Re:The cosmological constant,

[Lijemo]

my relativity teacher told his class, is a function of time: At first, it was non-zero, then people said it was zero, then it might be non-zero after all.

I saw a paper in the Journal of Irreproducible Results advancing the theory that the age of the universe is a nonlinear function of time.

They plotted on a graph the age people (or rather, western civilization) thought that the age of the universe was at various points in history--when the 19th century geologists said it had to be at least hundreds of thousands of years old, when the 20th century astronomers said that it had to be even older than that-- and plotted the points on a graph. They formed a smooth curve demonstrating (I think) a geometric increase.

So their theory was that, assuming all the age-of-the-universe estimates were correct, that means the beginning of the universe is moving backwards in time, away from us. In 1000ad, the universe really was 6000 years old, and now it really is 14.5 billion years old, and in another century, it will probably be in the trillions of years old

(I love the Journal of Irreproducible Results!)

Oooh... I can answer this one!

[njcoder]

Does Antimatter Fall Up Or Down? Yes!

Re:Oooh... I can answer this one!

[Idaho]

Does Antimatter Fall Up Or Down?

Yes!

But what if it turns out it falls sideways?

Re:Oooh... I can answer this one!

[teslar]

You may onto something. Perhaps the well-docmumented cases of people falling sideways are due to antimatter build-up within them. We should investigate.

Re:It will fall down

[that_itch_kid]

GR is bunk. I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Ah, so little imagination...

[meringuoid]

There are more options in particle physics than merely up and down.

Antimatter falls strange.

Re:I wish it fell upwards

[krnpimpsta]

I wish the results were that antimatter falls upwards. If that were true, while it would have no practical use in the near future, it would be a hole in physics that our far descendants could exploit. Dude, please don't exploit holes in physics. I don't want my access to the universe revoked just because God banned us all from our reality for hax. All it takes is one noob hax0r particle physicist to ruin it for us all.

Antimatter powered airships, hurrah!

[itsdapead]

Just a few technical details to sort out, first :-)

...and, of course, if your antimatter-powered airship crashes, the phrase "Oh, the Humanity!" is going to be even more applicable. Maybe without the "the".

I Bet

[Symbolis]

It falls sideways, just to screw with those smarmy scientists.

Re:It will fall down

[jandersen]

An alternative explanation is of course that the anti-particles are distracted and therefore miss the Earth, as demonstrated in the well-known experiments performed by Arthur Dent.

Re:It will fall down

[Hankapobe]

Yes, Silly physicist PhDs doing unneccesary experiments. They could have been told the result of the experiment just by asking a random commenter on Slashdot. :)

Why not? This is where I get my IP legal advice!

Re:I hate "news" like this.

[SQLGuru]

Publicity is especially important in quantum physics because we don't know if they are working or not working until they are observed.

Layne

Re:I wish it fell upwards

[smaddox]

Yeah, like that time this Jesus guy found an overflow in the kill process routine, and was able to resurrect himself after 3 days.

I heard God banned him for 3,000 years.