In a first-of-its-kind experiment, scientists dropped antihydrogen atoms and watched them fall, showing that gravity attracts antimatter toward Earth, rather than repelling it.
The study confirms a pillar of Einstein’s general theory of relativity known as the weak equivalence principle. According to that principle, gravity pulls on every object in the same way, no matter what it’s made of. “This concept is at the heart of our comprehension of gravitation,” says physicist Ruggero Caravita, who was not involved with the new work.
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