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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Anti-matter falls down, just like matter

The uncertainty of science: In a difficult particle physics experiment that carries large margins for error, scientists have determined that gravity appears to affect anti-matter the same as matter.

Quantitatively, the experiment indicates that antimatter experiences a pull from gravity that’s 75% as strong as that on ordinary matter, give or take 20%—a statistical agreement between the two. Hangst says 99.9% of physicists would have predicted the result. Still, he notes, “You have to do the experiment with an open mind.”

One must understand that, at atomic levels, the influence of gravity is practically nil. Extracting a measurment of its influence outside the other more powerful forces that dominate atomic particles, magnetism, the weak force, and the strong force, is difficult, to put it mildly.

The key is that the experiment result showed some influence of gravity, in the expected direction.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

6 comments

  • Ferris

    Interesting . . .

    I cannot claim to have given all that much thought to antimatter. I had simply assumed, perhaps due to science fiction, that it was essentially a complete opposite to “ordinary” matter.

    Much of the article is over my head, but if I am surprised that antimatter reacts to gravity as described. I guess I would have assumed that it would react in EXACTLY the same way as does matter, or not react at all.

    Thank you, Bob!

  • pzatchok

    I question the theory that their was an almost equal amount of matter and anti-mater during the big boom.

    It almost pure speculation.

    As our detection equipment like telescopes gets better we are constantly correcting our old observations.

  • Lee S

    This is one of the big problems with the big bang theory… matter and anti matter should have been created in equal amounts .. perhaps some of the galaxies we see out there are entirely made of anti matter… ( And their inhabitants consider our matter to be anti matter! )

    Or perhaps the whole big bang theory is wrong ( more likely in my opinion )

  • David Ross

    This seems more an endorsement of the certainty of science.

  • Lee S observed (along with many, many, others):

    ” . . . matter and anti-matter should have been created in equal amounts . . .”

    Why?

    We already know that the putative ‘Big Bang’ was an uneven event, viz Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation surveys. If the observed result is an uneven radiation distribution, why do we assume the event itself was evenly distributed, or even capable of such?

  • pzatchok

    Why do we think 95%+ of the universe is missing?

    What if only 5% is missing and the rest is just to far away to see yet?

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