If Antimatter Is The Opposite Of Matter, Does It Fall Up?
Antimatter Beams Now you know what they look like. John Fowler via Flickr/CC licensedTo find out, physicists go Newton on it, and drop some. Antimatter, the mirror opposite of normal matter, is strange stuff. Particles and atoms of antimatter have the opposite charge of their regular counterparts, and they behave accordingly. When the two collide, you don't want to be nearby--they annihilate each other in a flash of light. Physicists wonder whether they also respond differently to gravity--does antimatter "fall" up? Does it weigh the same as regular matter? Does it exhibit anti-gravity? To find out, physicists at CERN and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory went Newton on it and dropped some. It would make sense if gravity is the same for antimatter and regular matter. But there is no direct evidence proving this. Scientists who work with CERN's ALPHA experiment, an antimatter experiment, tried to measure it in a somewhat roundabout...