2023-09-27 17:00:12
The installation of the Alpha-g experiment in the hall of the Cern antimatter factory. CERN
Common experience teaches us a principle of common sense: we fall downward. But physicists like to play with common sense and dare the unthinkable. What if there existed objects that do not fall downwards but upwards, or even that do not fall at all? More knowledgeably, does the force of gravity, the effect of which we know on ordinary matter, act in the same way? on its cousin antimatter, a mirror image of the first. In antimatter, the electrical charges of the particles are reversed, while the masses remain the same. A proton in the nucleus becomes a negatively charged antiproton and an electron orbiting it becomes an anti-electron, positively charged.
So would a feather of antimatter fall as fast as a feather of matter? The answer finally came, in the form of an article in the journal Nature from September 27: antimatter does not fall upward. Gravity, known to attract masses of ordinary matter together, is not repulsive to antimatter.
“Antimatter Factory”
“We are the first to have done this experience, which represents thirty years of effort. Many thought the anti-atoms would fall downward, but we were prepared to see otherwise. Even if this is ultimately not the case, seeing the result we were radiant”, summarizes Jeffrey Hangst, researcher at the University of Aarhus (Denmark), author of this original study and head of the Alpha-g collaboration, based at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and with 70 members. This European center is the world leader in the field, with a building called the “Antimatter Factory” which houses six experiments devoted to the study of this substance.
“It is one of the most important fundamental physics experiments that has been carried out”explains Stefan Ulmer, head of the “Antimatter” program at CERN, and head of another experiment, BASE. “I take my hat off to them. A magnificent result »appreciates Patrice Perez, co-responsible for another experiment at the antimatter factory, GBAR. “It had never been done. Antimatter has been tested in the high energy domain. We know it in electromagnetism, but not in gravitation”adds Bruno Mansoulié, another member of Gbar. “Finding the slightest difference in behavior between matter and antimatter would be revolutionary, because the theory of general relativity would then be compromised”rappel Jeffrey Hangst.
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