Scientists Create Negative Mass

Scientists Create Negative Mass

Kelly Giffault

Scientists at Washington State University created a fluid with the property of negative mass. This is a big breakthrough and advancement because it is the first time a negative mass has even been observed under laboratory conditions. This can lead to further advancements in the understanding of black holes, dark matter and neutron stars; all controversial areas of science and understanding.

A negative effective mass is recognized in quantum systems by engineering the dispersion relation. A type of method is provided by “spin-orbit coupling” which is now at the center of many research efforts.

The fluid created by these scientist, claiming it to have the property of negative mass, is unusual in the fact that when you push on it, it doesn’t accelerate in the direction where it was pushed; instead it accelerated in the opposite direction. Forbes describes this as, “ once you push it, it accelerates backwards, it looks like the rubidium hit an invisible wall”. Scientists originally hypothesized that matter could have a negative mass like how particles can have a negative charge, however they have not been able to show it.

To create this experiments Peter Engels, a WSU professor who leads the team, used lasers to create the conditions for observing negative mass. The procedure goes as follows: first they cooled rubidium atoms to nearly absolute zero which resulted in a state called a Bose-Einstein condensate where particles move very slowly and behave like waves according to the principles of quantum mechanics. Particles also form a “superfluid” making them move in unison without the loss of any energy. Scientists then used lasers to change the spin of the atoms in the fluid which

made them behave like they had negative mass. Some scientists argue that what this created is called “negative effective mass”. Sabine Hossenfelder of Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies explained this saying, “Physicist use the preamble “effective” to indicate something that is not fundamental but emergent, and the exact definition of such term is often a matter of convention. The “effective radius” of a galaxy for example it not its radius. The “effective nuclear mass” it not a negative mass. The effective mass is merely a handy mathematical quantity to describe the condensates behavior”.

Many scientists think that is a major

advancement in experiments involving supercooling atoms and will help pave the way for studying complex phenomena.