So in my post from the other week I alluded to the idea that negative mass is absurdly awesome, and that I may talk about it in the future. Well, folks, the future is now. So let's get to talking about negative mass.

First of all, negative mass falls under the category of exotic matter, which is pretty much filled with stuff, that, while not mathematically impossible, is unlikely to exist and has never been observed anywhere in the universe. This does not stop exotic matter from being the most interesting kind of matter (it may actually be part of the reason it is so cool). So, as we know, all matter seems to have mass, a property intrinsic to matter, and, according to the Standard Model, imparted upon the matter via interaction with the Higgs Field (that's what all the Higgs Boson hullabaloo was about a while back—that was the boson which would act as the "force carrier" for the Higgs Field, and give objects mass (and, by extension, gravity))...

Picture yourself on the surface of the Earth (or in a boat on a river). Now, if you were to toss something up into the air, it would eventually be pulled back down, due to the effects of gravity. Obviously, this force is not indomitable, as we've escaped the Earth's gravitational well many a time (most recently, when we sent something awesome to Mars—because orbit doesn't really count as escaping the Earth's gravity). In fact, if you were to toss something up with enough force, it would fly away forever, never to be seen again. The speed you instantaneously imparted on that object when you threw it is the Earth's escape velocity. Now, let's say we increase the mass of the Earth to that of Jupiter, but keep the size the same (we make the Earth much, much more dense). Now, in the instant before you were liquified by it, you'd notice the gravity has become much, much stronger than it was. This makes perfect sense, as gravity is a property of mass.

Matter. It's basically everything. Anything you can see and touch (except holograms), and some things that you can't see or touch, is matter. There's plain old boring matter, which is all the things you see around you all the time, and is composed of atoms you see on the periodic table. But then there's all that cool weird matter (not necessarily strange or exotic matter, because those are actual, real names of types of matter). Since you're already probably pretty familiar with prosaic matter, having been interacting with it all your life, let's talk about some of the more interesting matter.