Anti-Matter Atoms to Address Anti-Gravity Question

For every particle in physics, there is an associated anti-particle, identical in every respect that scientists have yet measured, except that it holds an opposite electric charge.

Current theory holds that, at the birth of the Universe, matter and anti-matter were created in equal amounts. When they meet, however, they destroy each other in energetic flashes of light. The question has remained, then, why did any Universe come into being at all, and why is the one we see overwhelmingly made of normal matter?

One of the characteristics that may differentiate anti-matter is its gravitational behaviour. Most scientists believe that anti-matter will be attracted to normal matter. Others are not so sure; anti-matter may repel - it may “fall up”. That has implications for the question of why the Universe didn’t disappear into a grand flash of light just as soon as it formed. It also might help explain why the Universe is expanding ever more quickly.

It has simply been impossible to test the idea, but researchers at the University of California Riverside are getting closer to addressing the question once and for all.

They have created electron-positron pairs that are in stable orbits around one another - the result is called a positronium. The pairs are kept from bumping into and destroying each other by carefully dumping energy into them to create what are known as “Rydberg states”. 

Like the lanes of an automotive test track, particles can move into different orbits around one another if they reach higher energies, and these Rydberg positronium atoms are spun up to high energies, lasting for a comparatively long three billionths of a second. The team hopes to extend the method, up to a few thousandths of a second, preparing a beam of the artificial atoms and seeing just which way they fall.

To Study Zero Gravity, Levitate Fruit Flies

Scientists who want to study the effects of weightlessness have always had precious few options. There’s the “vomit comet,” NASA’s Weightless Wonder plane that creates a few seconds of weightlessness during parabolic flights. Or they could convince the space agency to actually launch their experiments into the great beyond. 

But there might be an easier and cheaper way: levitation. 

In a recent study, physicist Richard Hill and colleagues used superconductive magnets to levitate fruit flies for an extended period of time, allowing them to study the long-term effects of weightlessness on the insects’ biology. A fruit fly is a far cry from a human, but studying insects in weightlessness here on Earth is much cheaper than doing so inside a satellite 220 miles away in space, and even fruit flies could tell scientists something about how humans and their DNA will react to long-duration spaceflight. 

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Without gravity, flames act in mysterious ways. This artistic image is a composite of three separate flames spreading over paper in microgravity. Each color represents a different chemical reaction within the flame: Blue is caused by chemiluminescence, or the light produced by a chemical reaction, while white, yellow and orange are caused by glowing soot. 

This image, by NASA Glenn Research Center aerospace engineer Sandra Olson, won first place in the 2011 Combustion Art Competition at the 7th U.S. National Combustion Meeting. 

Gorgeous Gravity

These waves between Indonesia (top) and the coast of Australia (bottom) aren’t caused by wind. They’re a direct result of gravity. 

The pattern is of atmospheric gravity waves playing on the surface of the ocean. Atmospheric gravity waves form when buoyancy pushes air up, and gravity pulls it back down. As the air descends in to the low point of the atmospheric wave, it touches the ocean surface, causing rough waters, visible here as long, dark vertical lines. The brighter regions show the crests of the atmospheric waves, because there, the water is calm and reflective.