Antigravity gets first test at Cern's Alpha experiment

What the?

Just seen this on the BBC website:

Article

Researchers at Cern in Switzerland have proved the merits of a way to test antimatter as a source of the long-postulated "anti-gravity".

I've never even heard of this, didn't even know such tests were even happening...

It's the first time that anyone has even been able to talk about doing this

Antigravity? wow really had to double take at the article here, I know its early days but...

reply to post by roughycannon


I'm always amazed at the discovers that CERN has made. Chalk up another one for this amazing project.

Perhaps antimatter pushed itself away from all the regular matter. That would create large voids in the universe. But would antimatter atoms attract themselves to each other? Would they emit photons but with the electric and magnetic fields in the opposite hand (left handed vs. right handed)?

Oh man, I would give you a hundred S&Fs for this if I could!

Way cool post,I hope I live long enough, to live my Firefly dreams!

Take me out to the black, tell 'em all I ain't coming back...

reply to post by terriblyvexed


I nearly spat my coffee on my keyboard when I seen the title...

The experiment actually goes beyond a "simple" search for anti-gravity.

There is some theoretical work which shows that the effects of gravity produced by normal matter would repel antimatter. This experiment could have helped to validate this work, based on CPT invarience. An intriguing concept which posits symmetry with nuclear particles in; electrical charge, spatial coordinates, and time.

As expected however, and as other experiments have demonstrated, proof of CPT symettry would seem to be an elusive beast.

arxiv.org...
www.lbl.gov...

reply to post by Phage


I honestly always thought of antigravity as science fiction, didn't realise it was scientifically being explored at all...

Been reading a few things and I understand they are trying to see how antimatter and gravity interact and the hope is that it would have the opposite effect... antigravity.

I know it early days and these are just tests but still exciting to read things like this!

So can they make antigravity yet, or are they just attempting too?

reply to post by roughycannon

Been reading a few things and I understand they are trying to see how antimatter and gravity interact and the hope is that it would have the opposite effect... antigravity.

I think the idea is a fairly recent interpretation of symmetry. The idea is to see if symmetry applies (or does not) to Einstein's theory. Evidence of antigravity (of this form) would show that it does. This experiment was inconclusive though.

Symmetry in general relativity (if actual) may also help to explain the expansion of the Universe...except that antimatter isn't invisible.

reply to post by jjsr420

They weren't attempting to "make" antigravity. They were trying to see if antimatter is repelled by gravity instead of attracted to it.

The results were inconclusive.

reply to post by Phage


Phage just trying to get my head round this, theres not a lot of info about what I'm trying to think about.

If antimatter has the opposite effect on gravity, repelled instead of attracted then if in the future they could store antimatter as a fuel, then the propulsion would come from the antimatter repelling away from gravity?

If so this wouldn't work in deep space, you would need something producing gravity to repel against ie. a planet...

reply to post by roughycannon

The concept of using antimatter as fuel is not for its (possible) antigravity effect, it's because of the amount of energy released when antimatter meets matter.

If so this wouldn't work in deep space, you would need something producing gravity to repel against ie. a planet...

Well, there is gravity in space (that's what keeps the Earth in orbit around the Sun afterall) so if you had a spacecraft made of antimatter (and this theory works) you would be repelled but it would be sort of like a billiard ball in the near term, getting shoved away from this planet then that planet and all the time away from the Sun.

reply to post by Phage


What I mean phage is using it for interstellar travel, just like an ion engine the effect is small but over time the craft would pick up speed, the effect would be so small that the planets gravitational effect would be negligible basically our own sun would repel the craft out of the solar system, it would use no fuel just antigravity.

That why I asked about deep space because once out of the gravitational effects or our solar system the craft would keep going at a constant speed, point it towards Proxima Centauri eventually as it entered Proxima Centauri system the antigravity effect would slow it down as it neared the star.

Turn the craft around do the same again and bring it back...

Might be getting ahead of myself lol

Obviously the voyagers recently left the solar system so it would take while, but I dunno what kind of speed could achieved this way...

reply to post by roughycannon

Obviously the voyagers recently left the solar system so it would take while, but I dunno what kind of speed could achieved this way...

Well the acceleration would decrease the further away you got (and wouldn't be much to begin with, anyway). But if you were traveling from one galaxy to another you'd have a problem with approaching your destination. You'd begin accelerating away from it when its gravitational influence exceed that of your home galaxy.

Also, you wouldn't have a lot of say about the direction of acceleration.

I don't think it would work galaxy to galaxy, as for controlling direction some thrusters to aim it and point it in the right direction would be enough, take enough fuel to make corrections on the way, an ion engine would suffice because of the large distances.

Also what would the terminal velocity be in the vacuum of space? would there even be one? would it not keep accelerating until it escaped our sun's gravity?

reply to post by roughycannon

Star to star, galaxy to galaxy. Same principle. Same problems. Same problems as with gravity...but backwards.

Also what would the terminal velocity be in the vacuum of space? would there even be one? would it not keep accelerating until it escaped our sun's gravity?

There is no terminal velocity in space (except for the speed of light). Your antimatter spaceship is being repelled by the Sun's gravity remember? There is no need to escape it. The closer you are to the Sun the greater the acceleration away from it.

But how are you going to build your antimatter ship? A lot of matter in the Solar System. That becomes problematic when you're trying to make something out of antimatter. The solar wind is matter. It would eat up your ship as you build it, atom by atom. Messy and produces a lot of radiation at the same time.

But I think antimatter can be put to better use. If you can gather and contain enough antimatter to make the antigravity effect useful you can do a lot more with it than just using it to "fall" away from a gravity well. Make an engine. Mix a bit of matter with a bit of antimatter and you create enough energy to maintain acceleration for about as long as you want. That acceleration won't decrease according to the inverse square law as you leave the gravity well. You accelerate to the turnpoint, flip, and start slowing down.

reply to post by roughycannon


Do a search for Viktor Schauberger and Richard Miethe(amongst others) they were involved in anti-gravity research during the 1930's/40's,So nothing new here,apart from the method!

Well the main goals of the Alpha experiment has always been the creation and trapping of antimatter. I went to a seminar by one of the collaborators and it was a very interesting and amazing concept on how to mix and hold onto antimatter. The main challenges are cooling and containment.

You create both the anti-protons and the positrons using accelerators, Positrons can be made in another way though if memory serves, they still use an accelerator. You then need to cool both, and by cool i mean slow them down while maintaining them in packets. This is quite tricky, more so than accelerating them.

Once this is done, the two are pushed into a storage well, basically you try and create a magnetic potential that will hold onto the positrons, and anti protons, you allow the positrons to fill an inner potential and then you allow the anti-protons to oscillate through them (i think using RF) but basically the efficiency of the trapping is all to do with the cooling of the two groups and the controlled mixing such that you end up with anti-matter contained within a penning trap that have little momentum.

The experiment went from trapping a handful for a minute amount of time, to trapping thousands for periods of seconds, it hink now even greater... very very interesting experiment.

reply to post by Phage


Sorry to interject my singular humor...

But your description makes me wonder if we need to search for dilithium crystals for the matter/antimatter mixture chamber...