Antimatter/Antigravity?

Question

Since gravity is a property of matter, like inertia, it stands to reason that if a substantial amount of anti-matter were produced, anti-gravity should also be a property. But the mass of the Earth would be considerably more than the anti-gravity produced from anti-matter (In I would bet the next 100 years). So my question is: If there could be no inter-action of matter/anti-matter, and there was a person of my similar mass (6', 210#) that was made of matter on an anti-matter world, would he float in the air above ground? Keep in mind that a person of my similar mass is held down by gravity here due to the size differnce of me vs. the Earth, but the 'anti-gravity' of an anti-matterworld will FAR exceed the amount of matter that's contained in a mass of my size.

Answer 1

This is an interesting question, for which I can't claim to know the answer, but I'm going to take a guess anyway.

The crucial qualifier in your question is that matter and anti-matter cannot interact in your example. Otherwise, your matter person would be instantly annihilated. But since you eliminated the possibility, the answer is that you would feel gravity just the same as in a matter universe.

Here's why. Anti-matter is still composed of the same materials as matter, just with opposite charges (i.e.--electrons are positive, protons are negative). Presuming that your "anti-gravity" is not repulsive by nature (otherwise your world couldn't exist) then it's effects on the "matter" in your body would be the same as for the anti-matter because your anti-gravity would have no mechanism by which to distinguish between your electrons and its positrons, etc.

Answer 2

Antimatter is matter that is composed of the antiparticles of those that constitute normal matter. If a particle and its antiparticle come in contact with each other, the two annihilate; that is, they are both converted into other particles with equal energy in accordance with Einstein's equation E = mc2. This gives rise to high energy photons (gamma rays) or other particle-antiparticle pairs. The resulting particles are endowed with an amount of kinetic energy equal to the difference between the rest mass of the products of the annihilation and the rest mass of the original particle-antiparticle pair, which is often quite large.

Anti-gravity is a hypothetical means of countering or otherwise modifying the effects of gravity, typically in the context of spacecraft propulsion. Such systems are limited to the realm of science fiction given the current understanding of the way gravity works, but this has not stopped legions of hopefuls from making various spinning disks and magnets in hopes of perfecting such a device.

Answer 3

Fortunately, assuming your alternate self could not interact with his anti-matter world, causing annihilation, this person would stand on the planet just as you do now. Gravity is not a property of matter in-so-much as it is a property of energy. Since both matter and anti-matter are physical forms of energy, they both have mass, and therefore both generate and are affected by gravity in the same manner.

Answer 4

1. antiparticles have the same mass as their particle counterparts - antimatter behaves the same way in terms of gravity as matter

2. gravity is produced by the effects stress-energy on space time - this means that particles with no reset mass (such as photon) experience and exhibit gravity - this leads to the gravitational red shift, which has be measured experimentally

3. standard models of physics have no notion of antigravity - it simply does not exist

Answer 5

Anti gravity is not produced by antimatter