https://phys.org/news/2017-04-physicists-negative-mass.html

Negative effective mass.

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.155301

 

14 hours ago, Endy0816 said:

Negative effective mass.

Which in itself is not new. 

Yeah, think I recall seeing something.

I think true negative mass will eventually be proven impossible. Interesting to ponder.

On 9/3/2017 at 3:26 PM, Endy0816 said:

I think true negative mass will eventually be proven impossible.

I too have that feeling. It's actually really interesting.

Negative mass just seems really weird to think about. I'm sure quantum mechanics gives it a bit of leverage, but it doesn't seem to be understandable. Yes, quantum theory is really really weird, but you can still basically understand what is going on and why, but negative mass has no sense of logic whatsoever. It just seems so hard to comprehend.

You could model a helium balloon in a car as having negative mass. It potentially makes the model simpler than the actual behavior of the air in the car responding to an acceleration and then pushing on the balloon. It's not that much different a concept than modeling an electron hole in semiconductor physics.

On ‎3‎-‎9‎-‎2017 at 2:26 PM, Endy0816 said:

Yeah, think I recall seeing something.

I think true negative mass will eventually be proven impossible. Interesting to ponder.

You can't prove the absence of negative mass, like you can't prove the absence of god.

1 hour ago, Itoero said:

You can't prove the absence of negative mass, like you can't prove the absence of god.

You can't prove the absence of negative mass, in a different way than you can't prove the absence of god.

1 hour ago, Itoero said:

You can't prove the absence of negative mass, like you can't prove the absence of god.

Everything about Mass suggests something without a Yin to its Yang. I think mass having a negative value will eventially go the way of an infinite speed of light.

6 hours ago, swansont said:

You could model a helium balloon in a car as having negative mass. It potentially makes the model simpler than the actual behavior of the air in the car responding to an acceleration and then pushing on the balloon. It's not that much different a concept than modeling an electron hole in semiconductor physics.

Yeah, I think that is what they did here. Cool and all but unless it is taking off due to negative gravity, popsci needs to tone down the hype.