It’s a saying that’s been quoted by others, usually scientists and science writers, thousands of times by now, yet it retains the element of a profound insight. And that is ‘the Universe is not only far stranger than we imagine, it’s far stranger than we can imagine’. Every time you turn a corner, there’s an unexpected and rather shocking surprise staring you in the face! Mother Nature never seems to run out of curve balls. Anyway, one such imagination could have our Universe’s strangeness level increased a notch or so in that it allows for micro (quantum) time travel and that perhaps can lead to a Universe that consists of way less stuff than that contained in the smallest speck of dust.
Continued from yesterday’s blog…
The One Electron Universe:
So here is where things get interesting. According to Michio Kaku* (and other sources – see further readings), Feynman speculated (whether seriously, or tongue-in-cheek I know not) that perhaps the Universe consisted of only one electron (and presumably one proton**, one neutron, etc.). The logic goes something like this – at 10 AM an electron travels in the normal future direction. At 10 PM the electron reverses its time direction and heads back towards the past. At 10 AM it bounces back towards the future. At 4 PM, you freeze-frame and ‘see’ three particles, two travelling from the past to the future; one traveling from the future to the past. But in reality, all three are the same particle, two are matter electrons, one appears as a pseudo-positron. Now multiple that zigzag by zillions and extend some of the time frames from the Alpha to the Omega. One can reach the conclusion that the Universe consists of just one each of all the elementary particles!
This electron/pseudo-positron pair, bouncing forever forward and backward in time between Creation and Armageddon, is in fact the sum total of electron-ness in the Universe, which explains why all electrons are identical clones; ditto positrons since one travelling backwards would then appear to be a pseudo-electron.
The same would apply to a proton. There’s only one bouncing forward in time (as a proton) and backwards in time (as a pseudo-antiproton**) between the Alpha and the Omega. And real antiprotons, going backwards in time would appear as pseudo-protons.
In short, the Universe (including you), from beginning to end, consists of just a very few (one of each) particles and antiparticles, which makes the Big Bang event more believable! Any ‘now’ moment is just one slice of that forever ping-pong ball back-and-forth endless journey. It all happens so fast that for all practical purposes, one particle is everywhere at once. You think you consist of zillions of particles – alas, it’s only a few going zip, zigzag, zoom, zigzag, zip, zigzag, zoom, zigzag, zip, zigzag, zoom, zigzag, zip, zigzag, zoom, zigzag, zip, zigzag, zipping & zigzagging & zooming, etc. – back and forth – so rapidly it’s the illusion of many.
Now, personally, I think it’s one of the biggest crock-o-shit ideas I’ve come across (the lone particle idea, not the antimatter or the time reversal concepts – but then again Feynman may have been just shooting the bull and tossing out ideas just for the sake of speculating). I have to admit however, it’s a damn appealing idea in its simplicity! The cosmos all of a sudden is a lot less complex and perplexing. But…
The problem, as I see it, is that the zip/zoom time for electrons/pseudo-positrons (and positrons and their pseudo-electrons), or protons/pseudo-antiprotons (and antiprotons and pseudo-protons) is relatively slow (less than light speed) because they have mass. Even if they travelled at light speed, be it backwards or forwards in time, it would take, say zipping back to the Big Bang event, some 13.7 billions of years to do so (and another 13.7 billion years to return to our time). That would mean an awfully long duration when our ‘now’ was devoid of stuff and energy. The mirror of that is the time these few and far between particles would take to cross the Universe from side-to-side (assuming a finite Universe), even neglecting any further expansion while that crossing was going on. The crossing would take far longer than you could hold your breath for (and then some). Maybe that’s why the ‘one electron, one positron, one proton, one antiproton, etc. Universe’ isn’t discussed much. As a science fiction idea, it’s great. As a practical example of how our Universe is constructed – well you don’t see it proposed in any astronomy textbooks!
Or could it? Keep in mind that the side-to-side and top-to-bottom (or ultimately volume) crossings of the Universe was easier/quicker in the past when the Universe was smaller (recall our Universe is not only expanding, but that the expansion rate is accelerating due to something we know nearly nothing about called ‘dark energy’). Alas, the time distance between Creation and Armageddon (assuming there is an actual final end which is doubtful given an ever ongoing expanding Universe) remains fixed, so there’s no way to compress that part of the journey. Now here I keep assuming that the maximum ‘velocity’ through time is one second per second in either direction.
Oh wait, I’ve neglected to take relativity theory or effects into account. The velocity of electrons and positrons (and protons and antiprotons) through space could affect their ‘velocity’ through time. However, I’ve no hard information on how fast in space electrons/positrons, protons/antiprotons will travel. Elementary particles can stand still – well wiggle and jiggle in places somewhat uncertain according to quantum principles. Or, they might really floor the petal to the metal and zip and zoom around – as opposed to being laid back. If they zip and zoom around at close to light speed, their ability to transverse the cosmos in quick-smart time is increased. Recall the so-called ‘twin paradox’ where the twin in the fast lane ages a lot slower than her stay-at-home laid back sister. Lacking hard information, I’ve really not neglected relativity; I just can’t figure it into the scenario.
An analogy in something less than cosmic terms, would be to think of a river which has length, depth, and width. Each fundamental particle, or let’s be generous and say one water molecule, would have to go from top to bottom, bank to bank, and headwater to river mouth so quickly so as to give the illusion of a ‘solid’ continuously flowing river.
What ever so slight worries me here is that there is an actual known example of how Mother Nature presents us with an illusion. Solid matter (or liquid matter or gaseous matter for that matter) isn’t solid at all. Matter is nearly all empty space, be it an ice cube, a drop of water, or water vapour. Since that’s not an everyday common example, you’re more aware of how a film strip of individual images when moving rapidly create the illusion of a picture in motion, or a motion picture. Another common example is your TV screen or newspaper photograph. Those apparently solid continuous images are in reality just a composite of hundreds of individual dots.
Anyway, still, it’s a real stretch to imagine a river, far less our cosmos, as being composed of just a few bits and pieces! Actually that brings up a more fundamental problem in the case of one water molecule zipping and zapping so fast as to create an illusionary river – one water molecule, far less any single elementary particle or combination of particles has no property of wetness. So how could a one water molecule alone give a river its wetness property? [The same applies to other properties of matter – say colour, or texture. How could a one electron universe have colour?]
Ultimately it matters little if there is only one electron/positron (and proton/antiproton) dual-particle or entity zipping and zooming and zigzagging back and forth, or an umpteenth zillion. There’s still an observational lack of antimatter and there should be near equal amounts of both matter and antimatter. That imbalance is strange in that with equal probability a photon should create both an electron and a positron (and electron-positron annihilation should create a photon – symmetry all around).
The Missing Antimatter:
So why don’t we see significant quantities of antimatter today? Well, it’s nearly all travelled into the/our past in the form of pseudo-matter. Of course, if it were all that simplistic, you’d think textbooks would be full of pages outlining how the mystery of the missing antimatter has been solved. Since they’re not, maybe I’ve missed out on an elusive point or ten, or maybe the penny hasn’t dropped for the rest of the physics community yet!
Anyway, ‘what if’, and I have no specific reason in mind why this should be the case, but ‘what if’ antimatter has a greater affinity for travel backwards in time than matter? Antimatter exists – that’s established fact. Now antimatter can be created in labs and is used in medicine and it normally travels in a forward time direction at one second per second - normally. Therefore it doesn’t follow that any particle of antimatter must immediately upon its creation start heading towards The Creation, only that all else being equal, more antimatter particles than matter particles reverse time’s arrow.
Since antimatter doesn’t disappear immediately (if properly contained in a magnetic field away from ordinary matter), disappearing as in a backwards in time Houdini trick, there appears to be no observational evidence for this backwards-in-time-travel stunt by antimatter. I mean, if 100 antimatter particles are created in the lab, yet a few minutes latter there are only 98, that should constitute evidence, but apparently that’s not observed. For that reason, if I were a gambler, I’d bet against the antimatter-traveling-back-in-time theory; but why spoil a good scenario? But then as illustrated above, there’s nothing incorrect about viewing all of matter and all of antimatter, the sum total of stuff, just moving forward in time and in step at the rate of one second per second.
Still, we have to account for a Universe where matter rules and antimatter is the minority.
Maybe the affinity for antimatter travelling backwards in time is a slow (by human standards) process that however over cosmic time periods takes on significance.
But wait, you might think that a positron starting its journey back in time at one second per second would be thwarted in that the physical world it exists in is itself moving forward in time at one second per second. The two, a plus one second per second and a minus one second per second would cancel out and thus the positron is stuck in place and ain’t going no-where! But that doesn’t work either. Here’s our river analogy again to clear things up (I hope).
So say you’re floating in a river (representing time), moving downstream (the arrow of time) at one meter per second. Where ever you are, that’s your ‘now’. Downstream is your future; upstream is your past. Say a fish (representing the positron) is swimming upstream (back in time) at one meter per second. The fish is just standing still relative say to a tree on the bank of the river. You, on the other hand, are floating by that tree (which is standing still while you’re moving relative to it a one meter per second) and leaving it behind (in your past). Likewise, you and the positron-fish are getting farther and farther apart in distance, or separated in time!
To be continued…
*Parts of this topic were sparked off by reading several pages in Michio Kaku’s chapter on Precognition, contained in his latest book Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation and Time Travel; Penguin Books, London; 2009:
**Old learning’s die hard. Of course both the neutron and the proton are no longer considered to be fundamental particles. Rather, both are composed of a trio of quarks, and thus it is proper to have quarks and anti-quarks rather than protons and antiprotons/neutrons and antineutrons.
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