Antimatter falls down, not up: CERN experiment confirms theory

originally posted by: McGinty
a reply to: face23785

To my mind Gravity is weaker because it’s completely different in principle to other forces. In effect it’s not electromagnetic, it’s geometric.

I think you meant to say it's not quantum. Only the electromagnetic force is electromagnetic. The nuclear forces aren't electromagnetic.

It’s not ‘powered’ by quantum interaction, but instead simply mass moving through Space-Time; when that Space-Time is distorted by large mass, then smaller mass follows the modified geometric rule of that curved space.

But what’s the process of mass distorting space at the fundamental quantum (particle/wave, string) level? The answer to that may prove my opening sentence wrong, I dunno! But that still leaves Gravity as not being a ‘force’ per se, but the observable result of forces. You may reply ‘There’s no difference’ and you’d have a point.

Fun indeed! What’s more fun than playing God’s sandbox?

This is a really interesting area of research actually. The other 3 forces, as you noted, all have force carrier particles. Does gravity have one? It may not need one, since it appears to work purely based off the geometry of space. But then you could ask what makes matter alter the geometry of spacetime, and we still might need a force carrier particle of some sort. I'm sure you've heard of the graviton, the hypthetical force carrier for gravity.

If it exists and it is ever discovered, will we learn to manipulate it the way we've learned to manipulate the electromagnetic force? Just think of all the crazy applications that today sound ridiculously farfetched, like artificial gravity on spaceships. Many of the things we do with the electromagnetic force would have seemed impossible before we discovered and learned how to manipulate photons.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Ill back up a bit... so the idea that matter and anti-matter is being created and annihilated all the time is referring to virtual particles. The theory being that this happens within what we call closed loops such that this process cannot be interacted with or produce work etc occurs in vacuum with no observables.

Its one of those pie in the sky "if the theory says we can do this... it means it must be happening" Which isn't really true. Virtual particles are a way to model how interactions mediate more than a thing you can probe.

SO onto the early universe our theory should be that if you create matter from energy, you create equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, if you do, then it should just continue to appear and annihilate. The only way you can create the universe as we see it today, using the standard model of particle physics, is if we can have a process or processes which occur at different rates (or probabilities) involving matter and anti-matter. This would give you a pathway to 'burn off' the anti-matter while keeping regular matter.

Anti-matter in this experiment is created by using a sodium-22 source, which produces positrons (anti-electrons) and anti-protons produced by colliding a Proton beam with an Iridium target. A spray of stuff comes off, some of which are anti-protons. Similar to a mass spectrometer, you can collect these using focusing magnets tuned on the right energy and momentum. From there they take these bunches of anti-protons, and 'cool' them. by cooling you are decelerating them, since they come out of the target at high energy and momentum. You then bring them to a near stationary state in a penning trap and mix in your positrons to form the anti-hydrogen.

its a complex process with many losses.

Super interesting experiment, confirms what the theory states if gravity is an emergent property of the curvature of spacetime rather than something else.

originally posted by: face23785

Matter can't be created from nothing either.

Agreed, this is all really complicated and hard to explain. It is difficult to visualize with a brain built on processing only the reality our eyes and ears can see. There is so much more going on in the universe at all levels, we're just not built to perceive it.

I also can't explain this in detail, but I will focus on this one part you wrote.

Our idea that nothing can come out of vacuum and that vacuum is empty is also wrong. At the quantum level matter pops in and out of existence all the time. Matter literally appears out of nothing at the smallest levels and then vanishes again. While it is in existence it can be detected, measured and fully interacts as normal matter would. And then it pops back out of existence or annihilates itself with its antiparticle. These are called virtual particles, but they are very much real.

Virtual particles are indeed real particles. Quantum theory predicts that every particle spends some time as a combination of other particles in all possible ways. These predictions are very well understood and tested.

Quantum mechanics allows, and indeed requires, temporary violations of conservation of energy, so one particle can become a pair of heavier particles (the so-called virtual particles), which quickly rejoin into the original particle as if they had never been there. If that were all that occurred we would still be confident that it was a real effect because it is an intrinsic part of quantum mechanics, which is extremely well tested, and is a complete and tightly woven theory--if any part of it were wrong the whole structure would collapse.

But while the virtual particles are briefly part of our world they can interact with other particles, and that leads to a number of tests of the quantum-mechanical predictions about virtual particles.

Flashes of light can be detected from these virtual particles in a vacuum:

These virtual particles often appear in pairs that near-instantaneously cancel themselves out. Still, before they vanish, they can have very real effects on their surroundings. For instance, photons—packets of light—can pop in and out of a vacuum. When two mirrors are placed facing each other in a vacuum, more virtual photons can exist around the outside of the mirrors than between them, generating a seemingly mysterious force that pushes the mirrors together.

How weird is that? Photons that pop out of nothing can accumulate and exert a force on a real object. In a vacuum. I can't explain all this, but I find it #ing cool.

a reply to: ErosA433

As you likely guessed, I"m nothing more than a ''pop'' physicist, here 'pop'' refers to a general lay person making nearly vane attempts at understand it all and not the ''Big Pop'' that preceded inflation. Mostly I enjoy reading or listening to the history of physics were this guy or group says this and that guy or group says that. From all of that comes a low grade appreciation of the work and ingenuity that goes into these studies in depth, as it appears you do.

Thanks for that reply, I'll drop it in my collection pot and let it simmer with the rest of my stew.

Anti particles should be thought of as yet to be formed instead of tearing them apart to proto... reversing the fusion is a stupid waste of energy and not a conservation of it at all if one looks at newtons conservation of energy then it proofs but lets just waste all of the energy that went into making h2O that we didnt use by reversing it with way more energy that we do produce...

When we keep saying we have limited resources and then use those resources as if those already present are infinite here to un produce all out there? Is as some put it not sustainable... If it takes three years and all the world to make two or three anti particle bits with viable usable energy energy that cannot match what went into it without us? What is the goal... other than finding how much energy it took to fuse oxygen with two hydrogen in reversing that process? for a proto mass.

So hey what is the tipping point of a chain reaction? So say if we put anti particles in a 3 to one container would they convert the particles present not anti to anti at some part per particle? If thats what we are headed for we should probably choose wisely something that inverts that is rare here instead of sitting on a second sun in a lighting flash sort of speed like the abundant ones would when it inverts and converts the others... as we already know happens with the radio active ones in contact with it when forced into a cone point to fuse then split.

Saying that the tons of energy of anti we have put into making anti can get us to the moon is silly as it has taken at least seven amounts of it that could have to make one trip numbers given not accurate but close enough to say way its a dumb way to go looking for Goldilocks that will hit an auto invert like a glow plug that auto ignites at flash... it would in my opinion look like what gets called a "gravity wave" when observed in space. anti matter propulsion

originally posted by: Gothmog

originally posted by: face23785

originally posted by: Gothmog

originally posted by: beyondknowledge2

originally posted by: Spacespider
So what happens when more and more antimatter accumulate on objects in space, will they become more dense or will they create some kind of antimatter bomb ?

The object would have to be all antimatter as the mater and antimatter annialates each other when they contact. You could conceivable have an antimatter asteroid but because space is not a perfect vaccume, it would very slowly disintegrate in this universe of matter.

Good thing modern theory states that anti-matter will only react with its exact opposite.
I.E. iron with anti-iron.

Got a source? I don't mean that in the usual wiseass way, I'm genuinely interested to read about it. It does make a kind of sense.

Sources are all over the place, and explain that theory .
I first saw it on "How The Universe Works", then did research.
And , remember , theories are only theories.
Read my post above .
The very basic of explanations.

I cant find anything on the internet to substantiate your claim. Could you post a link please?

a reply to: Alien Abduct

Hi claim is basically wrong which is why he didnt back it up.

So its true that matter and anti-matter will annihilate, We have observed this to be the case. however his example is fundamentally wrong.

Basically atoms are complex objects made up of many parts (depending on the atom), If you had for example an anti-iron atom, including its anti-electrons. the anti-electrons would annhiliate with any electrons. As for the nucleus, its made of protons and neutrons. These would annihilate with any anti-protons and -anti neutrons (tho thats a tricky one).

yes it would take a whole anti-iron or the same number of protons and neutrons to eventually turn it all into gamma radiation, but yeah