Gravity = negative matter?

[DrDoc]

Symmetry seems to abound in the universe, but no one seems to have pigeonholed gravity, yet. It may soon become abundently clear that I have little background in physics, but that doesn't stop me from wondering about things.

 

It's my understanding that 'virtual particles' somehow spring into existence out of nothingness, they exist for a while, but when each meets its partner they annihilate each other. Using math as anology it seems that 0= -1 + 1. It's only one giant leap to supposing that for any particle there is some anti entity so that when the two are combined the end result is zero. It's only a small step to reverse the process: 0 = something + negative something. Given this, then why can't the gravity from particle 'A' + particle 'A' = 0? Going back to the virtual particles for a moment, could it be that when A (a particle) is created its negative element is also produced? My thought is that all particles having mass that come into existence also have gravity (i.e negative mass).

 

Just wondering if this makes a bad physics idea.

 

Regards,

 

DrDoc

[UncleAl]

Theories of gravitation are literal geometric symmetries. They can be written to ignore handedness (Newton, General Relativity) or detect it (teleparallel gravitation). Both alternatives give identical predictions for everything except opposite parity mass distributions.

 

Photons are their own antiparticles. There are a number of such neutral particles. You cannot combine two physical things and get nothing. Mass-energy, linear momentum, angular momentum, and electric charge are rigorously conserved. Another dozen or so conservation laws are weaker and have well-defined violations. What goes in must come out.

 

The rest of your proposal is an embarassment. (Gravity is not gravitation). One vanishes gravitation in vacuum free fall to get Minkowski space. Does the mass of something change sitting on the surface of the Earth vs. being in ISS FUBAR orbiting 200 miles overhead? if so, then NASA has been needlessly squirting large volumes of hot gases.

[DrDoc]

You cannot combine two physical things and get nothing.

 

I guess my understanding of virtual particle pair annihilation is wrong then?

 

 

Regards,

 

DrDoc

[Coronus]

Okay two points I want to make here....

No 1 is that my physics text book states that gravitational waves start at where ever matter is and ends at infinity...But the universe apparently is finite...This somehow presents a large problem in my mind...A positive charge as a negative charge gravity seemingly has nothing of the opposite...Yer Einstein defines gravity as a pinch in space time and that solves that problem to a certain extend....but if a pinch exists so can an expansion can't it?...

No 2 which is more shaky...Long long time ago I read in a very elementary book on cosmology that at the start of the big bang there was an equal amount of anti matter and matter....And apparently (according to the book)even galaxies made of anti-Matter exists...So is it possible that this anti matter could have anti-gravity...I guess the answer to that is no...It totally contradicts the whole master plan of the universe doesn't it...I'm really just speculation here...

[Jay-qu]

Well what is your understanding? For a start they wont leave nothing, they will leave energy behind.

[Coronus]

Well what is your understanding? For a start they wont leave nothing, they will leave energy behind.

 

It would leave nothing behind I think...It's not like mass is being converted into energy..Its more of cancelling out of each other....Like a possitive charge and a negative charge...The pinch in space time merely cancells each other out....:)

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, DrDoc! Your first non-introduction thread is laudably thoughtful and interesting. :thumbs_up

It's my understanding that 'virtual particles' somehow spring into existence out of nothingness, they exist for a while, but when each meets its partner they annihilate each other.

…

Going back to the virtual particles for a moment, could it be that when A (a particle) is created its negative element is also produced?

What you describe agrees well with present theory – specifically, the generating of a particle with mass, such as an electron, and its antiparticle (a positron), from a massless particle, usually a photon, which is know by the descriptive term “pair production”.

 

When observed, the particles involved in pair production are real, not virtual. In the photon -> electron + positron example, the electron and positron have equal, positive masses, but opposite charge. Since they thus experience magnetic attraction, an unusual event, such as a lucky close pass of an atomic nucleus, is necessary to prevent them from recombining back into a photon identical to the original. The energy of the photon – given by its frequency – is equal to the energy of the positron plus the energy of the electron, which are given by their masses (via the famous E=Mc^2 equation).

 

Antiparticles don’t have negative mass, and are effected by gravity indistinguishably from ordinary particles. (because antimatter has only been observed in very tiny quantities, with gravitational forces beyond present ability to measure, this is not known with 100% certainty, but is predicted by most theory)

 

Weirder than pair production are experiments such as ones that have confirm the existence of the Casimir effect, which imply that empty space – a perfect vacuum – isn’t really empty, but contains virtual particles, that can, through unusual means such as those produced by Casimir effect experiments, be made real. This “sea” of virtual particles is known as vacuum energy. Though most theorists are convinced it exists, there’s no good consensus as to what its density is, with different theorists offering speculative calculations producing results differing by factors of millions or more.

 

One need to tread very carefully around the subject of vacuum energy, because of the considerable sensational and often pseudo-scientific literature involving proposals to exploit effects like the Casimir effect to generate “free energy”. Some reasonable proposals have involved somehow scaling Casimir effect detecting devices, which massed hundreds of kgs and produced about 10^-7 N (0.0000001 kg*m/s/s) of force, into something that would produce useful forces – for example, by replacing massive, precisely machined metal plates with the interior of bubbles in water. Attempt to experimentally confirm the feasibility of these approaches have, to the best of my knowledge, been to date unsuccessful to inconclusive, and controversial.

 

Several theorists, such as Kip Thorne (well known for providing expert technical advice to Carl Sagan during the writing of his novel “Contact”) have worked on theories involving matter with negative mass – usually termed ”exotic matter”. Though most theorists and technologists agree that such matter might allow the construction of amazing things, no one has been able to do better than wildly speculate how one might go about obtaining it.

 

Physics has no shortage of difficult mysteries yet to be explained :) :smart: :)

[DrDoc]

I want to thank everyone for their thoughtful comments, much of whichis way over my head (but I'm trying!).:thumbs_up

 

Part of my problem may be simply semantics, so let me digress and try to map out my query in a different way.

 

 

I hope this diagram displays once I post it.(sorry it all left justifies without the use of the periods (....).

 

 

.....................+LEFT...........................|.......................+RIGHT

........................................................|

........................................................|

....................virtual particle A..............|......virtual anti particle A

.......................with a mass.................|............with a mass

.................... ______|_______________|__________|_____________

...............................|.......................|.................|

...............................V.......................|................V

........................................................|

...................Left handed negative mass |.....Right handed negative mass

........................(= left-handed gravity) |........(=right-handed gravity)

 

.................... -LEFT.....................................................-RIGHT

 

 

I apologize for the obtuse terminology, but I lack the training so have invented my own. I just hope I can construct in your minds my thought.

 

The drawing is a simple matrix: a horizontal line bisected by a vertical one, creating four areas designated +LEFT, -LEFT, +RIGHT and -RIGHT.

Everything above the horizontal line constitutes what I imagine are particles and anti-particles, which in this simple construct all have a mass. Given they have a mass, then each particle, be it matter or anti-matter, also has gravity (depicted below the horizontal line). For simple symmetry's sake they are labeled 'left handed' and right handed', but this distinction is not relevant (I hope).

 

My thought is that when (in this case) virtual particles come into existance (LEFT & RIGHT sides above the line = "mass") in pairs (all that above the line) their associated gravities also come into existance (all that below the line).

 

For everything to go back to its original state (i.e. nothingness, or zero) everything above the line must cancel out with that below the line and everything on the LEFT side must cancel out with everything on the RIGHT side; hence, using my terminology, a four-fold symmetry.

 

Hopefully this explains my original question: " why can't the gravity from particle 'A' + particle 'A' = 0?":confused:

 

Humble regards,

 

DrDoc

[UncleAl]

Horrible mess.

 

Virtual particles are vacuum fluctuations of energy re Heisenberg Uncertainty and knowing the exact energy of the vacuum over time (classically it is zero). Every allowed electromagnetic mode has 1/2 photon of uncertainty. By confining vacuum within an etalon (Casimir effect), a cavity (Rabi vacuum oscillations), around a charged oscillator (Lamb shift)... we alter selection rules and measure finite vacuum fluctuations that must average to zero even over very short tme intervals. They are real even if they do not exist on the average. Nothing, paired stuff, nothing - as long as it is sufficiently quick.

 

Hit a piano key for 10 milliseconds. Dink! On the right (treble) side of the keyboard you get a well-defined tone. 10 milliseconds is 30 cycles of 3000 Hz sound. On the left (bass) side of the keyboard you get mud. 10 milliseconds is 1 cycle of 100 Hz sound. There isn't time to hear the frequency. Over smaller and smaller time intervals higher and higher frequencies, and therefore larger and larger energies, E=h(nu), cannot be accurately measured. Put 2 times 511 KeV through Heisenberg and see how fast you must look to miss electron-positron pair formation. Nothing, paired stuff, nothing.

 

Protons and antiprotons, electrons and positrons, have the exact same measured mass (e.g., particle-antiparticle accelerators, ion cyclotron resonance rings, particle traps, etc.) and magnitude of charge. The differences between matter and anitmatter are defined by the mathematical symmetries of physics put through Noether's theorems to generate conserved observables.

 

Gravitation is not affected, matter vs. antimatter.

 

Quantum mechanics need not make sense to Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics is twice wrong - QM and Relativity. QM need only agree with observation, which it does to about 14 significant figures.

 

Gravitational waves are quadrupolar propagating excitations of spactime. They have nothing to do with gravitational attraction. Gravity waves are the ridges and troughs in bodies of water.

[HydrogenBond]

If matter and anti-matter can form from energy, differing only by charge but not mass (not mass and anti-mass), is it possible that the formation of protons and electron precusors, close to BB, was a type of matter-antimatter that stuck. Like the electron-positron the pair has opposite charge, but in this case the different masses allowes them to exist without annihilation.

 

For example, a neutron doesn't have to split into halves but can form the disproportionate matter-anti-matter pair, i.e, proton-electron, which does not easily annihilate, but instead creates a perpetual dance.

[DarkColoredLight]

This could be a new thread entirly, but I'd like to raise the point in this thread first.

 

From what I'm getting out of this equation 0=-1+1, or even a more complex equation say; 0=-1+1x1/1, is the idea of finding the equilibrium. With bouyancy(+1) being the uplift, gravity(-1+ being the downpull and equilibrium(0) being in the middle of them all.

 

Gravity can be found when a object is in liquid, just as bouyancy (which is a term most used in referance to liquids) can be, for now, found when gases are in gases. ie water falls in air; air rises in water. etc. To find a more complex yet simple way of making matter rise in air can be tackled by someone else with most knowledge in this field. Or, on a later date by yours truely.

 

 

Since I added more to your equation, is only fair for me to elaborate on what I ment. So:

We still have mass(not sure for this one), friction(/1) and velocity(x1) to consider, along with energy to consider. These factors aside, "up" and "down" is only relevent to perception, so anti gravity is, in my opinion, the word for something that has bouyancy in gas.

 

With those factors; mass, friction and velocity in the equation. The way to make the object defy gravity you'll need to manipulate the equation. With every manipulation of one factor you'll have to to counter manipulate another factor, untill the equation works. ie Flying objects.

 

But, defing gravity doesn't imply defining gravity. Just refining materials and combining ideas till the object works for now. Now is now then, and then is now now. I hope this might clear up, or spark some insightful conversations.

 

anti gravity device expected date of completion: 12/21/2012,

DCL

[DrDoc]

Uncle Al: “You cannot combine two physical things and get nothing. “ (Law of conservation), and: “Gravitation is not affected, matter vs. antimatter.”

 

Coronus: “It would leave nothing behind I think...It's not like mass is being converted into energy..Its more of cancelling out of each other....Like a possitive charge and a negative charge...The pinch in space time merely cancells each other out....”

 

CraigD: “Antiparticles don't have negative mass, and are effected by gravity indistinguishably from ordinary particles. “

 

Dark Colored Light: “From what I'm getting out of this equation 0=-1+1, or even a more complex equation say; 0=-1+1x1/1, is the idea of finding the equilibrium. “

 

Folks, Thanks for all you thought and for your replys, but I feel I have not succeeded in presenting my thought very well.

:hihi:

 

I drew the 2x2 matrix in an attempt to show where matter/antimatter exist in this relationship with gravity or “negative matter”. Let me re-state: matter and antimatter exist ABOVE the horizontal line and for the purposes of this discussion are the same (they are matter with mass and gravity).

 

Dark Colored Light came closest to understanding my query: 0= 1 -1, where 1 = a particle with a mass) and -1 = that particle’s gravity. The “pair” I am referring to is the mass/gravity pairing: every particle with a mass has gravity.

 

I am simply wondering “where does gravity come from”? and the equation 0 = gravity + particle seems like a likely place to start.

 

In other words: when a particle (= a mass) comes into existence IT’s gravity also comes into existence, and could it be that the gravity thus created is simply equal to the negative mass of the particle such that if they could somehow be recombined the net result would be nothing?

 

Just wondering, and,

 

regards,

 

DrDoc

[hallenrm]

Interesting discussion indeed! My thoughts after going through it carefully can be summed as follows.

 

Science explains phenomenon after they have been observed through a theory; not the other way around. One does not propound a theory and then go around finding phenomenon to support it. Correct me if I am wrong by citing instances when it has been so! I would be indeed grateful for the enlightenment.

[CraigD]

Folks, Thanks for all you thought and for your replys, but I feel I have not succeeded in presenting my thought very well.

I think I’m following you, DrDoc.

 

Your additional family of “negative gravitational mass” particles seem to match many of the ideas investigated by Kip Thorne (and his army of graduate students/slaves) in the mid 1980s, which he describes at some length in his 1994 book Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, terming it “exotic mater.”

 

”Exotic matter” is a somewhat overused term in particle physics, but generally mean a particle unknown to current theory. So, while interesting to speculate about, such ideas require a significant expansion of existing theory – no easy task, though potentially an engaging one, and one for which more experimental resources are becoming available all the time.