Does Antimatter Fall? 

Minor correction to something that was only really implied by the video's editing and not stated: I'm pretty sure PET scanners don't use artificial antimatter bottled in a Penning trap. Instead, they use radioactive isotopes that naturally emit positrons on their own. To be fair, I think those isotopes themselves might be artificially created, but they aren't piping straight antimatter from a particle accelerator into the scanner.

Man, science takes a _long_ time! I talked to scientist at CERN *14 years* ago and he was telling me about this exact experiment they were working on at the time.

Honestly pretty cool. I like it when Einstein is right, homie knew what was up

now make an antimatter star, to see if antimatter curves spacetime the same way matter does?

I'm very VERY sure that PET scanners don't use antimatter in the form it is implied at 2:00. The radioactive tracer molecule just releases positrons during decay naturally. The PET scan measures the annihilation of positrons with electrons, and doesn't handle either.

When I was reading Isaac Asimov as a teenager, I didn't know a "positronic brain" was anti-matter (which I'd heard of thanks to my beloved Star Trek).

3:00 But we already KNOW one of the fundamental forces treats matter and antimatter differently -- the weak force. I don't remember the details off the top of the my head, but for anyone interested, look up "CP [charge-parity] symmetry violations". I believe it was in the '90's that the relevant experiment was done and it was a big deal. Up and Atom did a video about it a few years ago and I think PBS Spacetime did too. This isn't to say that it wouldn't _also_ be a big deal if gravity too interacts differently with matter than antimatter. But it's rather misleading to imply that such a discovery would be the first time we've found evidence of matter and antimatter being treated differently by a fundamental force.

Here's a thought. What if some galactic superclusters are made of antimatter? Could we tell? Since superclusters are generally heading away from every other supercluster, this may limit annihilation events to practically nothing. Since the intergalactic medium is so rarefied, with one atom per meter, or something like that, any annihilation events would be too diffused to be noticeable. I assume the spectra from antimatter and regular matter are identical, unless they found out otherwise.

As only antimatter of the same type that causes the bang I always thought that you just need to make a container made of say just neutrons and you can store as much antiprotons as you want for a long as you need to. Yeah, turns out making the container is kinda hard.

Perfect timing. I was just reading Newtonian Physics, Quantum Physics and General Relativity for Babies. Also Rocket Science. They are brilliantly done for children and adults alike. Now I know that antimatter fits into the picture nicely.

Interestingly, regular old potassium that we have in our bodies and our food is a common source of antimatter as its naturally occurring radioisotope potassium-40 occasionally undergoes positron emission as well as indirectly via pair production of its 1.46 MeV gamma rays!

For anyone confused as to why this would be the same when otherwise antimatter reacts oppositely to most forces, the reason is because our understanding (which this study supports) says gravity isn't a force in the same way that the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces are. It's a distortion of spacetime, and if you apply general relativity it behaves a lot like centrifugal force, in that it only seems to exist as a force when you think about a reference frame which does not reflect reality.

... And here all this made me wonder is if they can make anti-the rest of the periodic table, and then anti water. And then what would happen if someone drank anti water. 😮🤔

I like the idea of having a tower of pizza, leaning or not. 🍕

That video of Commander Scott is a relic of pure amazement.

Anyone else when they said "partical pyschics" finish it "is kind of confusing" and then the rest of hank's song? Lol

When you combine antimatter and matter they SOMETIMES annihilate each other. They need to come together just right. I wish they wouldn’t skip right past those little details.

normally you hear the phrase "someone dropped anti-matter" and your next thought is "oh dang, I hope some of Sweden is still there" lol

I just want to take a moment and highlight that a group of scientists (i prefer Zefrank’s ‘science hippies’ ) created anti-hydrogen atoms from anti matter particles, Then using magnetic fields put them in a position where they could be dropped and measured. In real life. Last year. At times some of the physics being done is beyond mind boggling amazing.

I talked to one of the scientists doing this research at CERN last winter! He had just given a lecture on other properties of antimatter, like the spectographic signature of anti-hydrogen :)

My favorite part of this video is that they brought a feather all the way to the friggin moon

Very interesting. For a long time, I had the idea that maybe gravity had matter and antimatter repel each other but attract themselves, which I thought might explain why our clump of the universe is mostly matter. Sad to hear my little "hypothesis" is wrong, but them's the breaks.

If gravity is weaker for anti-hydrogen, then I don't think it'd be heavy enough to be "Earth shattering". I mean, the Earth doesn't shatter under the weight of regular hydrogen, and there's a little bit more of it!

I always assumed (with no desire to research it) that anti-matter and normal matter would have no gravitational effect on each other and that anti-matter might repel against itself like anti-gravity.

The testing facility literally has a giant sign that says ANTIMATTER FACTORY right over the front door! Another experiment is currently being built elsewhere but I bet they don't have a sign as cool :D

The idea that antimatter experiences inverse gravity becomes really funny when you think about it in the context of Hawking radiation. If Hawking radiation of black holes is real, and if antimatter is repulsed by gravity, then when particle-antiparticle pairings occur at the even horizon, the antiparticle will always be ejected. So black holes would just be slowly radiating waves of antimatter into the universe.

So in an antimatter nucleus, A positron orbits(?) a negatron? Do Electrons actually orbit the nucleus Anyway i mix up Anti- and Dark matter constantly, so I was thinking this was a "Does Dark matter fall?" video and i was confused how theyd even answer that, but now I also want to know - Does Gravity effect Dark matter?

An objects mass is not a part of its charge, and is not tied to its charge. Therefore (as far as we know) anti-matter will get pulled by gravity the same as "regular" matter.

Seems like that shows the potential energy stored in both matter and anti-matter is the same. Or at least in regards to that potential vs. the vacuum background for the same volume of space. If I had to hazard a guess, the acceleration due to gravity is a gradient curl effect in relation to the potential energy stored in mass vs. the resistive and/or permittive properties of a vacuum. (Everyone knows mass is the ball in the rubber sheet analogy, but the vacuum constants in some aspect define the tension of the rubber sheet itself. Perhaps that's the part that could use more looking at?) The only way to get negative gravity would be to have negative (potential?) energy vs. the vacuum background. But that seems like a particular trick in itself, doesn't it?

1:34 "do do" (:

I worked on this experiment

Everytime I hear about antimatter I get excited if it will give me any ideas to write more weird explanations for magic and alchemy in fiction, but still haven't had any sensible ideas

Correct me, if I am wrong. All of the other fundamental fields treat particles differently, depending on their charge in the respective field. If I send for instance an electron and a positron on the same trajectory through an electric or magnetic field, they will part ways and travel in different directions. But whatever I send on the same trajectory through a gravitational field will run the same path, if not disturbed by other non-gravitational fields.

The visible universe has been found to have an overall orientation and spin bias. I would suggest that that is the real reason our part of the universe is dominated by matter. Elsewhere, in the vaster universe, there would no doubt be other local areas that are dominated by the opposite spin giving them a preponderance of antimatter.

We still need to confirm experimentally that antimatter exerts gravitational force on OTHER antimatter to the same degree as matter does: the force of gravity between two masses is proportionate to their shared mass. So, suppose matter exerts an attractive gravitational force on matter and antimatter alike, whereas antimatter exerts a repulsive gravitational force on matter and antimatter alike. The force of Earth's gravity in the experiment would produce identical results to what we've observed, because there's a negligible difference between if the the relatively miniscule mass of the antihydrogen was attractive or repulsive.

One thing not tested by this experiment is if how antiparticles interact with each other. If antiparticles repel each other it could explain why we are not seing stars and anti stars collide in crazy flashy annihilations. I guess it’d be a nightmare to test though. 😅

So thing go down And anti-thing go down Lesson: Physics do physic correctly no matter the thing (Haha double t on mater)

It would be nice if the world was made of antimatter. Then a reduction in a redoxreaction would actually make "sense". In the real world a reduction is when an atom GAINS electrons. So yeah something is reduced by gaining something. I know it makes sense because it gains electrons which are negative and its charge is reduced. Still I asked my science teacher if she could please not make all electrons positive and all protons negative, so it is easier to remember.

I wonder why I don't hear about the possibility that it really is 50-50 matter, just simply beyond observable distance? Seems reasonable that annihiliating each other means observing matter makes it less likely that antimatter will be observed at all, and the reverse, so distance between the two types would be greater.

ok, we needed to know this. But then, I think we should do many more experiments with antimatter, since its the most powerfull stuff you can bear.

Could some black holes be made of anti-matter and could we design an experiment to help distinguish between them? Another question: assuming that there are anti-matter black holes, what would happen if one of them would merge with a "normal" black hole and have we observed any unexplained phenomena that could be associated with this hypothetical scenario?

1:33 DOO DOOOO!!!!!

I never reflected on how shattering it would be for general relativity if anti-matter didn't fall. GR says gravity is not a force, with those who resist free fall being the ones who are accelerating. So no fall = no equivalence principle because there is no logical way the direction of movement could be reversed in the accelerating rocket ship analogy. It falls or GR is toast.

What would fall up would be Negative Matter, made of Negative energy like the kind you would need to force open a wormhole or other exotic uses

There was a study indicating antimatter behaves the same as matter relative to gravity, about a year ago.

The real Principle of Equivalence is that gravity is indistinguishable from constant acceleration, which is why it acts upon all things the same. It would be weird indeed if you put the anti particles inside their vacuum chamber in an inertial frame of reference (floating somewhere out in deep space) and then accelerated the chamber (from the frame of reference of the chamber the particles should appear to be "falling" toward the bottom of the chamber) but instead they magically started accelerating away in the opposite direction or did not fall as fast as the chamber was accelerated. This would indeed break *everything*.

Galileo only believed that the same materials fall at the same rate. He didn’t write it down but his biographer said that.

I got really into particle physics in the hobbyist sense, I understand generally where we’re at but I’m not a scientist. That being said I see this as checking our numbers, there’s no logical way or reason antimatter would react different to gravity, it’s too fundamental. Put another way, gravity ignores all charges and appears as space-time itself moving. It’s important to note anti-matter is still positive mass, its quanta of energy like positive particles. Gravity is specifically weird because it’s not a force describable with charge interactions, its something as ephemeral as the concept of energy. I understand why these videos exist, most people don’t go down the rabbit hole, but I feel they sometimes give a poor representation of particle physics by being necessarily reductive. Experiments like this sound really cool and ARE very important, the casual viewer may walk away with a more fantastical take however. Its less a big discovery and more another dead end, only reinforcing the question. These theories correctly can predict everything but eachother, what could we possibly still be missing? Thank you for reading if you bothered ❤

The charges are opposite, but the mass is not.

well that pokes a hole my favourite theory; that antimatter and matter were gravitationally repulsive, kinda inverse of electricity, so that like charges attract, and opposite charges repel each other, so matter is attracted to matter and antimatter is attracted to antimatter, but electrically neutral masses of matter and antimatter would repel each other, so that matter and antimatter galaxies would never come into contact with each other, and the universe would be occupied by two distinct, interwoven, but never interacting, spiderwebs of galaxy clusters

If “gravity” tugs on an `anti-matter` particle at roughly the same direction and rate of acceleration as a regular `matter` particle, then obviously the SOURCE of that gravity is the same, as well, albeit in a different state of gravity than the “flavor” of gravity that affects regular matter. Think “water” versus “ice” versus “steam”. Same #Agua! Same #Gravitron! 😊 5:52

yes

I'm glad the test ended up negative, otherwise we would currently be on a mad hunt for the AntiHiggs particle or... something. I mean that would be fun and all but we can't solve a puzzle if we keep adding pieces to it *forever.*

Si that's what a positron is! Was Data a walking bomb, then? I wonder why they didn't write an episode exploring that possibility.

I'm guessing, yea To slightly expand, anti-matter has mass, gravity and mass interact, so yea

I'm glad this was tested!

if anti matter falls down, maybe an anti anti matter will fall up

Well, there goes that rocket propulsion idea. 😁😁

I think it would be better to discover that antimatter actually falls up, since it would mean that we have to rethink everything we supposedly know and start over. It would be hard, but at least we won't be stuck in the hole we are right now about the the theory of everything.

1:34 Heh heh. He said *do do.*

We’ve made containers for antimatter, right? Why build this whole machine when simple chem 1 stuff can test the gravity of antimatter. Weight is the effect of mass from gravity, and antimatter, I think many physicists can agree is matter, it’s the same stuff. So simply take say a 1 kg antimatter capsule and fill it with the little antimatter it can hold, let’s call it 1 gram. Put it on the scale. If the scale says 999, it’s going up, 1001 it’s going down. Another thing, it’s certainly going down, 100% of normal gravity. It’s important to note that atoms aren’t affected by gravity, the smaller parts are, the protons and electrons are attracted individually, and that may be true if individual quarks too. I’m not sure, but it doesn’t matter. I’m willing to bet that those antimatter particles released in that contraption were going really really really fast, much faster than gravity, to the point that it didn’t matter as much, which is why 20ish % went up, and I know the video kind of says that, but I’m willing to bet that the relation between the velocities incurred by the atoms bumping and by gravity are in similar proportion to a 20 80 split. That doesn’t mean gravity was 4 times stronger, rather after all the calculus is done, and formulas to the nth degree are used to approximate the motions of the antimatter, it results in a 1:5 split. I’m high, and high people pull crap out of their ass. Probably will delete tomorrow if I remember.

The way you refer to positrons is funny. The man who verified them named them that and PET scans would be called AET scans according to you.

I have a possible solution to dark matter/energy. If I'm wrong, would you be able to tell me why? Dark Matter solution (possibly?). What if the missing mass isn't from more atoms? Since interaction with the Higgs field is what gives things mass and that's due to subatomic particles. What if other places in the universe have higher numbers of subatomic particles per atom, or different ratios of subatomic particles that interact with the HIGGS field per atom? Could there be subatomic particles outside of atoms interacting with the higgs field, in a "non-visible through radiation" cloud in inter stellar/inter dimensional space, throwing all the models off? Alternatively, or additionally, is it possible for those subatomic particles to exist in the centers of the galaxies, or even black holes, without being contained in an atom? Or, if there's missing mass in planets, perhaps it's in the center of them? Related to this, black holes are supposed to be infinitely dense because gravity crushes everything infinitely small once a run away density is reached, yet the argument underpinning the "big bang" is that matter was crushed to closely, which created too much heat and energy Another idea: what if something stretches, or HAS stretched the HIGGS field, particularly if it happens unevenly, and thus differing interactions with it we see as gravity "not working" are just stretched in the Higgs field, like gravity warps space time? Also: If we don't have an explanation for uneven stretching in our universe, could it be from something occuring in the other dimensions predicted by string theory? I've also long wondered if some of the "missing" impact of gravity that I've been told happens, is due to it being stretched acroas multiple dimensions, perhaps some "dark matter" is this gravity bleeding back over from other parallel dimensions, possibly with the Higgs field as an intermediary somehow????

I can't imagine gravity would affect antimatter any differently if light doesn't. Not to equate light and gravity, but it seems odd to think gravity waves would somehow act differently when it hasn't been observed that light waves do (or different enough).

1:34 you said doo-doo

No, this 𝘪𝘴 new science. We had no real idea before. Now, we do.

Just listening with my eyes closed, this gave off Howard Wolowitz vibes

I don't want to be the dead anti-horse in the room, but need to ask ... since hydrogen is lighter than air and gravity allows it to float off, (UP) how do you go about saying this. At the NASA Lewis / Glenn Research in Cleveland, they vacuum all the air out of a silo, and drop a bowling ball beside a feather, but if you have hydrogen, in a vacuum, you really do not have a vacuum. If you put anti-matter in a vacuum, you really don't have a vacuum either. Since on earth, and even in a vacuum, the negative 'weight' would react the same. Hydrogen floats in gravity. Why wound a hydrogen anti-matter particle 'not' do the same. I watched a video, with a supposed explanation of a bowling ball and a feather on the moon. They said, "They both fall at the same rate, because there is no gravity on the moon." 🙄 WHAT? If there was no gravity, on the moon, neither would fall - this is stupid. There is no 'atmosphere, per say,' on the moon... it is negligible, but hit a golf ball on the moon, and it comes back down. It travels far, but does not leave orbit. Please enlighten me.

I believe the big bang was a collision event between two singularities, one antimatter and one matter. They were semi universe sized, but their mass imbalance resulted in the asymmetry.

If there must be equal amounts of electrons and positrons, then maybe instead of “shoosting “ (green acres quote) across the great unknown, maybe they didn’t make the journey like the highly motivated electrons. I myself would not create a universe so short lived, unless I recorded it then I could watch anytime (would there be time)?

Why would anyone have ever thought that antimatter would behave differently than matter when it comes to gravity? Matter is matter, orientations be damned.

Would anit-helium be stable enough to coexist with standard matter?

If antimatter has positive mass like normal matter. And gravity is the result of spacetime curvature. And falling toward a gravitational source is the result of moving in a straight line with no external forces acting on you in a curved spacetime. Why would anybody think that antimatter won't fall exactly like normal matter? To do so would imply there is some sort of positive and negative gravitational charge, or positive and negative mass charge. There is no evidence of such or theory predicting such.

If all classical observable (except charge) are same. how do we know what star is made of what matters?

If all three of the sub-atomic particles have anti particles, how is a neutron distinguished from an anti neutron? It doesn't have a charge, so there's nothing to reverse? I'm not a scientist so I'm just admitting that I don't understand this point.

What if they made an anti-matter stone and tested?

What if the universe keeps dying and gets reborn after mind boggling amounts of time even after heat death? For example, next big bang the universe will mainly consist of antimatter and what we see as matter will be seen as antimatter by the beings who live there, and the universe before this universe was antimatter as well, but the universe before that one was matter. Makes sense?

If antimatter fell "up" all the antimatter from the big bang wouldn't have been annihilated in the first place, there'd be matter and antimatter systems out there.

it would fall towards itself. And would fall away from matter. We literally see antimatter falling upward in thunderstorms. Does matter fall towards matter, Yes, so antimatter would fall towards antimatter.

Well if there are anti particles of every particle doesn't it stand to reason you would need an anti-higgs boson to apply anti-mass to an anti-higgs field for anti-gravity? And since the universe isn't made of anti-matter even the rare anti-particle is only going to interact with the Higgs Field and thus have normal mass and react to gravity like everything else?

No it pulls in all directions. In terms of our perspecti e on this arth i would say yes matter falls.

If the only difference is switched charge... And the different charged stuff blows up, why don't other different charged stuff blow up too?

Say, if an anti-hydrogen's positron is positive, wouldn't it be attracted to normal matter's electrons? Does anti-matter gravity affect anti-matter like how our normal matter affects normal matter?

Do anti H fuse to produce anti He? What if there are entire galaxies made out of antimatter? Can we know? So far we now a few planets and our sun are made of matter

I noticed that the way atomic particles bouncing off of each other on their way down was described was similar to how this is said to work for particles of sand, or even tennis balls. Does the same hold true for individual sub-atomic particles of all kinds? Or does this only apply to the higgs-boson at the sub-atomic level because only it has the needed mass for gravity-feuled collisions?

If an anti-electron is a positron, does that make anti-proton a conton?

Gravity is not force but a propriety of space-time, or so they say, so how do they expected anything else?

Will it blend?

Antimatter fall down, Mr. Bond.

0:10 this needs to be gif’ed by someone immediately

Great video about mavity.

until now, scientists still don't fully understand gravity.

Are there antiphotons? If, at the edge of the observable universe, there was a switch from Matter protogalaxy to Antimatter protogalaxy, would we be able to tell since all we have is redshirted light to see them with?

I find it ironic how scientists say that there had to have been an imbalance of matter to antimatter in the big bang and then be completely open minded to the idea that it can fall up, but what do I know.

What is charge

Well i can explain some thing about anti matter if we had a anti matter black hole AKA white hole it pushes matter and anti matter if anti matter was on a orbit of earth it will get ejected like a star pasing by our system

Both matter and anti matter has +ive mass. We need anti mass of -ive mass

Doesn’t the fact that the ratio of anti-hydrogen that fell through matched their simulation confirm that they react 100% with gravity like normal matter and not 50% or 80%. I mean, if it was only like 50% then surely 50% less anti-hydrogen would have fell through according to their simulation.

Antimatter has the same weight as it's normal matter counterpart, just a different charge; so what is the point of the experiment again? Why was research money even spent on this when it could have been spent on answering questions that we don't have an answer to? Antimatter is just matter but with an opposite charge of what it should have. As far as why there wasn't an equilibrium of matter and antimatter and why the universe wasn't entirely annhilated right after the BB; while I'm not a scientist or astronomer, I suspect that one of the reasons why we see voids in space is due to the way the resulting matter was distributed after all/most antimatter was dispatched. Maybe they could have used the money from this experiment to run simulations to try to see if that theory held up instead. Or make AI-generated cat selfies and videos and post them on the internet.

cool