Cosmic Fun: Random Ramblings in Modern Cosmology: Antimatter

The following ideas are primarily mine alone, the good, the bad and the ugly, albeit based on and influenced by reading multi volumes of tomes in modern cosmology. However, I’m also quite sure that numerous others have quite independently thought somewhat similar, if not exact, thoughts as well. Therefore, I’ll take no credit for being right, if I don’t get blamed for being wrong!

THE MISSING ANTIMATTER AND MISSING MATTER: A CONNECTION?

In the beginning there was the Big Bang. Theory suggests that equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been created. Alas, we don’t see antimatter in our cosmos. Where is it, or where did it go?

Well it might be silly to expect an absolute exact 1 on 1 match. Nature isn’t always 100% symmetrical.

It’s probably valid enough to postulate a close, but not quite exact 1 on 1 match, say for every 1,000,000,000 bits of antimatter created, there were 1,000,000,001 bits of matter.

When matter and antimatter meet, the bits annihilate, but since stuff (matter  and antimatter qualify as stuff) can not be poof-ed out of existence, what results is energy – Recall Einstein’s equating of mass and energy, where a little bit of mass can be converted into a lot of energy (the A-Bomb is an obvious example).  

Anyway, over time, nearly all the matter, but all the antimatter annihilated, but with matter ever so slightly ahead in the creation stakes, what we now see is a matter-dominated cosmos.  And one hell of a lot of energy should be around too – the result of 1,000,000,000 bits of antimatter coming into contact with 1,000,000,000 units of matter.

Another troubling issue is that the cosmos is expanding as a result of the Big Bang. If there is sufficient matter in the cosmos, the collective gravity will be enough to slow down to a halt that expansion; hence reversing the situation into a contraction and an eventual Big Crunch (perhaps to then be followed by another Big Bang, and so on ad infinitum).  If there isn’t enough matter, the cosmos will go on expanding forever and ever, eventually resulting in an eternally dark and cold endless expanse. Alas, that would appear to be the fate of the cosmos. We’re missing enough matter to close the cosmos.

But wait, isn’t energy the same as matter according to Einstein (and proved at Hiroshima and Nagasaki)? If so, what about those 1,000,000,000 units of matter/antimatter annihilation energy. That, combined with the one unit of matter left over, you’d think, would be enough to halt the expansion, resulting in the Big Crunch, a renewed birth, hence a second, third, fourth (up to an infinite number of) chances for the cosmos.

Then there is the theory by the late physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard P. Feynman that antimatter is exactly the same as matter, but traveling backwards in time! If we were to travel backwards in time, we’d become antimatter! The upshot here is that if, at the time of the Big Bang, equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created, then matter traveled forward in time (and is still doing so 13.7 billion years later), while the antimatter traveled backwards in time. Of course antimatter didn’t have to travel more than a few micro-seconds, even nanoseconds back before returning to the beginning (and presumably to a beyond Big Bang state – whatever that is – or was). Anyway, that’s why we don’t see or detect any antimatter in the cosmos today!

Further readings about antimatter:

Close, Frank; Antimatter; Oxford University Press, Oxford; 2009:

Fraser, Gordon; Antimatter: The Ultimate Mirror; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2000:

Nir,Yossi & Quinn, Helen R.; The Mystery of the Missing Antimatter; Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey; 2008: