Gravitational force between matter and antimatter

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
7 replies · 2K views
Messages
6,002
Reaction score
2,629
What is the current scientific consensus on the gravitational force between matter and antimatter. Is it repulsive, attractive or zero?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Antiparticle of photon is itself and photons attract.
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Delta2
Yes, it is clearly predicted to be attractive, but this has not been experimentally tested yet.
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: vanhees71 and Delta2
Dale said:
Yes, it is clearly predicted to be attractive, but this has not been experimentally tested yet.
But, we've made antimatter... didn't anybody notice if the stuff tended to fall down, or up ?
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: vanhees71
hmmm27 said:
But, we've made antimatter... didn't anybody notice if the stuff tended to fall down, or up ?
No. The antimatter that we have made is charged and it is hard to get a region where the EM field is so small that you can see which way it falls under just gravity.
 
Dale said:
No. The antimatter that we have made is charged and it is hard to get a region where the EM field is so small that you can see which way it falls under just gravity.
Actually, we have made neutral antimatter, but I think that their gravitational properties haven't been studied yet.
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: vanhees71, Dale and Delta2
If one believes the press releases, various experiments might be getting close to measuring the gravitational properties of antimatter (compared to matter) at good accuracy. Check out the following article:

AEgIs -- Cern Courier Feb 2021
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: andresB, vanhees71, Dale and 1 other person