You and the Vacuum Energy

The electron, the proton and the quark are all entities within the realm of particle hence quantum physics. All three carry electrical charge. All three have mass. After those observations, things get interesting, or messy, depending on your point of view.

An electron has a negative charge exactly equal and opposite to that of a proton. Note: the charge is exactly equal, even though the proton has a far greater mass than the electron (some 2000 times heavier in fact, not that there has to be of necessity any relationship between mass and charge).

Now that’s strange since the electron is a fundamental particle but the positively charged proton is a composite particle, made up of a trio of quarks (as it the neutron with no net charge). The proton has two quarks each with a positive 2/3rds charge (up quark) and one quark with a negative 1/3^rd charge (down quark) for an overall balance of one positive charge. (The neutron on the other hand has one up quark with a positive 2/3rds charge and two down quarks each with a negative 1/3^rd charge, for an overall balance of zero charge – neither positive nor negative.)

Now you might suggest that an electron might be a fusion of a trio of down quarks, each with a negative 1/3^rd charge, except the electron, again, isn’t a composite particle, and the mass is all wrong for that scenario. If an electron were a composite of a trio of down quarks, each with a minus 1/3^rd charge, the electron would be thirty times more massive than it is – not something particle physicists would fail to take notice of. 

Further, the force particle that governs the electron is the photon; that which governs the quarks inside the proton and the neutron is the gluon, which further differentiates the two things – quarks and electrons. In any event, if you could have a composite particle of a trio of negative 1/3^rd down quarks, if that were the case, and it is the case, and it’s called the Negative Delta, you’d also need a composite particle that’s the fusion of a trio of positive 2/3rds up quarks for an overall charge of plus two. To the best of my knowledge there is only one such critter in the particle zoo and it’s called the Doubly Positive Delta. I’m sure you’ve never heard of these Delta particles, which goes to show how much bearing or impact they have on life, the Universe, and everything.

In case you were wondering, there would be an anti-quark of minus 2/3rds charge, and an anti-quark of a positive 1/3^rd charge, to yield an anti-proton and an anti-neutron. The anti-proton would of course have an equal and opposite charge to the anti-electron (which has a formal name – the positron). So things are equally as mysterious in the realm of the anti-world.

Question: How do you get 1/3^rd or 2/3rds of an electric charge in any event? Of course one could just multiply by three and that does away with the fractions, but that doesn’t resolve the larger issues, like for that matter, what exactly is electric charge and how does it come to be?

Presumably quarks inside of protons and neutrons, and electrons, could have taken on any old values of charge, separate and apart, but didn’t. Why? Is this evidence for a Multiverse (where anything that can happen does happen in all possible combinations); intelligent design (which does not of necessity imply a deity – just a creator, or a programmer); or just a coincidence?

Why is it so? What does it mean? Equal and opposite charges between the proton and the electron would just seem to be one of Mother Nature’s little mysteries.

But something else is odd here. The proton, as noted above, is 2000 times more massive than the electron, but if you weigh up the trio of quarks* that make up the proton, the proton should only come in at roughly 20 times that of an electron. That’s 100 times too small. So where does the other 1980 bits of mass come from? Well the gluon that holds the proton’s (and the neutron’s) quarks together, like the electron’s photon and gravity’s (theoretical or hypothetical) graviton, have no rest mass that add to the total. But the internal jiggling of the quarks and their gluon companions does add a bit more mass to the proton. Remember that motion equals energy which equals mass. Finally, that leaves the vacuum energy to fill the remaining gap.

Vacuum energy: what’s that? There’s no such state as zero energy, so there’s energy around even where you don’t expect it – like in a vacuum. If you have a finite amount of energy in a finite volume, you cannot dilute that amount of energy such that you end up with no energy present. That’s a violation of fundamental conservation laws. So this vacuum energy is present everywhere and experimentally confirmed so that’s not an issue to be debated. The next bit is to recall that Einstein’s famous equation relates the equality between energy and mass. Mass can be converted to energy and energy can be converted to mass. So this vacuum energy can produce what’s known as virtual particles, which exist for nanoseconds (actually way less than that) before recombining, going poof, and returning to the environment again as energy.

Everywhere, anywhere, all the time, these virtual particles pop into and out of existence – your basic transformation of energy into matter (mass) and back to energy again. Again, matter and energy are two sides of the same coin. A little bit of mass can create a lot of energy as the atomic bomb; a lot of energy can create a tiny bit of mass, and virtual particles are tiny, so it doesn’t take much energy to manufacture them. As you might expect, it’s cheaper (uses less energy) to create virtual ‘ping pong balls’ than virtual ‘bowling balls’, and so you get way more of the lighter particles created than the heavier ones. Further, the heavier they are the quicker they go poof again. Not that it ultimately matters but these pop-in pop-out events transpire so quickly that not even the finest and most accurate of Olympic timers could measure their duration. Quantum’s vacuum energy’s virtual pop-in pop-out is all over in the blink of a blink of a blink of a blink (add some more blinks) of an eye.

Oh, one other thing to note, when the vacuum energy creates these virtual particles, they are created in pairs – matter-antimatter pairs to be precise. Now why, when virtual particles are created are they in that form? Matter-antimatter pairs are the only viable way of returning to the vacuum energy the energy that was ‘borrowed’ to create the particles in the first place. It’s like borrowing money from the bank. You’ve got to repay it. If the vacuum energy created, say a pair of electrons, well the energy debt couldn’t be repaid since two electrons can’t annihilate each other back to pure energy. The bank’s money wouldn’t be repaid and there’d be hell to pay instead!

This constant froth and bubble is commonly called quantum fluctuations or the quantum jitters. All that activity, those virtual matter-antimatter particles, completely accounts for the missing mass – the differential between the proton’s quarks’s mass and the proton’s mass. In a similar way, presumably all matter is more massive as a result of these quantum jitters that take place in the vacuum energy, jitters which even permeate the insides of protons and neutrons. So, and I hope you’re sitting down while reading this, a large part of your mass is due to the jittery happenings of the vacuum energy!  

Given the above, I can’t help now but wonder what affect this constant froth and bubble, the quantum jitters, has on the biological body – your biological body. In theory, barring external agents like accidents, there is no real reason why we should age and die. Some diseases are obviously caused by outside agents like bacteria and viruses, but others have more mysterious origins. There are external agents like smoking, alcohol, radioactivity and ultraviolet light which can have detrimental effects. But if you exclude all nasty external agents, why would we age and ultimately snuff it?

The body, your body, my body, your pet’s body, is ultimately a composite of the fundamental particles that make up life, the universe and everything. These fundamental or elementary particles are subject to quantum phenomena. These particles have a volume for those phenomena to operate in. Even in space external to those particles, quantum phenomena operate all the time, anywhere and everywhere. The vacuum energy isn’t somewhere ‘out there’ in never-never-land. It’s everywhere including inside you from head to toe. Virtual particles are being created and destroyed inside you even as you read this, like it or not. All of this too-ing and fro-ing, the constant creation of virtual particles and hence their annihilation (literally a matter-antimatter annihilation) – energy to matter and matter back to energy – must have some sort of wear and tear on biological systems starting at the quantum or micro level and moving on up the line. If something goes wrong at the micro level, it has an obvious ripple effect on up that line to the macro level. Perhaps modern medicine should pay closer attention to quantum and particle physics!

There are probably multi hundreds of thousands of monographs exploring and explaining the workings and maladies of the human body from conception to ultimate demise; from the whole of physiology and anatomy down to the individual organ systems (i.e. – digestive system, respiratory system, nervous system, etc.); the individual organs (stomach, lungs, spinal cord); the tissues that comprise these; the cells that make up the tissues and the biochemistry that works its magic inside the cells. But I doubt if you’ll find in any medical library too many tomes on particle and quantum physics. Yet without particle and quantum physics there could be no cellular biochemistry on up to gross physiology and anatomy.

If all those quantum jitters, those now-you-see-them now-you-don’t virtual particles consisting of matter-antimatter annihilations inside you weren’t bad enough, the micro world isn’t quite through with you. You’re being bombarded 24/7/52 by millions of cosmic rays and neutrinos every second, though fortunately nearly all pass right through you as if you didn’t exist at all. However, the same can’t be said for those matter-antimatter annihilations. There’s no way I can see the creation and destruction of virtual particles (in matter-antimatter pairs) having any beneficial effect on your body, hence my postulating that these quantum jitters might have some, even if partial, effect on some diseases, infirmities, the ageing process, even ultimately death.

There’s no point is worrying about this for there’s not a damn thing you or anyone, not even your family doctor or a particle physicist, can do about it.        

The one saving grace is that the virtual energy is 120 orders of magnitude less than theory predicts, otherwise you and the Universe would be ripped apart – well actually you and the Universe would never have formed in the first place.

*There is some degree of uncertainty in the exact mass of those various quarks because they cannot be weighed in isolation. However, the estimates are probably pretty close to the mark. The error bars aren’t that great.

Cosmology 101: Part Two

The standard cosmological model, the standard origin of our Universe model, the Big Bang event, is an “in the beginning” model. The Big Bang marked the beginning of our Universe; what happened before that is akin to asking what’s south of the South Pole. However, I prefer a “once up a time” scenario, which implies there was a time before the Big Bang created our Universe, and ultimately, us.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

THE CENTER OF THINGS #1

The Black Hole is at the centre of things between the Big Crunch and the Big Bang. I’ll suggest it’s a frictionless place – there are those who suggest that the interior of a Black Hole, call it a singularity, is a transformation to a new state of matter totally outside our experience. What happens at the singularity is a pretty big unknown as one can’t look inside a Black Hole, explore a Black Hole (and live to tell the tale), and even the relevant physics equations break down when trying to describe the Black Hole’s singularity environment. However, whatever a Black Hole is, and whatever a singularity is, it’s not a fantasy realm where just anything goes. Firstly, I suggest that internal conditions will be quite suggestive of extreme temperatures and pressures (the two are related). All previous structure is totally broken down and recycled back to the most elementary, fundamental bits. No structure from the previous universe survives intact into ours. Secondly, the transition into, through, and exiting a Black Hole, from Big Crunch to Big Bang, I suggest won’t alter the laws, principles, and relationships of physics. They will be the same before and after. Thirdly, the total amount of matter/energy on either side of the transition via our Black Hole centre of things will be the same. However, the ratio of mass to energy could well be different. That coupled with the random nature of quantum fluctuations means the new universe, our Universe, won’t of 100% necessity, right down to the Nth detail, be an identical clone of the previous universe. You retain your uniqueness!  

Once the former universe (now our Universe) starts expanding again, other energy sources come into play to add to the oomph. A second source of energy is that in-between a Big Crunch and a Big Bang all matter gets reduced to the basics of fundamental elementary particles due to the resulting immense temperatures and pressures present. Molecules are torn apart to atoms; atoms to electrons (and positrons) and atomic nuclei; nuclei to protons and neutrons; protons and neutrons to quarks (and anti-quarks). Now, given that this transition phase produces or reduces everything to basic fundamental matter and antimatter particles, what’s the most efficient form of energy production known? Well, it’s matter-antimatter annihilation!

Matter-antimatter annihilation plus momentum from the Big Crunch to the Big bang – well, that’s energy enough to expand our Universe to the state of play we observe today.

But wait, there’s maybe more. There’s also the contribution from the vacuum energy (perhaps the cause of an extra postulated ‘inflation’ phase just after the Big Bang event itself), and/or ‘dark energy’*** which is a push or pseudo-antigravity force apparently causing our Universe’s expansion rate to ever increase – something quite contrary to common sense given that the mass, therefore gravity, of our Universe should be slowing things down.

THE CENTER OF THINGS #2

Traditional Big Bang cosmology states that the origin or our Universe created space and time as well as matter and energy (first there was nothing; then there was something) and that space is expanding carrying matter along for the ride. Thus, there is no centre within our Universe where the Big Bang happened. There’s no set of coordinates. The event happened everywhere because in the beginning everywhere was just that one tiny Big Bang point and nothing existed outside that tiny (but now rapidly expanding) point.

Well, my untraditional Big Bang cosmology has the Big Bang event taking place in existing space and time, so there is a set of coordinates in our Universe where the event took place, and that our matter is expanding through that pre-existing space. And by the way, there’s no observational technique available that can distinguish space expanding carrying matter along like an ocean current can carry a ship, and matter moving and expanding in space, like a ship under steam moving through the water.

Well, if we’re not the centre of things, how do you explain the observation that all but the closest of the galaxies are red-shifted and moving away from us? Doesn’t that imply we have bad breath? Well, at the time of the Big Bang, not everything gets hurled outwards at the same velocity. Something hurled out faster than us will be obviously moving away from us. But, something hurled out slower than us will have us moving away from them, but from our relative perspective, it will appear as if that slower moving bit of stuff is moving away from us. So, even though there is a centre where the Big Bang happened, we still get the illusion that all things are moving away from us.

Why can’t we see the remains where the Big Bang happened? No, I won’t copout and say there’s all this interstellar/intergalactic gas and dust in the way blocking the view. Don’t forget some 13.7 billion years have gone by the boards since that explosive event. Say you are watching a candle from several miles away, both in the visible and in the infra-red (since the candle is giving off heat as well as light). Now what can you detect once the candle burns down and will obviously go out? In fairly quick-smart order you will detect bugger-all. You can’t see it any more, and in short order the now totally consumed candle will assume the temperature of the local environment. Infra-red wouldn’t distinguish it (or the burning event) from all that’s nearby. Our Big Bang event happened so long ago that the residue has become part of the background common to everywhere else. So, we can’t pick up the specific location anymore. Too much time has elapsed. 

HOW DO YOU CREATE A BIG CRUNCH?

Well, the obvious way is that an expanding universe has enough stuff, enough gravity, so slow the expansion down until it ceases, then reverses direction and starts to contract under that gravity, very slowly at first, but over time as stuff gets closer together, faster and faster until like cars meeting at an intersection, everything comes together at one point in space and time. That’s your basic Big Crunch.

But, our Universe isn’t apparently going to do the Big Crunch boogie. However, there is an alternative way. If our Universe is ever expanding, and meets another universe that’s ever expanding, then the partial intersection of the two might increase the overall mass density sufficiently to cause that local intersected area to start contracting. And when that contraction reaches its logical conclusion, you have a – wait for it – a Big Crunch. 

The inhabitants of a doomed Big Crunching universe could in theory escape their fate because there is an outside (the wider infinite cosmos) to escape into.

ALTERNATIVES

Other island universes may have had other origins and/or fates compared to ours. Our Universe had a Big Bang origin and apparently will have a Heat Death final. Another universe may have a quantum fluctuation beginning and a Big Crunch ending. Maybe all universes, including ours, are cyclic as the result of (via string theory) two branes colliding (the Ekpyrotic universe theory).

As long as the origin of our Universe happened in pre-existing space and time, I’m a happy camper.

Not up for grabs in this essay, or in the context of the infinite cosmos including our Universe and all other universes within, is the Many Worlds theory of all things quantum, nor ideas central to the concept of a parallel/alternative/mirror/shadow, etc. universe(s) as they fall, assuming they exist at all, outside our space-time continuum.

***I’ve often wondered whether ‘dark energy’, a push or repulsive force, could be the result of our Universe having a slight excess of positive charge over negative charge (or vice versa) – although our Universe is supposed to be overall charge neutral. If it is not, and since like charges repel or push, a surplus of either positive or negative charge would give our Universe an overall repulsive force edge to it. 

Antimatter and the One Electron Universe: Part Two

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.

Antimatter and the One Electron Universe: Part One

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.

Symmetry: The Yin and the Yang:

Symmetry, or two ways of looking at things, or dual solutions or just plain duality is quite familiar in our world and has lots of parallels in mathematics and physics too. I mean we have wave – particle,  forward - back, left - right, east - west, top - bottom, north - south, push - pull, either – or, positive charge - negative charge, matter – antimatter, spin-up – spin-down, mass (matter) – energy, clockwise – counter clockwise, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, the irresistible force vs. the immovable object, odd – even, zero – infinity, male – female, mind – body, alive – dead, black – white, night – day, dawn – dusk, right down to heads or tails, old vs. new, war and peace, a glass half full vs. a glass half empty, perhaps Coke vs. Pepsi in that glass! 

We’re aware that there are mathematical equations that have two solutions. For an easy example, what is the square root of four? There are two solutions: +2 and -2. Of course the concept of -2 is usually considered to be irrelevant or nonsense (can something be minus two feet in height?), so normally only the positive values are considered justified. One tends to always assume and use +2, which, when squared, is four.

Likewise, the general form of a quadratic equation always has two solutions at its core, again, one that is usually a plus value, one that is usually a minus value, but in any event dual solutions.

Symmetry and the Flow of Time:

So, with all this symmetry and dualism in our lives, in physics and in mathematics, why not add in one more – say the flow or arrow of time. But surely time can only flow in one direction, from past to present to future. Or then again, maybe that’s an unwarranted assumption.

At the micro (quantum) level, there is no physical law or principle equivalent to the one-way macro ‘arrow’ of time. Every micro (quantum) action in what we would term the direction towards the future can be equally valid in what we would term the direction towards the past. If time has no significance at the micro (quantum) level, then all particles and all antiparticles can go both backwards and forwards in time, and in doing so, become pseudo-antiparticles or pseudo-particles respectively. The concept that the arrow of time can reverse must be among the most difficult of ideas to wrap your gray matter around if for no other reason than that our grey matter has only ever actually experienced a unidirectional time’s arrow.

Translating what a dual-solution, a minus or a positive value solution, could mean in real physics, Maxwell’s equations predict the existence of two sorts of light waves, a (positive value) ‘retarded’ light wave (the normal kind that travels from past to present to future), and (you guessed it) a (negative or minus value) ‘advanced’ light wave (a decidedly un-normal variety that would in theory travel from future to present to past). 

In physics, one normally has something called CPT symmetry, where C = charge, P = parity (left vs. right), and T = time. To conserve symmetry, if a particle is assumed to be travelling backwards in time, then its handedness is reversed, and so is its charge. It takes on the appearance of that particle’s antimatter counterpart.

In other words, you have to reverse the charge, reverse left-right handedness, and reverse the arrow of time to conserve symmetry. When this is done, an electron, going backwards in time, must take on the appearance of, and be interpreted as, a positron – but of course it’s a pseudo-positron in that’s it’s a normal electron wearing a Halloween mask even though it’s indistinguishable from the real positron McCoy. 

Feynman’s Idea:

When (future) Nobel Laureate Professor Richard P. Feynman (albeit starting this track while in his graduate days) looked at physicist Paul Dirac’s equation for electrons, he noticed that if one reversed both the electron’s charge and the time element, then there was perfect symmetry. An electron with normal negative charge going forward in time (one solution), seemed to be identical to an electron with positive charge – a positron – going backwards in time (a second solution)!

A positron is termed an electron’s antiparticle, or equally an electron could be termed a positron’s antiparticle, but in common terms, an electron and a positron are examples of matter and antimatter.

Now all matter particles have an antimatter twin. Their charges are opposite. Particles having no overall charge (like a neutron** or a neutrino) are their own anti-particles (in that their charge is the same – zero). Even so, these particles and their antimatter counterparts differ in other respects, have differing quantum numbers, so particle physicists still talk about such things as an antineutron** or antineutrino, and you’ll find references to them in the antimatter literature. Antimatter isn’t an ivory tower fairy tale concept. Positrons have been created; Mother Nature can create antimatter. In fact, gram for gram, antimatter is the most valuable stuff in existence, worth hundreds of times its weight in gold or diamonds because it’s both naturally rare and can only be manufactured in miniscule quantities at exorbitant costs in particle accelerators.  And, as we all are aware, when matter meets antimatter it’s annihilation time – ka-boom – electromagnetic energy (photons) is given off***.

The upshot of all this is that Feynman proposed that antimatter was just ordinary matter but ordinary matter going in the opposite time direction! Perhaps at this juncture I’d be better off to quote Feynman directly:

“We begin with a photon and an electron, and we end up with a photon and an  electron. One way this event can happen is: a photon is absorbed by an electron, the electron continues on a bit, and a new photon comes out. This process is called the scattering of light. When we make the diagram and calculations for scattering, we must include some peculiar possibilities. For example, the electron could emit a photon before absorbing one. Even more strange is the possibility that the electron emits a photon, then travels backwards in time to absorb a photon, and then proceeds forward in time again. The path of such a “backwards-moving” electron can be so long as to appear real in an actual physical experiment in the laboratory.

The backwards-moving electron when viewed with time moving forwards appears the same as an ordinary electron, except it’s attracted to normal electrons – we say it has “positive charge”. … For this reason it is called a “positron”. The positron is a sister particle to the electron, and is an example of an “anti-particle”.

This phenomenon is general. Every particle in Nature has an amplitude to move backwards in time, and therefore has an anti-particle.”

[Feynman, Richard P.; QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter; Penguin Books, London; 1990; p.97-98.]

Or, in the words of British science writer Jenny Randles:

“Indeed, it is now widely accepted that the best way to interpret a positron – which is the antimatter version of the electron with identical mass but opposite charge – is to view it as an electron that moves backwards through time.”

[Randles, Jenny; Breaking the Time Barrier: The Race to Build the First Time Machine; Paraview Pocket Books, New York; 2005; p.116.]

So, here’s my understanding of what happens, and apparently there are two ways of looking at the picture. What if an electron is going forward in time and for some reason emits or absorbs a photon which would cause it to alter direction, perhaps to the extent of reversing direction in time as well thus taking on the appearance of a pseudo-positron (because charge is reversed). At some later time, the pseudo-positron emits or absorbs a photon, and reverses time direction again turning back into your everyday electron. That’s one way of looking at things.

The other way is to abandon time reversals and just assume that all electrons and all positrons go forward in time, full stop. In either scenario, you have no physical contradictions – two solutions to the same equation as it were. But if you accept the time reversal concept, it’s a sort of micro Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde transformation.

Let’s run that by again.

Reality one: A real electron travelling forward in time absorbs a photon, bounces back in time as a pseudo-positron (because charge has to be reversed) and absorbs a photon and reverses time direction again, back to that of an electron moving forward in time.

Equally, a real positron travels forward in time, absorbs a photon, goes back in time as a pseudo-electron (charge goes from plus to minus), absorbs a photon and reverses time direction. In this picture there is no matter-antimatter annihilation.

Reality two: A real electron (or positron) going forward in time meets its opposite number (caused by an earlier forward time travelling photon energy that disintegrated producing a matter-antimatter particle pair) and that annihilation produces (emits) a photon (energy) also travelling forward in time which can then disintegrate back into an electron-positron pair travelling forward in time. In this view there is annihilation (matter meets antimatter), and energy (photon) producing a matter-antimatter particle pair, but no time travel. In either picture, the total number of electrons, positrons and photons remain the same. 

 To be continued...

**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.

***I’ve never actually seen an explanation as to why matter and antimatter annihilate on contact giving off pure energy. It just does in the same, but opposite way (symmetry again) as pure energy can create matter and antimatter particle pairs. The annihilation and creation of matter – antimatter, to and from energy, is not the problem since matter (including antimatter) and energy are two sides of the same coin. [It’s interesting that you have matter and antimatter, but not energy and anti-energy.] So, I’ll just accept that when an electron meets a positron – ka-boom. Also ditto that in that a ka-boom can create an electron – positron pair. But presumably an electron and an antiproton, if meeting up, won’t annihilate because the antiproton is not the antimatter equivalent of an electron. Also ditto that in that energy cannot create an electron – antiproton pair of particles.