For the first time, an international team of scientists have directly observed that antimatter – the mysterious counterpart to ordinary matter – free-falls under gravity, answering a question which has been the subject of endless speculation among the scientific community.
If Sir Isaac Newton was watching an apple made from antimatter fall from a tree, would it go up or down?
“The result is a technical tour de force given the difficulty of measuring the effect of gravity – a force much weaker than most people realize – on just a small collection of antihydrogen atoms,” Menary said. Antimatter is composed of particles with the opposite charge of the corresponding particles that make up matter. All subatomic particles have an anti-twin , and if regular particles come into contact with their anti-twin, they annihilate, producing energy in the process.
“To find a solution for this conundrum, what we do is test the elements of physics of antimatter to see if we can find an inconsistency. In this case, we tested to see if the gravitational characteristics of antihydrogen mirror those of hydrogen, which is significant because it’s never been done before.
Once they had enough particles, it was time to release them from the trap and watch gravity take over. “We just don’t know what it is. There has been a lot of speculation on what happens if you drop antimatter, though it’s never been tested before now because it’s so hard to produce and gravity is very weak.”
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