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scurvydog-uldum t1_iu846yt wrote

Reply to comment by Xaxafrad in TIL that antimatter is made with antiprotons, which are the opposite of protons, with a negative charge, antineutrons with a neutral charge and positrons, which are the opposite of electrons, with a positive charge. by Doomguy2021

does antimatter weigh the same as matter, or would that be an antigram?

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Xaxafrad t1_iu84h3j wrote

There's absolutely no difference in mass or gravitational effect.

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scurvydog-uldum t1_iu84l82 wrote

c'mon, work with me here.

how are we supposed to get anti-gravity generators if antimatter has positive gravitational effect?

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onewobblywheel t1_iu8yfgd wrote

Source?

I don't believe anyone had proven that. It's an open question.

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SoItWasYouAllAlong t1_iu9znvn wrote

For a source, you can try: Wikipedia -> positron -> mass.

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onewobblywheel t1_iub1huy wrote

Mass and weight are different things. Mass relates to inertia, not necessarily gravity. (things can have the same mass on Earth and the Moon and Mars, but weight different amounts on all three planets -- yes, planets.)

To the best of my knowledge, no one has measured how antimatter is affected by gravity. No one has made enough of it to do that. It's still an open question.

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SoItWasYouAllAlong t1_iub4ne7 wrote

>Mass relates to inertia, not necessarily gravity.

Where are you getting this? No experiment has ever unambiguously demonstrated any difference between inertial and gravitational mass. This of course doesn't say much about antimatter, which has not been experimentally covered wrt gravity.

But anyhow, on your main point - my understanding is the same. Until someone actually measures antimatter's reaction to gravity, it's anybody's guess. IIUC, we have a good model for the makeup of antimatter of quarks, but that doesn't suffice, since we don't have a quantum model of gravity.

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onewobblywheel t1_iubeiee wrote

>No experiment has ever unambiguously demonstrated any difference between inertial and gravitational mass

You're confused. Inertia and gravity are fundamentally different things,

mass is a property of a thing that causes it to resist changes in velocity.

Gravity is the interaction of two things, currently assumed to be the result of their warping of space-time.

Matter and Antimatter can have the same mass and same inertia, but what if antimatter warps space-time in the opposite direction of regular matter? Instead of a dimple, it makes a bump ???

No one knows.

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