It is pointed out that the greatest hope for realizing warp drive has disappeared as it became clear that antimatter falls according to gravity
In order to create a practical 'warp drive,' it was necessary to have the existence of antimatter and the basic premise that antimatter must have antigravity. However, as a result of experiments using antimatter by a research team at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), it was observed that antimatter falls according to gravity, leading physicist Ethan Siegel to question the feasibility of warp drive. has been cut off.''
Warp drive's best hope dies, as antimatter falls down - Big Think
Since the 19th century, mathematicians and physicists have proposed the theory that space is not flat, but curved. By curving and folding space-time, the possibility of connecting two physically distant points has been discovered, and the realization of a 'warp drive' that instantly travels between two seemingly distant points. Suddenly there was a lot of noise.
In 1935, Albert Einstein and his student Nathan Rosen proposed the concept of a wormhole, a tunnel-like structure connecting two points. These wormholes are unstable and cannot remain open forever. There was also the problem that it would collapse instantly, and if you tried to pass matter through it, it would be destroyed by the gravitational tidal force caused by the severe curvature of space, but using wormholes to take a 'shortcut' through space The concept of doing something has captured the imagination of many people, including writers of popular fiction and science fiction.
In the 1960s, a physicist named Miguel Alcubierre proposed a concrete idea that would lead to warp drive. According to Alcubierre's theory, if there was some kind of negative energy in the universe that could be harnessed and manipulated, warp drive could be realized. The only problem is that all particles and fields known to exist theoretically have only one type of mass or energy, so for warp drive to be physically realized, it must be repelled by gravity. Some kind of '
Although there is a theory that substances with negative mass have anti-gravity that opposes gravity, the generally accepted theory is that they obey gravity, just like substances with positive mass. This theory has not been verified, and this is the first time negative mass associated with antimatter has been verified.
To determine whether antimatter falls ``up'', ``down'', or in an entirely different way, an international research team used the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (ALPHA) to measure large amounts of antimatter. They created an antihydrogen atom, tracked its movement, and conducted an experiment to observe whether the movement of antimatter applies to normal gravity, antigravity, or no gravity.
The results confirmed that antimatter follows normal gravity and is not one of the other options. In other words, antimatter does not generate antigravity, which eliminates the possibility of a warp drive that assumes the existence of 'antigravity,' Siegel pointed out.
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