The study, by scientists at Cern, showed conclusively that gravity pulls antihydrogen downwards and that, at least for antimatter, antigravity does not exist.
“Broadly speaking, we’re making antimatter and we’re doing a Leaning Tower of Pisa kind of experiment,” said Prof Jonathan Wurtele, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re letting the antimatter go, and we’re seeing if it goes up or down.”
Antimatter is a mirror version of ordinary matter, with some basic properties like electrical charge reversed. Antiprotons have the same mass, but a negative charge, while antielectrons (also called positrons) are positively charged.
When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other and produce energy, meaning that in a matter-dominated world like our own, antimatter only fleetingly comes into existence. But most theories predict that equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been produced during the big bang, and the mystery of what happened to all the antimatter is a central question in fundamental physics.
“Broadly speaking, we’re making antimatter and we’re doing a Leaning Tower of Pisa kind of experiment,” said Prof Jonathan Wurtele, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re letting the antimatter go, and we’re seeing if it goes up or down.”
Antimatter is a mirror version of ordinary matter, with some basic properties like electrical charge reversed. Antiprotons have the same mass, but a negative charge, while antielectrons (also called positrons) are positively charged.
When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other and produce energy, meaning that in a matter-dominated world like our own, antimatter only fleetingly comes into existence. But most theories predict that equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been produced during the big bang, and the mystery of what happened to all the antimatter is a central question in fundamental physics.
