Posted on 11/17/2002 6:53:38 PM PST by vannrox
Wednesday, 13 November, 2002, 14:40 GMT
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
Two Australian scientists believe they have found evidence of a parallel universe of strange matter within our own Solar System.
Dr Robert Foot and Dr Saibal Mitra, of the University of Melbourne, report that close-up observations of the asteroid Eros by the Near-Shoemaker probe indicate it has been splattered by so-called "mirror matter".
Mirror matter is not anti-matter, it is altogether weirder. It is somehow a "reflection" of normal matter, a sort of parallel series of particles required to restore the balance of the Universe.
Sounds far-fetched - some believe so. However, experiments are underway to confirm or deny the existence of this strange, potentially significant but as yet undetected component of the cosmos.
Cosmic balance
Mirror matter is a hypothetical form of matter that restores nature's flawed left-right symmetry.
Laws of nature, such as the rules that govern the interactions of fundamental particles, show a high degree of symmetry except that some laws are not the same when reflected in a hypothetical mirror.
Blue dirt: Pools of dust may be impact sites
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This means that elementary particles display a preference for left over right. In a way, the Universe is left-handed. Why? Nobody knows.
Many physicists are happy with this idea believing that in the first instants of the Big Bang everything was perfectly symmetrical. Only when the cosmos cooled did it become asymmetric, with a difference emerging between left and right.
But some scientists do not accept this. They maintain that the Universe has a left-right balance because there exists "mirror matter" - for every known particle there is a mirror particle that restores the cosmic balance.
Dark matter
Mirror matter would produce its own light but we would not be able to see it because mirror matter only interacts with our matter via gravity.
Dr Robert Foot believes that mirror matter would have been made in abundance in the Big Bang and that it is all around us but we can't see it.
Mirror man Dr Robert Foot
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"There could be mirror matter stars, planets and galaxies out there," he told BBC News Online.
"In fact, some think that the unseen so-called "dark matter" of the Universe could actually be mirror matter," he adds.
"Mirror matter is perfect to explain dark matter. It's dark and can only be detected through its gravity."
Dr Foot believes he has found evidence that it is here, closer than we believed, and that it had had a measurable effect on our spaceprobes.
Mysterious force
In October 2000, the Near-Shoemaker spacecraft lightly touched down on the 13-by-13-by-33-km (8 by 8 by 20 miles) Eros asteroid. It was the first time a probe had landed on an asteroid.
Its close scrutiny of Eros revealed many strange features - such as flat-bottomed craters filled with a peculiar bluish dust, and a puzzling lack of small craters.
Unexplained by conventional understanding, Dr Foot believes that mirror matter provides an answer.
He calculates that small objects containing mirror matter could have struck the asteroid and left behind precisely the same scars that are seen. Indeed, he says there is no other credible explanation.
He also calculates that mirror matter may explain the mysterious force that acts on both the Pioneer 10 and 11 deep spaceprobes.
Distant probes
Launched in 1972, the Pioneers are leaving the Solar System in opposite directions. Detailed analysis of their trajectory indicates that they are both subject to a tiny, unexplained force that is slowing them down.
Dr Foot believes that mirror matter exerting a drag on the Pioneers could be to blame.
Mysterious force: Pioneer 10
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"How else can you explain that both Pioneers, on opposite ends of the Solar System, experience the same force pushing in the same direction?" Dr Foot asks.
In a research paper to be published shortly, Drs Foot and Mitra suggest that mirror matter may even have struck the Earth.
He singles out three possible events: the 1908 Tunguska impact in Siberia and low-altitude, low-velocity fireballs seen in Spain in 1994 and in Jordan in 2001.
"Mirror matter could also explain these events," he told BBC News Online.
Future experiments
Many scientists dismiss mirror matter as wild speculation but even the sceptics will have cause for thought if the latest experiments from the European Centre for Nuclear Research (Cern) are to be believed.
Experiments involving so-called ortho-positronium - an arrangement in which an electron orbits a positron (its antimatter equivalent) - show that it decays slightly faster than can be explained.
This could be due, says Dr Foot, to the electrons changing fleetingly into mirror matter and then back again.
Experiments at Cern and in Moscow hope to determine in the next year or so if mirror matter really does exist.
Look at my definition of nothing.
Why? (And how do you define "nothing"?)
The extremely delicate balance of constants and forces required to allow our protected spacetime bubble to exist is one of the reasons I believe in the Creator. Either way, something existed before our spacetime bubble began to manifest so things did not come from nothing. You may not like addressing the possibility, but it is possible that the 'ether', the gel of 'empty' space in which matter appears to exist that resists acceleration and expresses inertia may actually be due to dimension time, as in the variable of time we could call 'present'.
We are fond of saying there are three dimensions of space, yet it may be more accurate to say there are three variable expressions of dimension space ... linear, planar, volumetric. If the bang theory is accurate, the variable expressions of dimension space need not have leaped fully expressed at the instant of first manifestation. Dimension space may have progressed in complexity from point to linear to planar to volumetric. The same concept may apply to dimension time as well ... ever held a moment of past time or a moment of future time? A beam of light arrives from a distant source carrying an expression of the reality of the source at the moment of divestment for the energy of the photon. A muon (or is it a mu meson?) slams through our gravitational field and appears to stretch time such that it arrives at a time not consistent with the rate of travel prior to arrival. A neutrino ignores out gravitational field and only rarily does a neutrino interact with a mass.
It is my contention that every particle (sub-atomic actually) is compsed of a bit of energy, a bit of space, and a bit of time. Bernard Heisch contends that the virtual particle field of 'empty' space is so real in its interaction with the spacetime filed that the virtual particles amount to a real mass interaction and thus the virtual field is the cause of inertia and resistence to acceleration. I am posing one step further, that the virtual field is actually evidence of the granular nature of space (the initial point manifestation) and present time. That's all; I'm an amateur, so I can have these flights of mental fancy without endangering any 'tenure' or reputation.... But there are some very astute minds 'out there' who are coming to similar conclusion, albeit from different directions.
One must start with axioms. That is one of mine.
Posted: November 17, 2002
Scientists have recreated a temperature not seen since the first microsecond of the birth of the universe and found that the event did not unfold quite the way they expected, according to a recent paper in Physical Review Letters. The interaction of energy, matter, and the strong nuclear force in the ultra-hot experiments conducted at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) was thought to be well understood, but a lengthy investigation has revealed that physicists are missing something in their model of how the universe works.
"It's the things you weren't expecting that are really trying to tell you something in science," says Steven Manly, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester and co-author of the paper. "The basic nature of the interactions within the hot, dense medium, or at least the manifestation of it, changes depending on the angle at which it's viewed.
. . . Excerpted
I do not accept your premise that there is an absolute need, either philosophical or mathematical, for there to be a "before" with respect to "our spacetime bubble". Time exists in the universe; the universe does not exist in time. Causality presupposes time, time presupposes existence (i.e., a universe). The existence of the universe cannot be contingent upon any sort of causal behavior.
Furthermore, I don't accept "fine tuning" or "specialness" arguments. Finely tuned parameters are, to me, indicators of physical principles that simply haven't been discovered yet. And "specialness" arises from our perspective: it's not that our universe is right for us, it's that we are right for our universe. Had it been different--radically different--we would have been radically different. But just the same we'd look out at it and say, "had it been any different, we couldn't be here."
~Doesn't matter.
...all signs of an absence of Brain Matter.
If this stuff really exists, I wonder if we'll ever be able to build anything, e.g., with it?
Does that allow an "always" or a "never?"
Sounds like a great subject for Art Bell!!
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