The language of time and space

Published on by Catherine Toulsaly

 

Leaving the States for a few days reminded me how much my own perspective is tinted by the set of spatial and temporal circumstances that define my daily life. I took the opportunity to read a few science magazines in French and got interested in stories that shed a different light on the Universe. My short trip to Grenoble, France, allowed me to change my perspective, not just on a personal level. As you travel, you will experience life the same way the locals do. You will watch the same media, take the same public transportation, and care for the same issues they do. There are as many perspectives as there are individual circumstances. The change of perspective highlights the idea of relativity. With every new information, I pause and rethink my attitude, whether I willingly or reluctantly meet the challenges to a status quo that is self-imposed on my mind and my way of life.  

 

It is generally considered that the Big Bang and its aftermath produced equal numbers of particles and antiparticles. At some point in its evolution, the Universe developed an asymmetry between the elementary matter particles and the elementary antimatter antiparticles. Such asymmetry was caused by a physical process called baryogenesis. While we know the general conditions necessary to generate a baryon asymmetry from an initially symmetric state, we are far from having a single accepted theory of baryogenesis.

 

For some, however, there is no matter-antimatter asymmetry in the present Universe. It may be that the vastness of the Universe allows the possibility of patches of matter coexisting with not yet discovered regions of antimatter, separated by immense voids.

...the standard cosmological model finds itself in the unpalatable situation of explaining most observations using concepts that are little, or not at all, understood. It is therefore reasonable to investigate possible alternatives to the standard model, which may in the end turn up to be just an impressive fit to the data using a relatively limited number of parameters.

Gabriel Chardin and Giovanni Manfredi

As an alternative to the Standard Model, the Dirac-Milne Universe is equivalent to an open empty universe that is neither accelerating nor decelerating and is said to contain as much matter as antimatter, provided that antimatter is a negative mass allowing repulsive gravity. New antimatter gravity experiments, such as ALPHA-g, AEgIS, and Gbar,  are underway at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

 

Another alternative is that the original antimatter created in the Big Bang is now contained within the stable composite leptons, the electrons and neutrinos, and the stable composite quarks, the weak eigenstate up and down quarks that comprise the protons and neutrons, within the hydrogen, helium and heavier atoms of the universe. Despite the lack of findings by the first mission of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) over 15 years ago, another experiment under development, the General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS), is designed to detect low-energy antimatter. One may wonder whether what we observed as a matter-antimatter asymmetry can be understood within the framework of a multiverse. Salvador J. Robles-Pérez suggests in his 2019 paper the possibility of two expanding universes from the point of view of their internal inhabitants. The latter identifies matter with the particles that move in their spacetime and antimatter with the particles that move in the symmetric universe.

 

Finding a link between the abstract world of a philosopher's mind and the theoretical universe of a physicist is a poet's dream. In the language of time and space, the expression "phantom divide" evokes a Buddhist image of the middle way of emptiness, defined as the crossroads between existence and non-existence, as a way to transcend a false dualism between being and non-being. At the root of reality lies the absence of dualistic entities and the entity that is the absence Of such entities - this characterizes emptiness...Whatever is dependent on co-arisen is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation, Is itself the middle way.

 

T31 n1601  

無二有無故,非有亦非無,非異亦非一,

是說為空相。

T30n1564

眾因緣生法,我說即是無,亦為是假名,

亦是中道義。 

 

I need to wrap my head around the transitional nature of spacetime. What is the ontology of the middle way? An in-between fabric of space and time, being and non-being, matter and antimatter, negative particles moving backward, and positive particles moving forward. Dirac had shown that antimatter appears as a matter of negative energy going backward in time. While antimatter's gravitational properties are still unknown, I wonder about its philosophical implications. My mind slips through the blurred lines of emptiness, deep into an abyss where existence and non-existence intersect. In the duration of our Universe, a trail of events runs through succeeding passages where mirror-image opposites encounter. The causality of events is to be found in the vacuity of endless middle ways. For every particle, there exists a corresponding antiparticle. The middle way is part of a threefold integrated reality.  

 

I stumbled upon the image taken of the Moon's far side, with Earth in the background, captured by China's LongJiang-2 satellite, and realized how great of an impact this "reversal of perspective" has on human consciousness. When consciousness, anchored by its earthly condition, ventures out to the other side of the Moon, it is turned upside down by how insignificant our planet looks in the background of the Moon. One needs to consider the evolutive aspect of temporal and spatial dimensions within the ever-expanding walls of our Universe.

 

From the dark side of the Moon (DSLWP-B/Dwingeloo Radio Observatory)

From the dark side of the Moon (DSLWP-B/Dwingeloo Radio Observatory)

 

On a more down-to-earth level,  I see the language of space and time being part of a more extensive discussion on space exploration. While most efforts are focused on a space race aimed at asserting one country’s strategic position beyond Earth in a rush to build the first lunar base and to plan and eventually fully carry through the exploitation of space mineral resources in partnership with private entities, I dream of another perspective that would strive to unify space and time and help find balance in our Universe. I dream of a “Center that collapses time and space into a single unified entity” (Clara Sue Kidwell, “So far and Yet So Near,” American Indian Places, p.210), a fusion of space and time.

 

The mind of a poet can be erratic. My head spins as my thoughts try to keep up with the pace at which images pop into my brain. A change of perspective has occurred in the flow of things and events.

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O
I think there at least is a connection between the soul, consciousness, God and antimatter. See my theory at<br /> <br /> God and antimatter<br /> <br /> https://crestroyertheory.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/god-and-antimatter/
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C
Interesting theory : "50% of the physical Universe is missing in the form of antimatter and maybe this antimatter is located in parallel universes in the form of consciousness"<br /> Thank you for your comment. The above link takes anyone who wishes to check it out to your 2013 article followed by thoughtful comments. <br /> I am adding the link to your YouTube video at https://youtu.be/J-TH46Ql5O0.<br /> <br /> Thanks again, Catherine