Reading Ideas

My Theory:

Within our universe, there is matter and antimatter. Matter has a negative gravitation (negative acceleration) effect on the space-time continuum (pulls towards). Antimatter has a positive gravitational (positive acceleration) effect on the space-time continuum (pushes away).

So if matter propels time forward, does antimatter propel time backwards.

Spectrum:

Positive Mass/Gravity = Positive Time
Zero Mass/Gravity = Zero Time
Negative Mass/Gravity = Negative Time

As the theory of relativity has been proven with atomic clock sync experiments; if you accelerate from the Earth, time begins to deccelerate (eventually to zero time?).

What if?

If you accelerate towards a large quantity of antimatter, would time reverse?

And if you were exactly inbetween a quantity of matter and a quantity of antimatter (or at a zero gravity point), you would be at the zero point, so time would literally stand still?

Another thought:

If you were somehow able to harness wormhole technology, going into a blackhole and out a whitehole would send you into the future, because a blackhole is comprised of extremely dense matter that theoretically could tear a hole in the space-time continuum causing a wormhole effect. So, if a blackhole is high mass, into the future, then a whitehole is the opposite and is high antimass, and into the past?

So if you took a ship, found/created a whitehole, and somehow traveled into it (granted you survived the trip and the antimatter pushing your ship back) you could theoretically go out a blackhole (physically impossible, Event Horizon, extreme gravity, etc) and be in the past.

Chew on it, comments, ideas, smart remarks, etc. All Welcome.

To each his own...

I figure for the benifit of the audience I'll paraphrase my replies in our discussion earlier today.

Anti-matter in your definition would have to have a negative mass inorder to make gravity negative. Unfortunately for this theory, Antimatter are merely particles whos addative properties (ie charge) are reversed, however mass is the same. So for example the anti-proton would hold a positive charge at 9e-31 kg. (thanks to: Wikipedia).

And unfortunately for your ship, the collision of matter with antimatter creates pure energy, essentially turning a ship into a pretty little fireworks display.

So basically the concept of antimatter (which I admit I misconstrued also) is not the absence of matter, but merely matter with properties reversed.

If you were somehow able to harness wormhole technology, going into a blackhole and out a whitehole would send you into the future, because a blackhole is comprised of extremely dense matter that theoretically could tear a hole in the space-time continuum causing a wormhole effect. So, if a blackhole is high mass, into the future, then a whitehole is the opposite and is high antimass, and into the past?

I do not believe this would work. Think of the wormhole as a highway. Taking the highway will get you from point A to point B much quicker than taking the side roads becasue speeds allowed are much faster. The same idea works entering the wormhole, only speeds are increased because time is decreased (think: velocity is distance/time. decrease time and velocity increases). However coming back in the other direction on the highway will return you from point B to point A, however you will be returning at time B, not at time A. This of course all implies that Swartzchild's wormholes are 2 way, which I havn't looked into.

Pistol Grip Pump In My Lap At All Times

Yeah, i think the name of the particle i was describing is not antimatter, it's called Exotic Matter or Exotic Mass. It is essentially the inverse of matter. it pushes instead of pulling, etc.

As for the wormhole thing...yes, if it is two ways, than youd go forward in time no matter which way you go. But like you mentioned, it may not be 2 ways, if that's the case, what if you force it to be? (with a huge amount of energy of course). Could going the "wrong way on a one way street" cause a buckling?

Another thing, if the blackhole is in the present at point A, and the whitehole is in the future at point B, if you went from B to A, you would essentially be going back into the past.

Keep it rolling :-p

To each his own...

So basically the concept of antimatter (which I admit I misconstrued also) is not the absence of matter, but merely matter with properties reversed.

If existence in a certain dimension is a property, then why wouldn't that be reversed as well?

Ewige Blumenkraft!

If existence in a certain dimension is a property, then why wouldn't that be reversed as well?

I don't think existance counts as a property, probably moreso the existance of all properties (or key properties) working in concert.

Pistol Grip Pump In My Lap At All Times

I think existence in our dimension could be construed as a property (mass), but I looked at that Wikipedia article and it's very specific about which properties are inverse. Interesting topic, but one I know very little about.

Ewige Blumenkraft!

Interesting topic, but one I know very little about.

Same here, which is why I'm going to hang around wikipedia for a while ;)

Pistol Grip Pump In My Lap At All Times

Well, i just find it hard to negate the possibility of something just because someone else it doesnt exist. I mean, the scientific method and mathematical calculations have proven and disproven so much of the "impossible scifi" of the years past.

i mean, 200 years ago, it was said man would never fly. look at us now. or when they said that the earth was the center of the universe or it was flat.

So why cant there be "Negative Mass"?

I mean, mathematics are the "language" of the universe. And if the universe is governed by mathematics, it must abide by the rules of math.

Not to sound clichish,

but where there is a 1, there is always a -1.

the equation must be balanced.

keep the comments coming...

To each his own...

Like I told you over AIM (again a reprint for community's sake), there is a mathematical problem that I looked at once in Algerbra II (or was it Pre-Cal) that was solveable in mathematics, but it was proven to be impossible in the real physical world.

Tomorrow, or at the latest Thursday I should be able to ask her and find out (my old teacher that is...).

Pistol Grip Pump In My Lap At All Times

Haha.

ok man, but im just saying a single problem is not gonna dismiss the idea of the possibility of "Negative Mass" aka Exotic Mass.

I mean, scientists in New Zealand are working on it right now.

To each his own...

<--- X axis ---> 
\     `         /\
 \    `         t
  \  /\         i
   \/  \        m
   `    \       e
   `     \      \/

Particles have proven to show very peculiar behavior. What this diagram depicts is the path of a proton by the dashed line. The ` marks are photon particles (particles believed to make up light).

Now, from the bottom, a particle wanders into the system, along with a photon. The photon splits into 2 other particles, one of them anti-matter and the other matter (anti-matter splits to the right). I should note that the size of these photons are incredibly small in size, and split into 2 much larger particles (oddly enough).

The anti-particle and the particle converge to form a photon just like the one that entered, and the excess particle wanders off the northwest part of the diagram.

It seems very strange, this behavior, and if you try to make sense of it in this manner, it makes little to no sense. However, think time as the y axis now. Suddenly, what you have is a particle that occasionally emits a photon and rapidly changes direction. It moves up, releases a photon which pushes it down, releases another and pushes it up off the screen.

So it seems that all anti-matter is an object flowing backwards through time, though to us, seems to be flowing the way we interpret time. It makes sense too. It acts exactly like a particle if time flowed backwards. It would be drawn to heavy objects (which for time to flow normally makes it look like it moves away from heavy objects).

Thought I'd share this with you guys. :)
Boggles my mind everytime.

If the world should blow itself up,the last audible voice would be an expert saying it can't be done

There's an easy way out of this. (Thanks to my 12 grade Physist teacher for explain two definitions of "mass" to us.) Why must gravitational mass and inertial mass be the same? What proof is there that inertial mass is the same as gravitational mass (sometimes called weight.)

We observe this to be so, but have never tested this for antimatter. This is what the great neutral cold hydrogen experiment is waiting to show. We can hypothesis a universe where the inertial mass is the same for antimatter and matter but where antimatter attracts antimatter and where matter and antimatter are repellant. That would be like a gravitational mass sign reversal but with the same internal mommentum. That would agree with the time reversal equivalancy.

Time reversal seems broke in universe in special situations. but still holds common sense in average every day life of mundane particles. Maybe it because we are deep in a matter rich enviroment well...but that's a different topic.

Back to the model, imagine space time curvature but where antimatter dimples the surface of space time "up" instead of "down" like punching holes in a sheet of metal from the opposite side. Zero rest(gravitational)mass particle would still follow the curvature of space the same. They still have momentum (inertial mass).

But gross matter and antimatter influcence curve space would interact differently. Also the weight of virtual particles pair in large volumes of space would cancel which is handy.

Causality paradoxi are resolved because matter and antimatter contacts lead to immediate anhilations and release of excessively large amounts of photon energy (therefore uncertainty as predicted in some reverse time travel calculations.) Photons travel at the speed of light and don't experience time in the same way as matter or antimatter. You can't go back in time but an antimatter messenger might. What stops one from killing ones grandfather is the same force that keep one from crossing the double yellow line in the middle of the road. Common sense. No U turns permitted. And don't fall a sleep at the wheel...time marches on or back as the case may be.

This post was edited by Marscrumbs on Dec 28, 2007.

I don't see why everyone seems to think matter should have some sort of counterpart. There is no opposite of existance other than to not exist whatsoever. If I studied my physics correctly, anti-matter is quite simply atoms which spin in the opposite direction.

The only reason why there aren't any is that of course upon contact, both are instantly destroyed equally and completely. It seems improbable that such contact could be kept for very long, much less since the big bang which formed the universe. Therefore, you could say that the 'matter' won the battle, at least for the section of the galaxy we are in. Had there been more anti-matter than matter, there would have been the same super-nova explosions which would have ultimately led to a anti-matter dominant galaxy. There's no reason to believe that anti-matter behaves any differently than matter as the direction of the spin of an atom does not change the strength of any of its forces.

Therefore, a planet of anti-matter would weigh the same as a planet of matter composed of the same material (of atoms spinning in the opposite direction). This means both would have gravity and follow the laws of the universe in the same way.

As for time travel, the idea is correct in thinking that escaping gravity is a bit like going backwards in time. However, one must remember that for as much 'forward' one is in time under the effect of high gravity (such as a planet), you could never reach the same 'forward' in time if you left the planet. It is analogous to saying that if you were on the peak of a mountain and you walked westward a bit that you'd still beat the same altitude as you were before. Clearly, you'd also be walking down as well as away from the peak, and likewise, you could never escape the gravity of a planet to go backwards in time. For that matter, any messages sent away from a planet would move forward in time once they are received by those on a planet, so likely it would seem very much like nothing strange had happened at all.

If gravity IS time travel, then perhaps there would be something to trying to receiving gravity and then losing it suddenly. For lack of a better analogy, rather than walk up a mountain slowly, you're strapped to a rocket on gigantic rubber wheels flying at 500 kilometers per hour. The difference is, of course, that once you pass the highest point, you'd likely be airborne rather than walking back down. Not many can say they've had gravity given and taken at such a fast rate, but astronauts have, and several tests involving synchronized watches has proven that at least some time travel occurs involved in space travel.

I think magnetism is a form of gravity, and the effects of time travel effect equally metallic objects. I'd be willing to bet that strong magnetic effects turned on and off could generate the same effect. So any time machine would likely have a fairly potent source of energy and some metal cords wrapped carefully around it to provide powerful magnetic forces.

Rumor was that the US government were doing similar experiments headed by John von Neumann to create an invisible battleship. An entire battleship was covered with metal bands and given a strong magnetic force. The results of the tests were not made public, but the rumors were that the ship simply disappeared entirely. After an approximate year, the ship was found intact and with many incredibly strange anomalies, among which were sailors melded with the metallic battleship walls and limbs found unattached to bodies. Sailors who were still whole were turned insane talking about how the walls became ethereal and passable.

You probably laughed at the metaphor of scaling a mountain being jet-propelled, but it seems that's what happened to the ship and all the inhabitants within.

If the world should blow itself up,the last audible voice would be an expert saying it can't be done

The existance of antimatter was first seen in a theory coming out of the math solution that predicted such particles ever before antimatter was observed. (A better name has been proposed that antimatter be called mirror matter.) And if your clock spun backward, wouldn't time seem to reverse itself? That is back in the days when we had analog timepieces. Does each piece of matter carry it's own timepiece or does time exist in empty space? Relatively so altered the concept of time to make this question sensible. What is spinning or what spin is is also a puzzle once you take quantum effects into account.

It was Einstein in his general theory who uses the hypothesis that accelleration and gravity the same. This lead to some unusual "relavistic" conclusions about time contraction. Also to limits of speed of travel by mass.

Also the congecture that antimatter is like matter running backwards in time comes out of relativity. Feynman transformation diagrams the somehow could be interpreted as either matter antimater anhilation, or by a high energy photon knocking a electron backward in time before releasing a high energy photon, depending on your perspcective.

Physist are innate taoists and like seening symmetry. Where symmetry is lacking they look for a cause that breaks it. That includes the arrow of time.

You paint a nice picture, and as much as I'd like to think that everything in this universe has an equal opposite, it simply isn't so. There are countless cases of forces and behavior that is simply *not* matched by an opposite force and/or behavior.

To name a few:
Gravity
Weak atomic forces
Strong atomic forces
Buoyancy

They're forces which have no opposite and equal force that we know of. It doesn't mean they must exist in some other part of the universe. Likewise, I think we humans are used to thinking of time like an arrow, flowing in exactly one direction. I could be wrong, but if time is a dimension, it is no more 'straight' than a line can be straight, and a line can be warped within other dimensions to produce very elaborate patterns and even be wrapped upon itself to form a loop. Rather, perhaps we have only seen time as an arrow because on earth, in the presence of gravity, time really does become uniform and straight. In other parts of the galaxy, time could stop, go backwards, loop upon itself, cross paths with itself allowing you to see your own spaceship 10 minutes in the future. In short, it could do a great deal more than go backwards.

If we're willing to accept that time could flow backwards, we have to accept it could do far more than just that, which wouldn't make it opposite anymore than following the curve of a graph in the +x direction would be opposite of following the curve of a graph in the -x direction.

If the world should blow itself up,the last audible voice would be an expert saying it can't be done

Gravity is symmeterical. It pulls equally on both objects toward their center. As goes with the rest of the forces. Bouyancy is just gravity apply through a fluid.

I apologize if I misled you.

By symmetrical, I didn't intend on the directional sense, but rather the radial sense.

Gravity only pulls, it never pushes (to the best of our knowledge). That's asymmetry.

Buoyancy is the result of gravity working more strongly on one weight than another, and that heavier weight being in a higher and less stable condition. The more obvious example is that of a boat staying above the water, not because the boat doesn't weigh, but because the amount of water the boat would displace is heavier. Admittedly, I guess you could say buoyancy is an effect caused by gravity to an extent, but like gravity, there's no opposite effect. Nobody's ever heard of anti-buoyancy, the force in which boats sink because they're lighter than water.

If the world should blow itself up,the last audible voice would be an expert saying it can't be done

Hypothetically: What if you powered say a Tube train with nuclear power to travel at more than light speed into a cloud of matter/antimatter... A Back To The Future View..

As for the train going faster than the speed of light. According the Einstein, this is not allowed by the parameters of our universe.

E = mc^2

What i think Einstein was saying was that if you took some object (for this case, a train) and made it approach the speed of light the object's molecular structure could not withstand the forces of that speed, ergo, it becomes pure energy as it approaches the speed of light.

As for the cloud of matter/ antimatter, not sure about that. It's said that when matter and antimatter are exposed to one another, there is a reaction with an energy discharge.

As for the time travel part, you would more likely need to "cut" a hole in the space time continuum with some Exotic Matter, to create a Blackhole and a White hole. the two holes would theoretically connect to form an Einstein-Rosen bridge. Then you could send a ship through the blackhole and it would come out the white hole.

The only problem (besides all the technical and physical problems) is controlling the whole thing.

With your theory, somehow if the train was kept intact, and somehow the matter/antimatter reaction caused a wormhole to be created, yeah, i think it's a possibility.

anyway, interesting approach.

To each his own...