LHC portal

Does anti-gravity exist? Turns out we don't know.
The question hopes to be answered by the AEgIS experiment at CERN.
They hope to determine if anti-protons fall up in the presence of Earth's gravity.
http://aegis.web.cern.ch/aegis/home.html
One of the experiment collaborators has this video lecture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PXSQjjsPUo

Which brings us to this gentleman with the interesting CV, Massimo Villata.
http://massimovillata.com/about-2/
Who has this idea;
"Antigravity could replace dark energy as cause of Universe's expansion"
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-ant ... nsion.html
Mr. V is a researcher & astronomer at Astronomical Observatory of Turin . He is also a Science Fiction Author.

All very interesting I think.

It sure will be nice to have this confirmed but I am afraid if there was anything "anti-massy" on antiprotons, Tevatron wouldn't be able to function for all the years or they'd have to compensate these effects and therefore would notice already.

Anti-gravity doesn't exist. The only difference between matter and anti-matter is that it is bend in different sideways directions in a magnetic field, and not towards or away from the magnetic field. Or have i got a wrong understanding? Also anti-matter produced by cosmic ray collisions should have a slightly different path, no?

btw that TEDx guy's goaty looks like a soap foam beard

Chelle wrote:Anti-gravity doesn't exist. The only difference between matter and anti-matter is that it is bend in different sideways directions in a magnetic field, and not towards or away from the magnetic field. Or have i got a wrong understanding?

Current understanding is that there is no difference between how matter and anti-matter behave. Anti-matter will bend in the opposite direction to it's matter counterpart due as it has the opposite charge - so the physics stays the same. It's thought (I can probably get away with saying 'expected') that anti-matter falls at the same rate and in the same direction as matter - but we won't know unless we test it

Wouldn't anti-gravity annihilate when it comes in contact with gravity? Having as result that these tests can't be done on earth. Or even more simple that it doesn't exist because such or some effects should have already been noticed as Kasuha pointed out.

All good trekkers know that you keep anti-matter in a magnetic confinement field so it won't touch any matter.

Here's some discussions on the Tevatron settling the question.
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questi ... e-tevatron
Short answer electromagnetic effects mask any gravity signal and no further work was done on the question.

Yes, but it doesn't shield the antimatter off from the gravitational field.

Here is a wiki article on the matter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigravity

I see your Wikipedia article and raise you another Wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitatio ... antimatter

" The gravitational interaction of antimatter with matter or antimatter has not been conclusively observed by physicists. While the overwhelming consensus among physicists is that antimatter will attract both matter and antimatter at the same rate that matter attracts matter, there is a strong desire to confirm this experimentally, given that consensus in science is for this to be true, but the hypothesis still open to falsification. "

So .. in the fullness of time .. we shall see.

Harbles wrote: .. in the fullness of time .. we shall see ..

.. Anti-pigs fly!

And I raise you yet an other Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_pig

Harbles wrote:http://www.flyingpig.com/

I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed there are far better flying pigs than that. And this time I'm not going to provide a link, every geek or geekette (trekkers, trekkies) should know this SciFi classic:

Chelle wrote:Wouldn't anti-gravity annihilate when it comes in contact with gravity?

This isn't about "Anti-gravity", it's about whether the gravitational field acts in the same direction for matter as antimatter or not. We don't attribute the behaviour of anti-matter in a magnetic field to "anti-magnetism"

Harbles wrote:All good trekkers know that you keep anti-matter in a magnetic confinement field so it won't touch any matter.

As do all good physicists

tswsl1989 wrote:

Chelle wrote:Wouldn't anti-gravity annihilate when it comes in contact with gravity?

This isn't about "Anti-gravity", it's about whether the gravitational field acts in the same direction for matter as antimatter or not. We don't attribute the behaviour of anti-matter in a magnetic field to "anti-magnetism"

If I understand you correct, than its about observing a particle flying through a gravitational field and see if it would bend to the left or the right, and not to or away the origin of the gravitational field. That makes no sense, or does it, since everything falls straight to the ground, or are the directions of whirlpools on the northern or southern hemisphere also partly related to gravity and not only magnetism?
And what if antimatter acts differently, than wouldn't it have anti-gravitational properties because every massive particle has a 'regular' gravitational property.

If anti-matter behaves differently in gravity then it would fall upwards through a field that would cause normal matter to fall downwards. This isn't what's expected to happen of course.
It's not about "anti-gravity", it's about the behaviour of anti-matter under the influence of gravity. Very difficult to check, and the expected result is that anti-matter falls down, just like matter.