Re: Balloon-Borne Instrument Collects Antimatter

Doug Jones (random@qnet.com)
Thu, 19 Aug 1999 21:40:15 -0700

While it's true that any individual antiparticle can be treated mathematically as a time-reversed particle, it does travel forward in time at 1 s/s just like everything else. In particular, antiparticles cannot propagate information backward in time, as your interpretation would imply. Antimatter does not run toward zero.

Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
>
> Clint O'Dell wrote:
> >
> > I'm no physicist, but doesn't anti-matter and matter annihilate each other?
> > How could you capture anti-matter that is floating around with matter?
>
> An anti-matter particle is only eliminated by its exact opposite. An
> anti-electron cannot be eliminated by an anti-proton. The problem with
> this balloon experiment is that the whole idea of anti-matter galaxies
> existing in the present day is ludicrous unless there is to be another
> big bang some time in the future. Any anti-matter that was created by
> our original big bang that was not eliminated at the time of the big
> bang is now some 26 billion years in the past, since anti-matter of any
> kind is simply matter that is going backwards in time. If anti-matter
> galaxies exist in the present day, then this means that we live in a
> closed universe and that it will collapse some time in the future to
> form a new big bang (or big bounce, as the case may be), as those
> galaxies are from that future time. Since the current preponderance of
> the evidence is that we live in an open universe, I predict that
> anti-matter galaxies will not be found....
>
> Mike Lorrey

--
Doug Jones, Freelance Rocket Plumber