Gravitational interaction of antimatter

The gravitational interaction of antimatter with matter or antimatter has been observed by physicists. As was predicted by most physicists, the experiment showed that Earth's gravity attracts antimatter at the same rate as matter, within experimental error.

Antimatter's rarity and tendency to annihilate when brought into contact with matter makes its study a technically demanding task. Furthermore, gravity is much weaker than the other fundamental forces, for reasons still of interest to physicists, complicating efforts to study gravity in systems small enough to be feasibly created in lab, including antimatter systems. Most methods for the creation of antimatter (specifically antihydrogen) result in particles and atoms of high kinetic energy, which are unsuitable for gravity-related study.

Antimatter is gravitationally attracted to matter. The magnitude of the gravitational force is also the same. This is predicted by theoretical arguments like the gravitational equivalence of energy and matter, and has been experimentally verified for antihydrogen. However, the measured equivalence of the gravitational acceleration of matter to matter vs antimatter to matter has an error margin of about 20%. Difficulties in creating quantum gravity models have led to the idea that antimatter may react with a slightly different magnitude.

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