Scientists to test if antimatter falls upwards

SWITZERLAND — Scientists at CERN plan to drop antimatter into a vacuum chamber to see if gravity affects antimatter the same way it affects matter.

Antimatter is identical to matter in every way, except that it has a negative charge, according to New Atlas.

If matter and antimatter touch and interact with one another, they cancel each other out and annihilate each other.

In the first experiment, the scientists plan to conduct is called the ALPHA-g experiment in which the researchers will trap antihydrogen atoms in a vertical vacuum chamber and test to see what effect gravity has on the atoms.

In the second experiment called GBAR, antihydrogen atoms generated from antiprotons will be subjected to a fall of 20 centimeters to see what effect gravity has on them.

Scientists predict that antimatter should fall down like regular matter, but there is a one in a million chance that it could fall up instead.