Physicists observe 'negative mass'

[Biskit]

Physicists have created a fluid with "negative mass", which accelerates backwards when pushed.

In the everyday world, when an object is pushed, it accelerates in the same direction as the force applied to it; this relationship is described by Isaac Newton's Second Law of Motion.

But in theory, matter can have negative mass in the same sense that an electric charge can be positive or negative.

The phenomenon is described in Physical Review Letters journal.

Physicists observe 'negative mass' - BBC News

 

[psikeyhackr]

Does negative mass mean anti-gravity?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Does negative mass mean anti-gravity?

Ooh, good call. Could be the beginnings of.

 

[tinkerdan]

If you push something and it accelerates in the opposite direction. Assuming the force would be equal or maybe less then that applied, wouldn't that look like putting on the brake and pushing the accelerator. No anti-gravity there; more like stopidium or stickidium or perhaps sticky matter.

That might come in handy if you needed something to stay in place but couldn't glue it down.

 

[mosaix]

Fascinating science!

 

[Lumens]

Finally we will have punching bags that punch back!

 

[Ursa major]

Does negative mass mean anti-gravity?

I'm rather surprised that gravity wasn't mentioned, if only to say that no noticeable effect due to gravity had been observed and that this was to be expected, given how weak gravity is.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I'm rather surprised that gravity wasn't mentioned, if only to say that no noticeable effect due to gravity had been observed and that this was to be expected, given how weak gravity is.

The abstract, although not too clear on exactly what they were doing, does state that they created something with negative effective mass.

I think this means that they created a model physical system that can, if you squint at it, has behaviour in it that can be explained if you assign a negative mass to it. They have not made anything with real negative mass. Hence gravity, being a function of real mass, is not effected here at all.

The closest thing I can think of that is similar are the physical 'models' they did with microwaves (I think) that mimicked black holes. They didn't make a black hole but they could set up an experiment that gave analogous results to what they think a real black hole does. Which is sometime preferable to making a computer crunch numbers and trying to get results from a purely theoretical approach.

 

[thaddeus6th]

And here was I thinking this was a story about Victoria Beckham...

On-topic, fascinating and freaky stuff. I do like science news. We've had this, the superblack pigment (I forget the name), and the magnetic rocket fuel all quite recently. Science is one of the few areas of news where the good stuff seems to outweigh the bad.

If anyone missed it, this rocket fuel video is rather fun to watch:
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[Stuart Suffel]

The important thing is critical mass.

In the village where I come from, mass is truly truly, critical.

 

[Parson]

The important thing is critical mass.

In the village where I come from, mass is truly truly, critical.

It's good to see a good Catholic village from time to time.