Ah thank you for entertaining me tonight with some brain food.
So my first thought is always ... who's pulling my leg.
A quick check of the source it seemed legit. Then a quick read of the article to get a handle on it.
OK.. got it. Running negative mass or acceleration through the formula F=ma is a bit of fun.
But this isn't anything new. I first saw this 30 years ago. In fact, I'd bet a good 20 cents that you've seen it too.
The experiment they're describing is at the atomic scale in ultra cool bizzare matter states. Heheh.. you ain't leaving this planet in a hurry
Ok, so the real world example you have seen before. Good old high temperature superconductor doing it's thing.
It obeys and reflects Newton's first law very well.
A body remains at rest or in motion unless acted upon by an external force.
Under normal temperature conditions, the YBaCuO would be accelerated due to gravity and fall to the floor.
No surprises there.
Under superconducting conditions ignoring friction due to air resistance we can see the superconductor moving along the track almost frictionless.
Something we've become accustomed to.
When the superconductor sits above the magnetic track, gravity pushes it towards the magnetic track. The ΔB (change in magnetic flux) causes an eddie current to flow in the superconductor which then mirrors the magnet below it. This repels the superconductor (negative acceleration) and the superconductor levitates above the magnet.
The same thing happens below the magnet. The superconductor falls away due to gravity, but again, the -ΔB in the superconductor sets up an eddie current which causes the mirror opposite magnetic pole and the superconductor is attracted to the magnet. The harder gravity pulls or pushes, the more the superconductor negatively accelerates it with respect to (in this case) gravity.
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OK .... so you want to play negative mass.
You remember that little particle called the Higgs Boson. Hold on to your hats because your about to get a applied physics lesson on it and you might actually understand in an abstract way how the Higgs field actually works.
So lets start with the things you do know. The higgs field gives particles their mass. The higgs boson is the carrier particle.
Add to this your desire to have negative mass.
So I'm going to ask you to use your imagination a little for this lesson.
I want you to think of .... the economy. You buy and sell things for money. I can give you a dollar and you can spend it. Nothing abstract there.
Now imagine a cashless society. You have a magic electronic box that stores your electronic dollars and if you want to buy something, you can magically transfer e-dollars
to anybody else.
Imagine the economy is the higgs field, and the dollar is the boson, the imaginary carrier particle of the economic field.
You visit a country with this cashless economy. Everybody talks about this imaginary thing called "the dollar". You can't see any dollars, but you notice that people who have more dollars seem to attract more people. (They have more economic mass).
If I give lots of people lots of dollars, they will be attracted to me like bimbos to Hugh Hefner.
Enter the negative mass. I need to be so badly in debt that people are repulsed by the thought that just being in my presence will make them poorer.
That's the description of negative mass in terms of (economics) and the higgs field.
You need the particle equivalent of my ex-wife.
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