Physicists create fluid with ‘negative mass’
“What’s a first here is the exquisite control we have over the nature of this negative mass, without any other complications,” said researcher Michael Forbes.
By Brooks Hays
Scientists created a liquid with “negative mass.” The experiments could help scientists investigate astrophysical phenomena like black holes and dark matter. Photo by NASA/UPI
April 17 (UPI) — A team of physicists at Washington State University have created a fluid that ignores Isaac Newton‘s Second Law of Motion. The fluid has “negative mass.” When it’s pushed it accelerates backwards.
Almost all matter in the universe obey’s Newton’s second law — matter accelerates in the direction of the force applied to it. The new fluid does the opposite.
“With negative mass, if you push something, it accelerates toward you,” Michael Forbes, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Washington State, said in a news release.
The liquid consists of rubidium atoms cooled to a temperature barely greater than absolute zero. The cooled atoms formed a Bose-Einstein condensate, a phase of matter characterized by slow-moving particles that behave like waves. The matter behaves like a superfluid, meaning its particles move in unison without sacrificing energy.