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Physicists Say They've Created a Device That Generates 'Negative Mass'
Physicists have created what they say is the first device that's capable of generating particles that behave as if they have negative mass. The device generates a strange particle that's half-light/half-matter, and as if that isn't cool enough, it could also be the foundation for a new kind of laser that could operate on far less energy than current technologies.
This builds on recent theoretical work on the behaviour of something called a polariton, which appears to behave as if it has negative mass – a mind-blowing property that sees objects move towards the force pushing it, instead of being pushed away.
Now physicists from the University of Rochester have created a device that allows them to actually create these polaritons at room temperature. They do this by manipulating captured photons and combine them with a kind of quasi-particle called an exciton to make something half-light/half-matter that some scientists affectionately refer to as 'magic dust'.
This alone is "interesting and exciting from a physics perspective," says quantum physicist Nick Vamivakas from Rochester's Institute of Optics. "But it also turns out the device we've created presents a way to generate laser light with an incrementally small amount of power."
Anomalous dispersion of microcavity trion-polaritons (open, DOI: 10.1038/nphys4303) (DX)
Previously: Physicists Create 'Negative Mass'
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:58AM (18 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:58AM (1 child)
Flubber?!!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:20AM
What's this!? A vision!? A vision of what? A vision of the future. I can see it. I can see the future of your ass. I'm the Assteller.
You're relaxing at home when all of a sudden you're instantly transported to a mysterious location. It looks like some kind of large, dark cavern, and it's so large that you can't see any walls. You then realize that the floor is made out of stuffing, like you'd see in a pillow. A voice from an unknown source then said, "The Stuffing is a nice place! It's warm, it's stuffy, and there's parades all around!" Right after that, you notice a parade in the distance, and decide to go there.
You party down in the parade for a long time, but then you realize that you got lost and can no longer find it. You wandered away from the parade without realizing it. A feeling of dread bubbles up from the depths of your being. You have to find the parade. You can't remain in this place for too long; it's dangerous. Something is targeting you. You see countless lumps under the stuffing on the floor. Numerous beings are crawling towards you.
What do you do? When you try to run, you can barely move, as if something is preventing you from sprinting at normal speed. So you decide to slam your ass down on the lumps as if your ass is a meteor! After doing so, all the lumps have vanished from existence. You proclaim your victory, but can't get rid of the feeling that something is wrong.
Then it hits you. The tickle. Those lumps were actually evil children's toys crawling under the stuffing, and they got sucked right up your butt. These toys are now slamming into the walls on the inside of your ass! It tickles, stop! No! You think about rubbing dirt in your face, but there is no dirt to be found. Countless more lumps make their way towards your body, and you can do nothing but watch them get sucked into your ass! The tickle intensifies to the point where it makes the previous level of tickle look like a joke. You begin screaming incoherently, but your ass continues to be used as a bouncehouse...
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:59AM (4 children)
It also sounds a whole lot like what the Alcubierre drive [wikipedia.org] needs to work, but I wouldn't get your hopes up just yet.
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(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:39AM (1 child)
Now all we need is a bipolar drunk to go off his meds, build a warp drive for real, and panic when he realizes his work will make him more famous than he wants to be.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:59PM
Hopefully he'll have a shotgun ready. A warp signature is going to light up so many long-range probes, and alien invaders are certain to follow the craft back to Earth. Hopefully he realizes this, shoots them on the gang plank, and takes their ship so we can understand what kind of technology those green-blooded hobgoblins are planning to use to enslave us.
It could be the dawn of a glorious new empire!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:44AM (1 child)
these things have negative mass just as much as air bubbles in water have negative mass.
so you may as well use air bubbles for your alcubierre drive.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:12PM
As long as I can get the initial coin offering for WarpCoin going, sure thing.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:41AM (4 children)
Unfortunately polaritons are actually quasiparticles. That is, they are not really particles (such as, you cannot pull them out of the material and send them somewhere in space), but they only exist as states of the material that behave as if they were particles. And the material still has positive mass (and positive gravitation).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:09AM (3 children)
Umm, ok. It would still be reduced mass, no?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:14PM (2 children)
Depends. Reduced mass compared to what?
In any case, compared to the mass of the material as such, all those masses are negligible (as in, the mass difference will be below anything measurable with scales).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:21PM (1 child)
Reduced mass compared to the same material minus the quasi-particles which have negative mass.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:45PM
Since you have to add a photon (positive energy), you end up with a state that has more total energy, and thus more total mass (as E=mc²). The negative mass is only the effective mass of the quasiparticle describing its movement relative to the material. It is mostly unrelated to the real mass that enters the inertia/gravity of the material as a whole.
As an example, take the most common (and most easy to understand) quasiparticle: The hole. The hole is just a missing electron, no electron sitting where an electron should be. No electron of course has less real mass than one electron. Yet a hole has a positive effective mass; it behaves exactly as if there were a particle with positive mass and opposite charge sitting in that place (and indeed, the mass can even differ depending on the direction the hole moves!).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:16AM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:42PM (2 children)
Maybe. There's a actually a lot of speculation on what exactly negative mass would imply, with most models dismissed as extremely unlikley because, like your example, they would break conservation of energy and/or momentum.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:34AM (1 child)
They don't break conservation of energy or momentum. The increased kinetic energy of the positive mass is exactly balanced by the negative kinetic energy of the negative mass. Likewise for momentum. The negtive mass has momentum pointing in the opposite direction to where it's moving.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday January 17 2018, @02:07PM
Hmm, you're right. So perhaps not - my gut says it would not be terribly difficult to "game the system", but intuition may readily misfire when you change fundamental assumptions.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:48PM
That's the first thing my crossed my mind. A particle that pushes towards the force of gravity, rather than away from it, would be one of the greatest physics achievement in all of human history.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 16 2018, @06:08PM
It sounds like it, but read the article. The "particles" that they are talking about are excitrons, i.e. in an unstable excited state. It's quite interesting, and it might well lead to a better laser pumping system, but don't read too much into this. You need quite controlled conditions to create it, and it's still only meta-stable...and closer to unstable than to stable.
The equipment needed to generate this might well be miniturizable, but it will guaranteed be quite massive compared to the "negative mass" produced. And the process of making it eats energy, as you would expect if you were pumping a laser.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.