It’s a fundamental law of physics that even the most ardent science-phobe can define: matter falls down under gravity. But what about antimatter, which has the same mass but opposite electrical charge and spin? According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravity should treat matter and antimatter identically. Finding even the slightest difference in their free-fall rate would therefore lead to a revolution in our understanding. While the free fall of matter has been measured with an accuracy of around one part in 100 trillion, no direct measurement for antimatter has yet been performed due to the difficulty in producing and containing large quantities of it.
In a paper recently published in the journal Nature Communications Physics, the AEgIS collaboration at CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator (AD) reports a major milestone towards this goal. Using new techniques developed in 2018, the team demonstrated pulsed production of antihydrogen atoms, which allows the time at whi
Michael-doser
Nature-communications-physics
Physics
Cern
Large-hadron-collider
Lhc
High-energy-physics
Particles
Science
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