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 Originally Posted by OngBonga
Back to physics...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39642992
What the actual fuck is negative mass? I've come to understand mass as resistance to acceleration. The "heavier" something is, the more resistance it has. Something with zero mass, ie a photon, has no mass because it has no resistance to acceleration... it always moves at c, so does not experience a change in state of motion, thus, no mass.
So how can negative mass be explained in inertial terms?
lol
"not the apparatus used in the latest research"
Editor was all, "I don't care. Put a sciency picture on this article, dammit!"
***
They're saying that it's the inertial mass that is negative (no mention of gravitational mass). They're not saying any known laws of physics need revision.
So F = ma, still. (bold letters used to indicate vectors)
F doesn't change, a doesn't change, only the sign of m changes. The result is that the applied force causes acceleration in the opposite direction of the force.
Meaning that if I push something with negative mass, it will move toward me, not away from me, as expected.
They're not saying any single particle behaves this way. They're saying there is a region of the Bose-Einstion Condensate which behaves in this way.
It sounds like it's a property of the system, and not of the particles.
This still needs peer review and replication as far as I can tell.
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