(urth) Wolfe vindicated!

Gerry Quinn gerry at bindweed.com
Tue Dec 6 06:19:59 PST 2011


From: David Duffy 

> Hajdukovic concludes:

> the gravitational properties of antimatter [will] be tested in CERN before 
> the end of the current decade (Kellerbauer et al. 2008) and that the 
> recent theoretical considerations give some support to the gravitational 
> repulsion between matter and antimatter (Villata 2011).

> So, was this idea already floating around in the 60-70's?
It’s been floating around since antimatter was theorised / discovered.  It’s very difficult to test because you really want a heavy antimatter particle with no electric charge, i.e. a cold antimatter atom.  AFAIK they are working on making them.   
It basically kills general relativity if it’s correct (and not before time IMO).  The interesting thing as I see it is that we know energy (e.g. light) is definitely attracted / bent towards the gravitational field of matter.  If the opposite applies to antimatter, this is a huge asymmetry, as there is no anti-light.  If it bends towards both, that’s... puzzling.  
One example of a problem: if antimatter repels matter and you could switch at will between a mix of matter and antimatter and a box of photons, you could switch gravity on and off, because a box of light is definitely attracted to matter.  That seems hard to mesh with the concept of gravity as a long range field.  Though maybe I just discovered how flyers work ;-)
- Gerry Quinn 
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