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posted by janrinok on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the lots-of-suck dept.

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'


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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:42PM (2 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:42PM (#623139)

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:34AM (1 child)

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:34AM (#623413) Homepage Journal

    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

      by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday January 17 2018, @02:07PM (#623585)

      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.