Smartphone sensors and antihydrogen could soon put relativity to the test – Researchers on the AEgIS collaboration at CERN have designed an experiment that could soon boost our understanding of how antimatter falls under gravity.

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Created by a team led by Francesco Guatieri at the [Technical University of Munich](https://www.frm2.tum.de/en/frm2/home/), the scheme uses modified smartphone camera sensors to improve the spatial resolution of measurements of antimatter annihilations. This approach could be used in rigorous tests of the weak equivalence principle (WEP).

The WEP is a key concept of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which underpins our understanding of gravity. It suggests that within a gravitational field, all objects of should be accelerated at the same rate, regardless of their mass or whether they are matter or antimatter. Therefore, if matter and antimatter accelerate at different rates in freefall, it would reveal serious problems with the WEP.

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“Our solution, demonstrated for antiprotons and directly applicable to antihydrogen, combines photographic-plate-level resolution, real-time diagnostics, self-calibration and a good particle collection surface, all in one device,” Gautieri says.