admin Three physicists from the prestigious Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Waterloo, Canada, proposed an extraordinary idea: from the Big Bang not only the Universe we know but also another one that is ‘its image in the mirror’ arose.
A universe where everything moves away and expands over time. From our point of view, the universe is therefore moving “on the other side of the Big Bang” … in the past.In an article later published in Physical Review Letters, physicists Latham Boyle, Keran Finn, and Neil Turok argued that the universe in which we live is only part of the real universe and that if so, the two main problems that physicists are confronted with (i.e. dark matter and inflation) would no longer make sense.
In fact, dark matter, a mysterious substance that accounts for almost a third of the mass of the universe and that scientists cannot observe, is nothing more than a new type of neutrino (not yet observed). And the period of inflation, which expanded the universe exponentially shortly after the Big Bang and whose mechanism is still unknown, would simply no longer be necessary.
Now, in a new study just published in the Journal of Physics, the same researchers expand their work and examine what this inverted “anti-universe” would look like.
And their discoveries are really fascinating. As astrophysicist Paul Sutter explains in Live Science, future experiments looking for gravitational waves or determining the mass of neutrinos in the coming years could clarify whether this mirror universe really exists.
SymmetryCPT
There are a number of fundamental symmetries in our universe that no force of nature can escape. In fact, all of the equations that best describe reality, from Newton’s universal gravitation to Maxwell’s electrodynamics to Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, conform to these basic symmetries, with very few exceptions.
For example, suppose the universe “works” as time flows forward or backwardThe most important of these symmetries is charge (if we change the charge of all interacting particles to their opposite charge, the interaction will be the same); parity (if we look at the mirror image of the interaction, the result will be the same); and time (if we consider the interaction over time, it will work the same way).
With the initials (“C” for charge, “P” for parity and “T” for time), the combination of these three symmetries is called CPT symmetry.
“It is true that violations sometimes occur, but so far no one has observed a violation of all three symmetries at the same time. Therefore, in their new work Boyle, Finn and Turok propose to extend this combined symmetry beyond the forces of nature and take it to the entire Universe. In Sutter’s words, “the idea extends this symmetry and instead of applying it only to the ‘actors’ of the Universe (forces and fields) it applies it to the ‘stage’ itself, the entire physical object of the Universe.”
A simple glance ‘out there’ is enough to prove that the Universe is not symmetrical. And although changing the three parameters in the equations (Charge, Parity, and Time) does not alter the results of any specific interaction, the truth is that, overall, in our Universe time only moves in one direction, space expands and never it contracts and there is much more matter than antimatter. It is as if the ‘other half is missing.
Therefore, the authors of the study explain, that if the Universe follows the CPT symmetry, there must necessarily be a mirror-image cosmos that balances ours. This cosmos would have all the opposite charges that we have, it would be the mirror image of ours and, from our perspective, it would go back in time instead of forward. The Universe in which we live, then, would be only one of two ‘twins’. And together, the two universes would obey the CPT symmetry.
What would that universe look like upside down?
But what consequences would such a Universe have? According to the authors of the study, a universe that respects the CPT symmetry would expand naturally and fill with particles, without the need for an initial (theoretical) period of extremely rapid expansion, and inflation, whose mechanics are uncertain.
“And second, that symmetrical universe would add, as Sutter explains in Live Science, some neutrinos to the mix; “There are three known flavors of neutrinos: the electron neutrino, the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino. Strangely, all three ‘flavors’ of these neutrinos are ‘left-handed’ (referring to the direction of their spin relative to their motion). All other particles known to physics have left- and right-hand varieties, so physicists have long wondered if additional ‘right-hand’ neutrinos exist as well.”
Well, a Universe that respects the CPT symmetry requires the existence of at least one type of ‘right-handed’ neutrino. One that would be practically invisible to the instruments of scientists, and that would only influence the rest of the Universe through gravity. Does it ring a bell? An invisible particle that pervades the Universe and only interacts through gravity is the perfect definition of dark matter…
We can never see it
Boyle, Finn, and Turok provide some clues in their article that could lead to observations revealing the existence of this mirror universe. For example, one of the predictions for this CPT universe is that among the different neutrino types, there should be at least one completely massless type. And it turns out that, at least so far, physicists have only been able to determine the upper limits of neutrino masses. If they could measure these masses unequivocally and one of them turned out to have no mass at all, that would be a huge boost to the idea of a symmetric CPT universe.
Finally, as mentioned above, the model claims that the inflation event never happened. But physicists who believe this say that when the inflation happened, it must have shook space violently, filling it with gravitational waves.
Many researchers are looking for such “Primary Waves”, but they should not exist in a universe with CPT symmetry. So if at some point nobody finds them, that would be another indication that the CPT mirror model of the universe is correct.
Image Description: This is what our universe looks like to x-ray eyes
