Can we make minus mass?

[D H]

Science doesn't work by pulling nonsense out of the clear blue sky, alpha2. There are three kinds of mass to consider, inertial mass, passive gravitational mass, and active gravitational mass. What is the physical meaning of your inherent mass? Until you can say what this means physically, and how and why it is something other than inertial mass or either flavor of gravitational mass, a better name for your inherent mass would be nonsense mass.

 

The inertial mass of an antiproton is the same as the mass of a proton. If it had negative inertial mass physicists would have seen that in particle colliders long ago. Passive gravitational mass is very hard to assess at the atomic level, but experiments have been proposed and (I think) are underway to investigate the passive gravitational mass of anti-hydrogen. That leaves the active gravitational mass of antimatter, and determining whether that too obeys the equivalence principle is, I suspect, a long ways off.

 

That said, a universe in which the inertial mass and passive gravitational mass of a particle and its antiparticle are equal but the active gravitational mass of the antiparticle is negative would be a very weird universe. Energy and momentum would not be conserved.

Edited January 20, 2011 by D H

[swansont]

Are there any problems?

 

What problem does this solve? As D H said, you don't just make stuff up. Models explain what we see/measure and make predictions. Either you have to explain some previously unexplained phenomenon, or you are predicting something new (and preferably both). If what you are predicting is contrary to what is observed, it's wrong.

[alpha2cen]

Science doesn't work by pulling nonsense out of the clear blue sky, alpha2. There are three kinds of mass to consider, inertial mass, passive gravitational mass, and active gravitational mass. What is the physical meaning of your inherent mass? Until you can say what this means physically, and how and why it is something other than inertial mass or either flavor of gravitational mass, a better name for your inherent mass would be nonsense mass.

 

The inertial mass of an antiproton is the same as the mass of a proton. If it had negative inertial mass physicists would have seen that in particle colliders long ago. Passive gravitational mass is very hard to assess at the atomic level, but experiments have been proposed and (I think) are underway to investigate the passive gravitational mass of anti-hydrogen. That leaves the active gravitational mass of antimatter, and determining whether that too obeys the equivalence principle is, I suspect, a long ways off.

 

That said, a universe in which the inertial mass and passive gravitational mass of a particle and its antiparticle are equal but the active gravitational mass of the antiparticle is negative would be a very weird universe. Energy and momentum would not be conserved.

 

I think about the benefit of this new inherent or primal mass.

In the fusion reaction we can calculate the reactant and product mass easily.

m(P) + m( P^-) =0

m(P) + m(p)=~2

m( P^-)+m( P^-)=~2

2m(P)2m(n)+m( P^-)=~3 *Helium+anti-proton

3m(p)3m(n) +m( P^-)=~5 *lithium + anti-proton

 

where m is a mass, fusion energy is released.

I also think that this concept would be tested by many theoretician.

And I wish the experiment of finding mass origin were finished rapidly.

[D H]

alpha2, no energy would result from a proton / antiproton annihilation if the rest mass of an antiproton was the additive inverse of proton's rest mass. We get a huge energy release precisely because both a proton and antiproton have positive rest masses.

 

 

There is nothing in physics that even closely hints at antimatter having negative mass. You are trying to solve a problem that does not exist.

[swansont]

I think about the benefit of this new inherent or primal mass.

In the fusion reaction we can calculate the reactant and product mass easily.

 

We already know how to do this with E=mc^2

[steevey]

They have negative mass squared. They do not violate anything within special relativity, but quantum mechanically they are understood to be unstable and would quickly decay.

 

 

But don't you use the absolute value in quantum mechanics? Otherwise how do you have negative positions and probability?

 

 

[D H]

What ajb meant is that for a tachyon the square of the mass is negative. In other words, the mass is imaginary.