Tag: Universe

If cosmologists are to be believed the Universe came from nothing and is likely to return to nothing. This is odd as there seems to be an awful lot of it! There are between ten to the power 78 and ten to the power 82 atoms in the observable universe, according to some estimates. There’s also a huge amount of energy out there in the universe, and as Einstein said, this is equivalent to matter, according to his famous equation.

It is likely that the enormous amount of matter and energy that we see out there is balanced by an equivalent amount of “negative” matter and energy somehow. “Negative” is in scare quotes because it may not describe what is actually going on. Anyway, the negative matter and energy may be incorporated into this universe somehow, which means that on average half the universe is this sort of energy. We can’t see it anywhere so far as I know, so it is a bit of a puzzle.

We can see evidence everywhere for “normal” matter and energy, and we should be able to see evidence of “negative” matter if it is anywhere near us. As I understand it, “negative” matter would behave differently to “normal” in various ways and should be detectable. I’m not sure in what ways it would be different – I can guess that there could be a gravitational attraction between particles of “negative” matter, just as there is between particles of “normal” matter, but there could be a gravitational repulsion between “negative” matter and “normal” matter for example.

But my ignorance is almost total. I do believe it is true that “negative” matter should be detectable.) Since we can’t see or detect “negative” matter within our locality (ie “the observable universe“) it may be grouped elsewhere in the universe. If so, it may not have any observable effect in our neck of the woods, but inevitable it will have an effect at some time in the astronomical future.

The reason that I say this is that the universe doesn’t seem to be expanding faster than the speed of light so any effect such as (possibly) gravity which does appear to have a “speed of light” effect will eventually affect our corner of the universe. But the situation is complex, and as the Wikipedia article says,

Due to the non-intuitive nature of the subject and what has been described by some as “careless” choices of wording, certain descriptions of the metric expansion of space and the misconceptions to which such descriptions can lead are an ongoing subject of discussion in the realm of pedagogy and communication of scientific concepts.

In other words, there are many misconceptions and misinterpretations around this topic. However any effect of the possible existence of “negative” matter on our little neck of the universe is likely to be felt a long time in the future, even on a cosmological time scale, I feel. “Negative” matter could have created a negative universe, I guess, which mirrors this universe.

In a negative universe at least one dimension would be reversed but all other dimension would have the same polarity as our universe. If an odd number of dimensions were reversed, would all but one cancel out? I’m not sure but a cursory mathematical examination would indicate that this would not be so, but I lack the time to explore the concept in depth.

In our universe things tend to a state of disorder. If one partition of a closed system contains all the matter (in the simplest case, as a gas) and the partition is removed then eventually the matter is eventually dispersed through the whole system. In a negative universe, possibly the opposite would apply – gas dispersed through a system could tend to bunch up in one part of the system. Maxwell’s demon could watch benignly without lifting a finger.

Our view of this is that it is extremely unlikely – would a glass spontaneously rise from the floor, gathering the scattered wine and land on the table complete with wine? Perhaps this is a parochial view, only true in our universe. In some alternate universe, this may be the normality – entropy may tend to decrease, order may tend to increase. Such an entropy twin may simple be the time reversed twin of the original universe. Or the original universe perceived from a time reversed perspective.

If the universe sprung out of nothing, then the sum of the universe is zero. Any object has its anti-object. Any event has its anti-event. Maybe the universe has a partner, an anti-universe if you like, or even a mirror universe. Time in our universe runs from the zero moment into the positive future. In a mirror universe would presumably (and debatably) run in the opposite direction from the zero moment and all spacial dimensions would be reversed.

This would correspond to a point reflection in time and space, which may or may not be the same as a rotation in time and space. I’m not sure. Some of complexities can be seen in this Wikipedia article on “parity”. In particular some interactions of elementary particles may display chirality, which means that they come in left and right handed versions, like gloves or shoes. All of the above means that if a person were to be point reflected into an anti-universe and all the elementary particles of his body were switched with their anti-particles, there may be no way for the person to tell that the switch had occurred.

Sure, time would be reversed, but so would literally everything else, so a left-handed glove would appear, in the point reflected world, to still be a left-handed glove even though, if we could see the glove it would appear to us, from our point of view to be right-handed. Of course I’ve assumed for much of the above that the reflection that transforms a universe to its anti-universe is a point reflection.

In mathematical terms that means that all variables are reversed. That is x is replaced by -x, y by -y, z by -z and so on. It may be that the reflection may be in a line and the x dimension stays the same while the others are negated. Or it may be a reflection in a plane (a mirror reflection) where 2 dimensions are unchanged. Or it may be a reflection in a higher number of dimensions.

As you can see, the subject is complex and I’ve not got my head around it (obviously!), but I believe that if we were switched into the anti-universe (including all out particles) it would not look any different from this universe. In fact we would probably find ourselves discussing our anti-universe, which would be our original universe. In fact it would not matter which universe we called “the original” because they both would have come into existence at the same time and there would be no meaning to the term “original”.