Slashdot Mirror
Missing Matter, Parallel Universes?
Phoghat writes "Could mirror universes or parallel worlds account for dark matter — the 'missing' matter in the Universe? In what seems to be mixing of science and science fiction, a new paper by a team of theoretical physicists hypothesizes the existence of mirror particles as a possible candidate for dark matter. An anomaly observed in the behavior of ordinary particles that appear to oscillate in and out of existence could be from a 'hypothetical parallel world consisting of mirror particles,' says a press release from Springer. 'Each neutron would have the ability to transition into its invisible mirror twin, and back, oscillating from one world to the other.'"
And in this parallel universe, everyone has a goatee.
Home of the Evil Spock.
I guess I'm my own invisible mirror twin then?
I believe they're talking about mirror matter. It's still in this universe but doesn't really interact with anything else, kind of like, oh dark matter is suppose to. :) So rather than new particles, they're existing particles but with a reversed parity. I'm not really sure how this would account for how dark matter is distributed differently than normal matter since I would think it would pretty much clump together to form the exact same structures as normal matter would.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_matter
The missing matter is all in the form of single unmatched socks.
... is the observations that dark matter not only doesn't interrupt with electronic matter (except gravitationally) but also doesn't interact with itself.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'm sure I did :)
Luckily we have more than one cosmologist, so it's not really a problem if some try new explanations (and maybe get to test them), because we have other cosmologists doing other things. Or are you going to suggest that there's only one cosmologist, going backwards and forwards through time and across the whole universe?
Can someone with a good understanding of physics explain whether anti-matter could be a possible answer to this question?
I sometimes forget... I'm the evil twin. Gotta go find the "good" version of me and get rid of him.
Remember, just because you have an evil twin doesn't mean *you're* not evil too.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
You mostly have that backwards. "Normal people" invent outlandish untestable explanations -- often with reference to supernatural intelligences -- for unexplained phenomena all the time, whereas the "mirror particle" hypothesis makes quite specific, testable predictions (and specific tests are recommended in the paper.)
Dismissive assumptions are so much more scientific than actual testing.
My keys seem to be missing. I can't find them anywhere! Could they be in a parallel universe? They could, but it's far more likely I'm just too stupid to figure out where they are.
We read all this stuff trying to understand anything and all, and then the next paper they release will just say "Bazinga!"
Science and religion (and philosophy for that matter) share many features, but the whole point of science is to protect against the incorrect or misleading statements of the others. So it's completely possible (and fairly common) for a scientist to hold religious beliefs, as long as science is practiced correctly then the religious beliefs will have zero impact on the results.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I'll pay you $100 for one of your dinosaurs!
When cosmologists talk about parallel universes, they have a very precise meaning, not Star Trek kinda parallel universes. In this case, a parallel universe is a plane of spacetime that is an actual distance away (through one of the higher dimensions in, for instance, M theory). Some particles that aren't attached firmly to our plane can travel between them (gravity is thought to be weak because of this). So if a cosmologist says that a parallel universe might be the cause of some effect, they *probably* have an idea for a mechanism, not just "They're like us, but they all have goatees!" These ideas are very difficult to test at the moment, so most of the work is theoretical, but they're not unfalsifiable in principle. This is why we do things like build bigger and bigger particle accelerators; it lets us create the conditions needed to test some of these crazier ideas.
I'm guessing the people who thought relativity and quantuam mechanics were bupkis probably used similar lines of reasoning.
You might want to try reading Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe". It a fairly approachable book on superstring theory and hidden dimensions for laymen.
The theories are very elegant and well thought out but are inherently difficult to prove since the sizes of the things that need to be seen are so small that they are currently unseeable, or energies required are so huge we can't produce them, so there is currently no way to experimentally prove the theories. The main superstring theories suggest 10, 11 or 26 dimensions of which we can actually see only four.
No one is advocating embracing superstring theory, hidden dimensions or multiverses as fact, since even their advocates know they are only theories, but neither should they be discarded as "bupkis" until they are disproved since they may be a way forward in understanding and resolving unresolved conflicts in quantum mechanics in particular. They are regrettably as difficult to disprove as they are to prove.
I'm of the opinion if smart people want to keep thinking about these things they probably should. Just because they are very hard problems doesn't mean they should be given up on. If smart people like the people that wrote this paper can figure out novel ways to test these hard problems, more power to them.
@de_machina
Read the David Deutch books: "The Fabric of Reality" and/or "The Beginning of Infinity". Good "layman" descriptions of quantum theory and the possibility that we are indeed living in a multiverse where "our reality" intersects with many others . . .
How do we know that all galaxies are made of matter, and that the universe isn't littered with some galaxies made out of antimatter? How would we be able to tell if a galaxy was made of anti-matter due to a different rounding error than occurred in our neck of the woods?
Sure neutrons have an aggregate charge of zilch yet quarks that make up the thing don't. We've been able to see fractional effects caused by constituents of neutrons for a while now.
It would be really interesting to understand why being able to effect a neutrons properties with a magnetic field warrants such exotic explanations.
The only way to transcend between the worlds is a modified transporter beam.
wrong you can also end up in the mirror universe if you have accident while in transit through a stable wormhole.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Crossover_(episode)
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
they mixed floating point and fixed point math sad really
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
sounds like a syfy channel moive of the week
Was just hoping that meant only just another spatial dimention or other relatively cheaper alternatives. But if we have to make guesses, lets think big from the start.
There were many scientists in earlier times when most people still believed in God, who did groundbreaking work in science and mathematics. There are names like Nicholas Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Gregory Mendel, William Thomson Kelvin, Max Planck and Albert Einstein. There are others that could be added to this list. It is quite clear from history, that belief in a Creator God does not preclude great scientific discovery and mathematics.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
I like this because unlike most candidates for missing mass, it can be falsified. Congrats to Berezhiani and Nesti for having the balls to propose something that other scientists can measure! It should be feasible to distinguish neutrons that decay, neutrons that hypothetically oscillate into a non-interacting state and back, and those that simply escape the trap.
There is an alternate theory that explains all observations in terms of electric and magnetic laws that are well understood and used every day here on earth. Because electric forces are so much greater than gravity, electricity gets things done much faster. This causes a great conflict with theories that try to explain how things came into being by processes that take immense amounts of time. This electrical theory CAN be tested by experiment and observations.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
The Crosstime Engineers are strip mining this universe. It's close, from an energy consumption point of view and has no advanced civilization to get in the way. The testing phase is over and full scale exploitation will begin shortly.
Relativity and quantum mechanics has been experimentally tested. It used to be that ALL science was done by experimentation and observation. Unfortunately, nowadays cosmology is mostly mathematical modeling using powerful supercomputers. These mathematical models are getting increasingly complicated, in order to take into account many recent measurements and observations coming from modern telescopes and space probes. According to present theories, these models require esoteric, never yet discovered entities, such as dark matter and energy and black holes. It appears that present theories are based on fundamental assumptions that are evidently wrong.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
If dark matter is actually some effect of the relationship between matter in another universe and this, how is it that the two are typically linked gravitationally, but not always. If you look at this photograph recently taken by the HST, one of the largest galaxy clusters we can see has its dark matter concentrated when the barionic matter is not. Puzzle me that? I'd have to have an explanation that would explain such anomalies.
Would not these parallel universes be somewhat coupled, then, because moving particle positions one place could affect the other place? And obviously position could transfer energy. Would a neutron within a black hole in one universe then be able to transfer energy into or out of the black hole by means of its parallel connection? But doesn't that violate some premises of black hole physics? And finally, would evil Kirk ever be able to overcome good Kirk and absorb his acting skills?
As I recall general relativity took four years to confirm experimentally from the time it was published in 1915 until observations of a full eclipse established that space did bend around the Sun. Some of the teams involved had flawed experiments which seemed to disprove it, and Einsteins hopes for a Nobel Prize were frequenty dashed when, for example, an attempt to observe an eclipse during World War I ended when the German team was arrested in Russia for espionage.
One wonders how long it would have taken to prove general relativity if we didn't happen to have a moon just the right size to create a full eclipse of the Sun.
It wasn't until 1959 that better tests, using radio frequencies, were designed that better proved the predictions of the theory.
In the case of Superstring theory they have run in to an even tougher challenge since the things that need to be observed are the size of the Planck length so they are impossible to observer with current technology.
In quantum mechanics there is still a dispute over a possible hidden mechanism behind quantum entanglement and "spooky action at a distance"
@de_machina
See, Strangest Result of the year.
Baryonic matter ("normal" matter from our perspective) is the minority.
WE are the Goatse Universe.
NOOOOOOOoooo ... oh, wait, that's not what you said. Phew.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I have an alternative theory. How often do you see a story saying "astronomers find out ____ is actually much bigger/smaller than they thought" or "____ actually has more planets orbiting it than we thought." So they're supposed to be counting all mass in the universe AND they're using almost exclusively reflected radiation to do it?! Dark matter is a math error, if you can even call it that when the error itself is thinking you can even estimate something that complicated with our crappy technology. Creating all these theories about it are just idiotic. It's right up there with lightning....hmm, must = Zeus. Dark matter is 100% made up with almost no basis in reality.
Just a minor note: Einstein won his Nobel for his work on the photoelectric effect (which ironically helped launch the quantum theory he distrusted the rest of his life), not for relativity. I'm not sure if you meant to imply that or not.
Such a theoretical mass swap, particle replacement system would logically not result in more mass in our universe and less in another. It's a mirror, not a funhouse mirror.
Let's say they do oscillate at 10 times per second and both particles exist together at some point because of an unevenness. Then with 10 particles, 5 would be unbalanced one way and one towards the other universe, as it is a cycle.
So let's say it's a perfectly even system like two moons orbiting a planet. They're always offsetting the other so they're in perfectly even balance, which would not cause an inbalance of mass.
There's a really old theory that I like better. Instead of neutron swaps with a parallel universe, there's an antimatter/event horizon theory that says "virtual" exotic particles that are basically matter and antimatter pairs are being created together in empty space all the times. They have mass so they collide and destroy each other very quickly, creating a net mass of zero and positive energy. But in theory, it isn't a natural effect, it's mass derived from energy. I think the basis of the theory was some sort of small scale energy to mass conversion thing where light and heat and other energy transition into "fake" matter that does actually have mass then back into energy when they collide. So at the edge of a black hole, one particle could get sucked in while another escapes, creating dark matter. It was a stupid theory since there's a 50/50 chance that a + particle would get sucked in instead of a - one basically, causing no creation of antimatter along an event horizon.
Of course that explains dark matter but makes "dark energy" worse because some of the univers's energy would me MIA for a bit at all times.
I know we keep looking for smaller and smaller bits of an atom, but if the neutron exhibits this behavior then Gravity as a weak force could be explained. If all the neutrons in a object were phasing in and out of our universe then their gravity impact on the object would be limited to the total neutrons and the force they can exert on the object while they exist in our dimension. Other parts of atoms do have mass, but this is interesting.
There is an alternate theory that explains all observations in terms of electric and magnetic laws that are well understood and used every day here on earth.
The way you phrase this - by saying it exists and mentioning its value and superiority, while carefully not actually describing it - reminds me of how those Amway people start every sales pitch.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Just go to the Southern Hemisphere and the water goes down the plug hole in a different direction. I think toilet spin is more to do with its design rather than the coriolis force.
Actually "hidden mechanisms" can be ruled out by experiment using Bell's inequality
...it's where my unpaired socks disappear.
Maybe Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter knows something we don't know?
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
What if you have a rotating toilet?
You may find yourself on a prison planet fighting an endless supply of criminals on top of a pyramid.
For a long period of time there was much speculation and controversy about where the so-called `missing matter' of the Universe had got to. All over the Galaxy the science depart-ments of all the major universities were acquiring more and more elaborate equipment to probe and search the hearts of distant galaxies, and then the very centre and the very edges of the whole Universe, but when eventually it was tracked down it turned out in fact to he all the stuff which the equipment had been packed in.
There was quite a large quantity of missing matter in the box, little soft round white pellets of missing matter, which Random discarded for future generations of physicists to track down and discover all over again once the findings of the current generation of physicists had been lost and forgotten about.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I'm sick of parallel Bender lauding his cowboy hat over me!
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
General and special relativity were cited in most of the nominations for his prize, and I think it had a clause citing his contributions to theoretical physics.
I think there was still distrust of the theories on relativity in some circles at the the time so they gave it to him on a safer discovery though many of the people involved wanted him to get it for relativity.
I could misremember though.
@de_machina
I don't see what hair styles have to do with anything...
oh really?
explains a lot, actually.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
More importantly, which way do your toilets flow if you live in Rand McNally ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Weird, just had the same thought the other day. Haven't broken into the Asimov volumes yet, that might be the first one ! Thanks.
Can I light a sig ?
He should also have received it for his explanation of brownian motion, which relaunched the whole thermodynamics / statistical mechanics field. All those contributions in less than ONE year. And I'm still trying to make the front page of slashdot for the 2nd time in 20 years...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Care to cite a source to that effect?
You can read more at Starts With A Bang, but the bullet cluster galaxy collision is a good demonstration: the electronic matter of the two galaxies is slowed by the collision, and the dark matter of the two keeps on keeping on. If the dark matter could lose energy in a collision the two dark masses would not continue unaffected.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
There are many aspects to the electric universe theory. Accepted science today tells us that the energy of the sun comes from an internal fusion reaction. In recent years, modern solar observation satellites have brought back much data which is confusing and puzzling if attempts are made to explain it by the generally accepted theories. Here is an article you can read:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2011/12/08/our-mysterious-and-variable-sun/
There are many other excellent articles on this theory, but some of them are rather complicated.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.