Jumping the Timestream – A Note from 08-09-2012

Because no one can be certain about one’s own ability to participate in the future, I have a couple of ideas in the works that I’d like to post to the future just in case I (for some reason) don’t get around to it before then. 

First amongst these is this, an idea Chris Hackman and I developed while young astrophysics majors at the Univerisity of Wyoming in early 2000: 

The Antithetic Force

In my view the so-called Hubble Constant is in dire need of a reevaluation in the context of Dark Energy.  I believe the two phenomena are actually the same, and further, that they together represent the evidence of Gravity’s “missing pole” – that is, the push to balance gravity’s pull.  (In other words, “antigravity.”)

I call this force “Antithy,” which as I propose it is a fundamental property of matter – a repulsive force that increases in strength proportionally with distance (i.e., the father away two objects are from one-another, the more strongly they repel).  This is in direct conceptual opposition to Gravity, which is a fundamental property of matter – an attractive force that decreases in strength proportionally with distance (i.e., the closer together two objects are from one-another, the more strongly they attract). 

At first blush, this proposition seems impossible, as soon all objects would be accelerated from one-another beyond the speed of light and the universe quickly undergoes infinite expansion.  However, this conclusion is made without considering the very important spacetime curvature implications of General Relativity.  When looking at the cosmological implications of an Antithetic force from a higher-dimensional context, one quickly realizes that such a force produces an initially-expanding but self-closing universe.  The closure quickly solves Antithy’s own problem, for once closed, the Antithetic Force works in all directions, supplying a sort of repulsive pressure across the universe to counteract initial expansion and shepherd all of the matter in the universe into equilibrium positions with respect to all other matter (like a web of repulsive magnets on the surface of a sphere). 

With this in mind, on small cosmological scales, Gravity dominates.  On large cosmological scales, Antithy dominates.  Thus, Gravity/Antithy is not the weakest but the strongest fundamental force.

I strongly suspect that Antithy is why a consistent value for the Hubble Constant proves perpetually elusive, and Antithy supplies an additional force to explain the nature of “galactic bubbling” in cosmological structure as well as explain the presence of a force attributable to pervasive “dark matter.” 

There you go.  I’m trying as hard as I can to get this proposition into a publication for critical review, but tempus fugit. 

Consider this post a backup for posterity.

Cheers,

Ben McGee

August 9, 2012; 03:00pm

The Antimatter Plot Thickens…

I realize it’s been egregiously silent here at the Astrowright blog for some time.  Apparently, I am not immune to the same disappointing (as a reader) dry spells experienced in/by so many other blogs I’ve followed during the years. 

(With grad school, teaching at CSN, my day-job working for DOE, a side-business or two in flux, moonlighting the occasional and surreal TV project, and with a 1&1/2-year-old at home – let’s just say I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’m not a juggling Jedi yet.)

Excuses aside, however, I wanted to take a moment to relay a devastatingly exciting potential discovery, which itself was prompted by a pleasant surprise…

CERN’s ALPHA experiment – our Anti-Virgil into Dante’s Antimatter Inferno? (Credit: CERN)

Antimatter in Focus

As reported on SpaceRef.com and NASAWatch.com, which prominently featured the antimatter symbol I created a couple of years back (i.e., the pleasant surprise – thanks, Keith!), we may be one giant leap closer to figuring out antimatter – and with it, peer a little farther into the mysterious underpinnings of the Fundamental Forces of Nature.

In an article titled, “Does Antimatter Fall Up or Down?” Keith Cowing reports that researchers at CERN’s Alpha Experiment recently published in Nature Communications their tantalizing antimatter research progress.  

Specifically, these CERN specialists have identified a process for finally determining whether or not gravity acts upon antimatter the same way it does upon “ordinary” matter, even if they haven’t answered the question quite yet.  (See Keith’s article for more details on their experiment, what it means, and where it’s going.)

Down the Anti-Rabbit Hole

So, why do we or should we care about figuring out what antimatter really is and how the universe treats it?  Well, quite simply, it has the possibility of providing new solutions to many current problems in physics. 

Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and questions about early Cosmic Inflation all essentially deal with versions of the same issue: There are apparent problems with the amount of force we see in the universe versus how much we should expect. 

Perhaps a shift in our understanding of fundamental forces, like gravity, will shed new light.

This is to say nothing of the mystery concerning why the universe appears to be all matter and generally no antimatter.  According to physics as we understand it, there’s no reason for the bias.  (Why not areas of high concentrations of antimatter and others of normal matter?)

Why did matter win?

And to make matters yet more interesting, the late, great Dr. Richard Feynman (and others) have described antimatter as being inditinguishable from (or perhaps actually being!) ordinary matter moving backwards through time.  While few physicists believe this is actually the case, it certainly bends neurons considering that it remains a physical possibility*.

(*I should note that this idea of antiparticles moving “backwards” in time, in order to be true, requires a reconstruction of what we mean by “time.”  This is because antiparticles don’t blip out of existence as they move to the “past” with respect to us as we, presumably, continue to move into the “future.”  Instead, we remain with the antiparticles in the same measurable “now” in the universe…)

Antimatter – A Guiding Star

Keep an eye on this one, folks.  It could very well be that the study of antimatter provides us the wedge we need to evolve beyond peering through the keyhole at the universe and instead throw open the door.

Optimistic?  Admittedly. 

However, we’re due for our big 21st Century paradigm shift in the sciences.  What with the recent 100 Year Starship Symposium hinting at what the future has to offer us (along with humanity’s expanding view of our galactic neighborhood and our desire to get out there and engage it), it’s high time we get on inventing that superluminal propulsion system to Alpha Centauri, already.

I’m not getting any younger.