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Scientists create fluid with negative mass in lab

JoeBoy101

Member
So to throw it away from you... you pull it towards yourself?

k8DQE_f-maxage-0_s-200x150.gif
 

Koren

Member
Yup, I'm sick of these stupid editorialized headlines. In no way is "negative mass" the same thing as "effectively negative mass"

I really wish there was a fine specifically for journals/papers that sensationalize the shit out of research findings. They do a disservice to the field, as well to potential for public to actually engage with the updates.
I agree...


The best (worst) example was about three years ago... All newspaper began titling about a 15 years old boy (whose) researches on cosmology proved Einstein theories wrong (sic).

The actual story: the boy's father is a researcher, and his son wrote a small Python (IIRC) visualisation tool for his father's equations... the results were confirming anomalies on galaxies distributions. That's another example that shows that old models for Big-Bang are outdated, but that's hardly new...


But you need a catchy headline, and the story gets more and more distorted when it's relayed...
 

Koren

Member
So to throw it away from you... you pull it towards yourself?
Somehow, but assuming you can really do it that way, you get kinetic energy with a negative work. So infinite energy.

So basically, it'll never work that way for normal objects you can hold.
 
Well if you have massive gravitational mass the effect is to warp Spacetime like a black hole. Not sure what happens if you had a powerful negative mass or if such a thing is possible really.

I suppose it would be an anti-black hole.
 

Koren

Member
So what's this for?
Basically, a nice, strange object... They suggest it could be useful for studying cosmological objects like black holes using analogies, since

On our scale, basically nothing. I doubt you can create a macroscopic system with those properties, and even if you could, the behavior come from the energy stored inside, so you already can create similar behaviors using actuators (and energy). I remember playing with a device that would move in the opposite direction when pushed, but there were strings and motors.

It's not just a specific state of the system (or you would get acceleration for free in a space station just by adding another system with negative mass beside... the former pull the latter, the latter push the former, and you accelerate for free in any direction, just move one ball with respect to the other)

By the way, we already have a system that act in a 90° direction of the applied action. It's called a bicycle (gyroscopic effect has this consequence on a fast rotating object)...

Well if you have massive gravitational mass the effect is to warp Spacetime like a black hole. Not sure what happens if you had a powerful negative mass or if such a thing is possible really.
Among other issues, how would such a system even collapse if the effects was "going away when pulled"?
 

Future

Member
So is this going to eventually turn into force field tech? Pushes back bullets and shit?

Also, applying force from the top pushes back equally from the bottom making things hover?

I'm down with this
 

Khaz

Member
Apparent negative mass is super weird.

At first I assumed it would make the object completely impossible to push. Like, as you start pushing, you encounter resistance from the negative mass, the more force the more resistance, to infinity (until you let go). Now I'm thinking the vectors are simply oriented the other way. A negative mass object left on a single plate scale would indicate a weight of zero; to push a -1kg object as if it were a 1kg object, you would need the equivalent force to push a conventional 2kg object. In motion, a negative weight object would have the apparent weight of negweight × -2. I dunno, it's weird.

[edit] like a non-newtonian fluid. Slap it and it's super hard, but push gently and you can dive in it.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
Meryl Streep is all like, "The priest in question has your son!" and Viola Davis explodes with "LET HIM HAVE HIM, THEN!" , leading to Meryl Streep's stunned "wat".

Wait I thought Streep was a bad guy in this movie? (I'm gonna just go read the wiki now...)
 
Fucking stupid sensationalist science "journalism". I bet the study says no such thing.

*reads the study abstract*

"A negative effective mass can be realized in quantum systems by engineering the dispersion relation. A powerful method is provided by spin-orbit coupling, which is currently at the center of intense research efforts. Here we measure an expanding spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate whose dispersion features a region of negative effective mass. We observe a range of dynamical phenomena, including the breaking of parity and of Galilean covariance, dynamical instabilities, and self-trapping. The experimental findings are reproduced by a single-band Gross-Pitaevskii simulation, demonstrating that the emerging features—shock waves, soliton trains, self-trapping, etc.—originate from a modified dispersion. Our work also sheds new light on related phenomena in optical lattices, where the underlying periodic structure often complicates their interpretation."

 

Koren

Member
Apparent negative mass is super weird.

At first I assumed it would make the object completely impossible to push. Like, as you start pushing, you encounter resistance from the negative mass, the more force the more resistance, to infinity (until you let go). Now I'm thinking the vectors are simply oriented the other way. A negative mass object left on a single plate scale would indicate a weight of zero;
I think it would be stranger...

There's two kind of mass: inertial and gravitic (usually, it's the same mass, but I think it's still an open question)

In the example here, the system behave like inertial mass is negative.

* If inertial is negative and gravitic is positive, Earth pull on the object, and the reaction is in the opposite direction, so the object lift and leave the plate... Glue the object to the plate, and it's even stranger: the scale pull the object, that make the object going up ; the object pull the scale, and the scale goes up too ; You'll either have a negative value if the scale is heavier (in absolute value) or you'll see the scale go to space, pulled by the object...

* if both are negative, the object will still go down if left alone above ground, because a=g. When it reach the ground (or the scale), the support reaction produce an acceleration towards the bottom, so something the scale and the ground is crushed, or the object just break.

The results seems completely unbelievable, but remember something: the simple idea of a negative mass break the energy conservation. So you need energy stored inside (it's the case in the experiment, spin energy) so the strange behavior only last till the energy is extended.


So in the first case, you'll see the scale jump a bit, then the object has a positive mass, and in the second, you crush scale a bit, and then the object has a positive mass.
 
Scary if it actual behaves the way the headline makes you think.

Let's say you had a solid block of this stuff (a large block), and you push on it.

And it moves toward you. But you don't want it to hit you, so you put your hands out to stop it. But by doing this, you are pushing it again.

And it moves toward you. So you put your hands out to stop it.

And it moves toward you. So you put your hands out.

And moves toward you, so you put your hands out again, and again, and again!

And so by pushing on it just once, before you know it the large block has you trapped against the wall crushing you to death.
 

Mortemis

Banned
I remember this thread from a while ago and I'm still kinda confused.

So what happens if you throw it down? Does it float up or something.
 

cakely

Member
It only exists in the lab (and probably only for microseconds) but this stuff would also be repelled by the earth's gravity.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
From reading the article this sounds like they had to have a bunch of precise lasers and got some atoms to behave this way. I'm not clear on if the matter is permanently in this state or not.
 

Eusis

Member
It's not that hard. You push Homer's brain towards Flanders, and instead it moves away from Flanders. That's negative matter!

And how they made it negative? I see they used lasers, so "lasers did it" works for me!
So basically this?

pGq8h8R.gif
More seriously I was kind of getting there with the Simpsons joke, I think it's like if you tried to push someone (stronger than you I'd assume) and they don't like being pushed that way so they push back AT you instead as you try harder to push them. Kind of like Homer probably would if you were trying to just shove him to Flanders.
 
Oh yeah, I remember this. As other people said, this is really nothing spectacular, it is only an effective negative mass, not the actual thing.

The fluid is kept confined in a magnetic trap. When the trap is switched off, the normal behavior (positive mass) would be that the fluid's pressure makes it expand. In the region where the mass is effectively negative, it contracts instead.

You may see it in the picture they have in the article
negative_mass03.jpg

The effective mass is just the curvature of the energy function plotted. You see that overall, it still positive, there is only a small region where it is curved downwards, there the "effective mass" is negative.

There would be no way to have the mass be negative over the whole region, it is in fact an unstable equilibrium situation, like a pencil balanced on its tip.
 

Pifje

Member
Oh yeah, I remember this. As other people said, this is really nothing spectacular, it is only an effective negative mass, not the actual thing.

The fluid is kept confined in a magnetic trap. When the trap is switched off, the normal behavior (positive mass) would be that the fluid's pressure makes it expand. In the region where the mass is effectively negative, it contracts instead.

You may see it in the picture they have in the article
negative_mass03.jpg

The effective mass is just the curvature of the energy function plotted. You see that overall, it still positive, there is only a small region where it is curved downwards, there the "effective mass" is negative.

There would be no way to have the mass be negative over the whole region, it is in fact an unstable equilibrium situation, like a pencil balanced on its tip.

Still:

10090ccc4321cad9161f8aa1ac76616e0fa2fe8e71d532183021437ab3bc192a.jpg
 

Koren

Member
It only exists in the lab (and probably only for microseconds) but this stuff would also be repelled by the earth's gravity.
Not if both gravitic and inertial mass are negative...

m a_r = - G m Mt / r² u_r

so

a_r = - G Mt / r² u_r

The "m" factor disappear. The mass has no effect on the effect of earth gravity...
 
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