Matter with the property of having negative mass has sure been hypothized and researched as an abstract concept. Anti-particles are totally the hot potatoes of particle physics. If they ever becomes electrically neutral the magnetic bottle stops working, and they fall and annihilate with the ordinary matter at the bottom of the container. Once you create a spray of new particles, you sort the matter and anti-matter apart, keep the anti-particles ionized, and store them (briefly) in a “ magnetic bottle“. When you smash stuff together, or otherwise get a mess of energy in one place, new particles are generated half matter and half anti-matter. Many particle accelerators today generate and use anti-protons all the time. In fact, we’ve never directly observed negative energy and it’s very, very likely that we’ll never be able to do more than infer that negative energy exists.īut anti-matter definitely exists, and can be created and stored (a few particles at a time) here on Earth. Anytime a bit of negative energy is generated (and the methods involved create, like, none), a larger, overwhelming pulse of positive energy must be created almost immediately. There are some subtle physical laws that imply that the creation of negative energy, in the form of exotic matter or not, has limitations called “ quantum interest“. However the big difference, arguably the biggest difference, between anti-matter and negative matter is that negative matter doesn’t exist. With a liberal peppering of exotic matter (often far more than the universe’s total stockpile of regular matter) you can really open up the flood gates of the weird. About the weirdest things you’ll see are black holes, which are pretty cool, but… time machines. Spacetime, as described by general relativity, is pretty limited by the fact that energy and matter seem to be strictly positive. In fact, Hawking proved that if you want to build a time machine smaller than the universe, negative energy/mass is a requirement. Warp drives, worm holes, perpetual motion, and even time machines are possible if you allow for negative matter and energy. When exotic matter in brought together with ordinary matter, the positive energy of the matter and the negative energy of the exotic matter cancel out entirely, leaving nothing at all behind.Įxotic matter is a freaking blank check for sci-fi writers. If you were to bring it into contact with ordinary matter you would see, not an awesome explosion, but an underwhelming and abrupt nothing. Negative matter, more commonly called “exotic matter”, has negative energy. It’s the energetic equivalent of a ant stomping a foot (in anger!). A single atom of anti-matter (say, anti-carbon) annihilating in your ear would be just barely audible as a pop. For comparison, the largest nuclear device ever detonated, the USSR’s “Tsar Bomba”, is the yield you’d expect from about 1 kg of anti-matter (so about 2 kg of energy total, because it needs some mass to annihilate with). All of their combined mass is converted into buckets of energy in an amount dictated by Einstein’s little-known equation, E=mc 2. Specifically, anti-matter carries positive energy and mass, just like regular matter, while negative matter carries negative energy and mass.įamously, when you bring matter and anti-matter together they annihilate.

While the “anti-” of anti-matter may seem to give it an air of mystery, it still acts just like ordinary matter in essentially every respect. If you, and everything else on the planet, were suddenly turned into anti-matter, you’d never know the difference.

Physicist: Anti-matter is exactly the same as matter, but different.

Antimatter vs dark matter