Objects placed above the ring reportedly lost up to 2 percent of their weight, independently of their composition. This curvature cannot be 'turned off' by imposing additional magnetic and electrical forces, such as those present in a superconductivity experiment. Even if one assumes that some poorly known quantum effects could affect the amount of magnetic flux contained in the superconducting ring, or in materials placed above the ring, the fact that mass and energy curves the space around them still holds true.
Also conceivable are measurement error or poor control of the many variables in the experiment. Were the materials pure? Was the balancing instrument affected by the magnetic field below it? How well was the magnetic field in the material above the disk measured? Did the spinning disk which turned at 5, revolutions per minute cause any vortices of air or gas that may have provided the buoyant force? Without detailed knowledge of the experiment, one cannot draw definite conclusions about the claim of antigravity.
It turned out that one problem was that the original experimenters failed to stir their calorimeter thoroughly. And remember the Fifth Force? A book entitled Rise and Fall of the Fifth Force, by Allan Franklin [American Institute of Physics, ], makes interesting reading about the types of issues that bear on the quality and repeatability of experiment, as well as the interpretation of data.
Unfortunately, 'the Devil is in the details,' and the conclusions of the experiment rest on these details. The lay public must rely on reports that refer to peer review of the experiment and original sources. In the antigravity experiments, no such peer review appears to be available, and therefore the conclusions, at this time, cannot be supported.
Sign up for our email newsletter. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. A popular science fiction trope is the spinning spacecraft that creates artificial gravity via centripetal force, such as the one depicted in the movie A Space Odyssey. The logic behind this plan is sound, but to create gravity similar to that on Earth, such a spacecraft would have to be much larger than any spacefaring vehicle ever built.
For now, we might as well enjoy the antigravity aspect of space travel, which is good for, among other things, some very weird yo-yo tricks. She has a bachelor's degree in astronomy and physics from Wesleyan University and a graduate degree in science journalism from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter. Credit: Nick Higgins. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Go Paperless with Digital. Antimatter may be that mass, but we don't yet know, experimentally.
Currently, t here is no such thing as a gravitational conductor. On an electrical conductor, free charges live on the surface and can move around, redistributing themselves in response to whatever other charges are around. If you have an electric charge outside an electrical conductor, the inside of the conductor will be shielded from that electric source. But there's no way to shield yourself from the gravitational force.
There's no way to set up a uniform gravitational field in a region of space, either, like you can between the parallel plates of an electrical capacitor. The reason? Because unlike the electric force, which is generated by positive and negative charges, there's only one type of gravitational "charge," and that's mass-and-energy. The gravitational force is always attractive, and there's simply no way around that.
Schematic diagram of a capacitor, where two parallel conducting plates have equal and opposite This configuration is impossible for gravity, unless there's some form of negative gravitational mass.
But if you have negative gravitational mass, all of that changes. If antimatter actually anti-gravitates, falling up instead of down, then gravity sees it as though it were made of anti-mass or anti-energy. Under the laws of physics that we currently understand, quantities like anti-mass or anti-energy don't exist.
We can imagine them and talk about how they would behave, but we expect antimatter to have normal mass and normal energy when it comes to gravity. If anti-mass does exist, though, then a slew of great technological advances, imagined by science-fiction writers for generations, would suddenly become physically possible. True artificial gravity would require something to behave with negative mass. We could even create warp drive, since we'd gain the ability to deform spacetime in exactly the way that a mathematical solution to General Relativity, discovered by Miguel Alcubierre in , requires.
The Alcubierre solution to General Relativity, enabling motion similar to warp drive. This solution It's an incredible possibility, one that's considered wildly unlikely by practically all theoretical physicists. But no matter how wild or tame your theories are, you must absolutely confront them with experimental data; only through measuring the Universe and putting it to the test can you ever accurately determine how the laws of nature work.
Until we measure the gravitational acceleration of antimatter to the precision necessary to determine whether it falls up or down, we must keep ourselves open to the possibility that nature might not behave as we expect. But if that's the case, a whole new world of possibilities will be unlocked. We could change the currently-known limits of what humans can create in the Universe.
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