A team of WSU researchers has developed a fluid with negative mass for the first time without any additional defects or issues.

Michael Forbes, WSU assistant professor of physics and astronomy, said while other researchers have observed negative mass in condensed matter, this is the first time researchers have been able to isolate and manipulate the effects.

“What’s a first here is the exquisite control we have over the nature of this negative mass, without any other complications,” Forbes said.

The fluid is an exception to Isaac Newton’s Second Law of Motion, which states objects move in the same direction and speed as the force acting upon them, according to the news release. It moves in the opposite direction in which it is pushed because the fluid possesses negative inertial mass, which measures the mass in the object’s resistance to acceleration when responding to force.

This experiment illustrates how objects can have negative or positive mass in the same way that electrical charges can be negative or positive.

The team of researchers used lasers to cool rubidium atoms to a temperature just above absolute zero, creating what is called a Bose-Einstein condensate, according to the release. In this state, particles act like waves and move extremely slowly. As a result, the particles move together in unison and are able to flow without losing energy.

New insight into controlling negative mass systems can help to further research phenomena that are otherwise impossible to study, such as black holes and dark energy, according to the release. Creating the negative mass fluid provides a better understanding of the universe and other branches of physics, Forbes said.

“In particular, I have an interest in nuclear theory and what happens in nuclear reactions and neutron stars,” Forbes said. “This allows us to use cold-atom experiments to test our theoretical description of phenomena in neutron stars in ways that would be impossible otherwise.”

The research findings, published as an “Editor’s Suggestion” in the journal Physical Review Letters on April 10, also have potential for more practical applications, Forbes said. These include improving quantum technologies, such as encrypted communication, measurement devices and quantum computation.