Was Mad Max Right All Along? The Parallel Universe

[Avinash]

vsdprasad ji mentioned about antimatter. So, I felt it appropriate to say what antimatter is.

In 1930 Paul Dirac developed a quantum theory for the motion of electrons in electric and magnetic fields. It was the first theory that correctly included Einstein's theory of special relativity in this context. This theory required the existence of a particle with exactly the same mass as the electron but with positive instead of negative electric charge. This particle, which is called the positron, is the antiparticle of the electron, and it was the first example of antimatter. In less than two years Anderson did experiments to confirm the existence of positron.

Dirac's prediction applies not only to electron but to all fundamental particles. Hundreds of such pairings have been observed.

A particle and its corresponding antiparticle are same in all respects except in the sign of electric charge and magnetic moment (and, of course, any property which is dependent on electric charge and magnetic moment). If a partcle does not have electric charge and, also, does not have magnetic moment, then it is its own antiparticle, example: photon.

A particle and its antiparticle will annihilate each other to produce radiation. This is why the antiparticles made in labs are unstable.

Take any particle which is not its own antiparticle. Even though Physics says that both of them must exist, both have not been observed in equal amount; one of them is negligible compared to the other. As an example, the no. of positrons is negligible compared to the no. of electrons. But it is possible that some matter exists which is made up of antiparticles of the particles which are found in the matter we have observed. That matter is called as antimatter. So, antimatter is made up of positrons, antiprotons and antineutrons instead of electrons, protons and neutrons.

It is possible that there is some Theist who is made up of antiparticles of the particles of which our Theist is made. But, our Theist should not try to shake hands with him. Otherwise, they will annihilate each other and both of them will get converted into radiation.

[vsdprasad]

Thanks Avinash ji, that was informative.
While I was preparing for JEE in my +2, our physics professor made us work on some equations relating to nuclear reactions and told us that it also releases some antimatter particles. Those classes were highly interesting to work on those energies & particles. Though I couldn't make it to those top IITs [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] (unlike intelligent beings like you!), I did acquire some knowledge in the process. Sometime I pondered over those antimatter particles and thought about their usage in spying. Imagine you have Television camera or any of the recording gadgets, made of antimatter particles. Assume they can record real matter particles. Imagine a Theist made of antimatter particles & working for FBI or CBI. No wonder he can go wherever he wants and observe the events without being noticed.

Of course, as you said he shouldn't go to "Berlekeley" and meet our real Theist! LoL

-Prasad.

A New Slice on Physics
Is the world we see trapped on a thin membrane separating us from vast
other realms? Some scientists say that would explain a lot.

Plato considered it first.

What if everything we hold dear is but a thin slice of some larger,
unreachable reality, like a flickering shadow cast on the craggy wall
of a cave? What if the moon and stars, your home, your thoughts, your
cat, are but projections on this wall -- mere suggestions of
unfathomable realms beyond?

In the last few years, a mathematically rigorous version of Plato's
2,000-year-old thought experiment has been refashioning the way
physicists think about everything from subatomic particles to the Big
Bang. The universe we see, according to this scenario, is stuck on a
thin membrane of space-time embedded in a much larger cosmos. And our
membrane may be only one of many, all of which may warp, wiggle,
connect and collide with one another in as many as 10 dimensions.
Physicists call this new frontier the "brane world."

The idea could help solve a long list of outstanding mysteries. Among
them: What is the "dark matter" that seems to make up 90% of the
universe? And why is gravity trillions of times weaker than
electromagnetism?

The revolution was set off in the mid-1990s when UC Santa Barbara
physicist Joe Polchinski determined through mathematics that branes
were a surface to which things attach, like hair to skin -- except the
"things" in this case were the minuscule "strings" that may well be
the fundamental ingredients of the universe.

"I was just fiddling around with mathematics.... Within a week or two
[other physicists] had done things with it I hadn't envisioned. It was
like taking the stopper out of the dam. Things poured through."

Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, creator of the
currently accepted version of the Big Bang, said recently he felt a
little like Rip Van Winkle -- picking up his head from a long sleep
only to notice that the landscape of physics he thought he knew had
suddenly, drastically, changed.

Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge, among others,
envisions brane worlds bubbling up out of the void, giving rise to
whole new universes. He ends his latest book, "The Universe in a
Nutshell," with a call to explore this "brane new world."

One might well wonder why such a seemingly bizarre concept has
attracted so many well-established physicists. The short answer is:
desperation.

The laws of nature that describe the large-scale universe to an
astonishing degree of precision (Einstein's general relativity) are
incompatible with the laws that describe the small-scale universe with
the same astonishing exactness (quantum theory). This means either
that one of these well-tested theories is wrong (all but
inconceivable) or that there is some larger, more encompassing theory
that somehow accommodates both.

To date, the only theory that comes close to marrying the two is
"string theory" -- a mathematically elegant set of ideas that has
swept the world of physics over the last few decades. According to
string theory, the basic ingredients of the universe are not
point-like particles, but tiny strings vibrating in 10-dimensional
space. Although still untested, string theory has scored a spectacular
series of theoretical successes, earning it an ever-widening circle of
admirers.

And yet string theory remains a realm apart from day-to-day physics --
lovely to behold but innately aloof.

For one thing, the strings are so small that it would take a particle
accelerator larger than the solar system to create the energies needed
to "see" them. This means, in effect, that strings can never be
detected.

For another, the complex mathematics required to deal with the
tortured 10-dimensional landscape is beyond the reach of most
physicists.

Brane models change all that: Unlike in string theory, the extra
dimensions in brane worlds can be big, infinitely big. "It led to a
whole new bunch of possibilities that could be experimentally tested,"
said physicist Jim Cline of McGill University in Montreal.

What's more, branes don't require the full range of mathematical tools
required for string theory, opening the door to new groups of
scientists. "You can use methods that are part and parcel of more
traditional physics," said Columbia University physicist Brian Greene.
"So a person who's not a string theorist can jump into the field and
make contributions."

This sense of promise was palpable last summer at the Aspen Center for
Physics, where string theorists and cosmologists -- the scientists who
study the origin and structure of the universe -- gathered for a
workshop to explore links between the smallest scales in the universe
and the largest. Brane scenarios popped up everywhere, enveloped in
the thick fog of uncertainty that clouds the birth of new worlds.

The setting was strangely church-like. The faithful . in rows under
spires of white-barked aspens, their round leaves fluttering in the
wind.

In front, a maestro in sneakers tapped out symbols on a blackboard,
chalk flying like fairy dust, black jeans covered in white handprints.
There was lots of talk about the infinite. Lots of recitation and
response. Everyone strained to channel some larger reality through
equations.

"Your bulk could contain many 3-branes," one physicist said.

"The 9-branes could still annihilate."

"I'm lost."

This was not your grandmother's physics. There were no objects in the
usual sense. No matter, no particles. Not even numbers. Only
"instantons," "alpha vacua" and multidimensional membranes wrapping
around one another, traveling down throats of black holes and bouncing
back, transformed.

Even to physicists, much of this seems unbearably strange. But in
physics, strangeness comes with the territory. "When I first learned
about quantum physics as an undergraduate, it just about destroyed my
mind," said Stanford post-doctoral fellow Stephon Alexander. "And now,
12 years later, it's just a tool."

There's actually nothing particularly new about the idea that space
may extend into unseen dimensions, or even that the world we know is
somehow trapped on a membrane.

Extra dimensions were such a hot topic in the 19th century that
Victorian schoolmaster Edwin Abbott wrote a famous science fiction
novel, "Flatland," based on the notion that our limited perceptions
prevented us from seeing worlds existing right in front of our
three-dimensional noses. Albert Einstein made extra dimensions an
integral part of physics when he used a fourth dimension, time, in his
theory of relativity in 1905. Ten years later, he showed that this
interwoven fabric of space-time could warp under the influence of
massive objects -- "causing" the force we know as gravity.

Extra-dimensional membranes were kicking around in string theory since
at least the mid-1980s, but no one took them very seriously. One of
the first suggestions that the world we know might be stuck to such a
membrane appeared in a 1985 paper that was a parody of string theory
titled "The Super G-String" by V. Gates, et al., from the University
of Cauliflower (actually, physicist Warren Siegel of State University
of New York, Stony Brook). "It was based on a serious paper that was
totally overlooked because it was before its time," Polchinski said.

The branes playing such a large role in physics today are richer and
more mathematically rigorous than early versions.

Essentially, a brane is a discontinuity in space-time, a boundary
where things meet, like the surface of a pond where the water meets
the sky.

"It's a defect in the quantum fabric," said Ruth Gregory of the
University of Durham in Britain. On one side of the defect would be
the vacuum of empty space. A vacuum with somewhat different properties
might exist on the other side.

Imagine our brane as pond scum -- a thin film that divides the air
above from a deep (perhaps infinitely deep) body of water below. Most
of what we experience is trapped in the scum. But beyond is a whole
other world of currents swirling beneath the surface. Their motion
might tug on our scum. We'd feel it as nothing but a gentle
disturbance, never dreaming of what lurks below.

A brane doesn't always divide one thing from another. It may just be a
condensation of stuff, "a localized lump of energy and curvature that
likes to hang together," Stanford University physicist Steve Shenker
said.

Either way, it's a place where things get stuck -- like the scum on
the pond. "That was the revolution," said Harvard University physicist
Lisa Randall. "To realize that branes were honest-to-goodness
objects."

Randall played a pivotal role in the revolution when she and Johns
Hopkins University physicist Raman Sundrum realized that branes could
be infinitely large and yet remain invisible.

The reason: We can't see anything outside our brane, because light
can't escape or enter it. We can't hear anything outside, because
sound travels through matter, and matter is stuck to our brane. We
can't use radioactivity to sense what's beyond, or even break through
with nuclear bombs, because nuclear forces are also firmly nailed to
our brane. There could be a big blue elephant sitting not a millimeter
away in another dimension, but we wouldn't know it's there because
everything we use to "see" is stuck to our brane.

Only gravity can't be glued to a particular brane. Gravity, as
Einstein revealed, is the curving of space-time itself, so it wanders
willy-nilly where it will, leaking off our brane into what physicists
call "the bulk" -- the rest of space-time.

Brane scenarios offer an elegant explanation for why gravity is such a
weakling: Maybe it's not any weaker than the other forces. Maybe it's
just concentrated somewhere else in the bulk, or on another brane.

Explaining the wimpiness of gravity is but a taste of what this Brane
New World might do.

Consider another embarrassing problem that has stumped astronomers for
decades. At least 90% of the matter in the universe is AWOL. Or more
precisely, it is known to exist because of its gravitational pull
(without it, galaxies wouldn't hold together) but can't be detected by
any other means. The standard approach has been to populate the
universe with exotic new forms of matter, too elusive to be readily
seen.

If our brane is but a small slice of a much larger cosmos, however,
the "dark matter" might be nothing but ordinary matter trapped on
another brane.

Such a shadow world, Hawking speculates, might contain "shadow human
beings wondering about the mass that seems to be missing from their
world."

Or take the mystery of why elementary particles always appear in
triplets, each set heavier than the next.

One possibility is that each triplet is the same particle repeating
itself on three layers of branes. They would have different masses on
our brane for the same reason as shadows on a wall can be different
sizes depending on the distance of the object that casts them.

"One of the neat things about the whole extra-dimensional idea,"
Polchinski said, "is that all the physics that we see -- all the kinds
of particles and their detailed properties -- are reflections of some
inner geometry."

As in real estate, value depends on location, location, location.

The physicists most entranced with brane worlds are cosmologists. Over
the last decade, a new array of telescopes and satellites has provided
them with sophisticated tools for taking the measure of the universe.
What was once little more than navel gazing is fast becoming a
data-drenched science.

But cosmologists need string theory to understand the origin of the
universe, because laws of physics break down at the tiny distances and
immense gravity at play in the Big Bang. For now, cosmologists can see
back in time only so far, and no farther.

Consider the Big Bang. According to current theory, the universe
sprang from an infinitely small speck of space-time known as a
"singularity" -- a paradox in the accepted laws of physics, which hold
that nothing can be infinitely small.

"A singularity is a euphemism for: 'Things have gone haywire....
Things make no sense,' " said Greene, one of the coordinators of the
Aspen workshop. "The Big Bang singularity is an 'It doesn't make
sense' on the most important problem -- namely, how did it all begin."

Branes can enclose the Big Bang singularity like a sheet of cellophane
-- avoiding the problem of the infinitely small by giving the
singularity some dimension.

Not surprisingly, the string-cosmology connection that brane worlds
brought about is also producing something of a culture clash. Until
recently, string theorists have remained skeptical of the grand
theories of cosmologists. String theory is mathematically rigorous.
Cosmologists are a wilder bunch, willing to try out almost any model
of the universe and see where it leads.

"We know how branes work," said string theorist Nathan Seiberg of the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. "We know what are
properties of branes, and what are not properties of branes.
[Cosmologists] violate all the rules. Is this good or bad? I'm not
sure. Because if they come up with something which violates the rules
of string theory but does all sorts of other wonderful things, then
maybe we in string theory will have a motivation to look into it."

Branes already have brought a whole new zoo of exotic species into the
world of physics. There are skinny branes and fat branes; empty branes
and full; active and still.

"A brane which is wiggling a lot would translate to a brane that has
excitations on it, particles on it," said McGill's Cline. That would
be a brane with atoms, forces, us. "But I could also have a cold
brane," he said. "That would be like a cold, empty universe. The brane
still has some energy density, but there's no particles living there."

And while the term brane derives from membrane -- a two-dimensional
surface -- branes could also exist in every possible dimension. A
string is a "1-brane," for one-dimensional object. Brane worlds (like
the one we might live in) must by necessity be "3 plus 1" branes --
three dimensions of space plus one of time. But you can just as easily
have a pair of 10-dimensional branes bounding an 11-dimensional
universe.

For now, no one knows whether the building blocks of the ultimate
theory will be strings or branes. "You can't really say," Polchinski
said. "It's kind of Zen-like, but in a very precise way."

Ultimately, brane worlds will stand or fall, like all science, on the
twin tests of consistency and experiment. Whatever bizarre brane
worlds may exist in some larger dimensional landscape, they can't
change what we perceive. The stars can't slip off into hyperspace. The
cat can't be disturbed from the couch. Physics has to answer to nature
as we know it.

Experimental evidence could come in the next decade from two very
different realms. A new particle collider under construction in Europe
could reach high-enough energies to produce, say, a five-dimensional
"particle" of gravity -- a telltale sign of brane worlds beyond. This
particle might be detected as energy missing from a collision because
it "leaks" into an extra dimension.

At the same time, cosmologists are figuring out ways to read the
signature of extra dimensions in the microwaves that pervade space as
the afterglow of the Big Bang; the effects would be subtle but
detectable, with a new generation of satellites.

"We just have to keep hoping that nature will be kind," Cline said.

In the end, there's always the chance that all these ideas will turn
out to be too, well, off-the-wall. "Who knows?" said University of
Chicago physicist Sean Carroll. But even if brane worlds aren't real,
Carroll said, "they will have taught us a useful lesson that we should
have known all along, which is that we don't have a clue to what's
going on."

Polchinski, for one, believes that branes are probably real, even
though he isn't sure where the idea will lead. "It's possible that
nature doesn't work that way," he said. "But it's so rich with
possibilities, if it's not good for this, it's probably good for
something else."

[Avinash]

I was not continuing with this thread because I felt that some may get bored (and irritated) if I keep on posting messages in this thread. But now I recall that I had promised to post what dark matter could consist of. So, I will describe the categories of dark matter very briefly. After that I will let this thread rest. I will post another message if I find some post in this thread which I feel would require replies from me.

The two main categories that scientists consider as possible candidates for dark matter have been dubbed MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects), and WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). MACHOs range in size from small stars to super massive black holes. MACHOs are made of 'ordinary' matter, which is called baryonic matter. They are thought to be primarily brown dwarf stars and black holes. WIMPs are smaller than atom subatomic dark matter candidates, which are thought to be made of stuff other than ordinary matter, called non-baryonic matter.

300 is a great movie full of visual effects and graphics which made it different and much better.
Acting was great, director did a wonderful job and chose great actors, full of action, and it is based on a true story.

[Murali_Mohan_das]

OK, putting aside the science (and aspects of the big bang theory which don't add up) for a moment, what is the *theological* opposition to the big bang theory? I know Srila Prabhupada was very much against the idea that creation appeared by chance, and this carried over to disdain of the big bang theory.

However, as I've mentioned once before on this forum, we see in Srimad Bhagavatam a description of creation that very much parallels the big bang. From: http://vedabase.net/sb/1/10/21/

They said: Here He is, the original Personality of Godhead as we definitely remember Him. He alone existed before the manifested creation of the modes of nature, and in Him only, because He is the Supreme Lord, all living beings merge, as if sleeping at night, their energy suspended.

and, from the purport:

There are two types of dissolution of the manifested cosmos. At the end of every 4,320,000,000 solar years, when Brahmā, the lord of one particular universe, goes to sleep, there is one annihilation. And at the end of Lord Brahmā's life, which takes place at the end of Brahmā's one hundred years of age, in our calculation at the end of 8,640,000,000 x 30 x 12 x 100 solar years, there is complete annihilation of the entire universe, and in both the periods both the material energy called the mahat-tattva and the marginal energy called jīva-tattva merge in the person of the Supreme Lord. The living beings remain asleep within the body of the Lord until there is another creation of the material world, and that is the way of the creation, maintenance and annihilation of the material manifestation.

and:

This Mahā-Viṣṇu is the plenary portion of the Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, who is mentioned in the Brahma-saḿhitā as follows: "Let me offer my respectful obeisances unto the original Personality of Godhead, Govinda, whose plenary portion is the Mahā-Viṣṇu. All the Brahmās, the heads of the universes, live only for the period of His exhaling, after the universes are generated from the pores of His transcendental body." (Brahma-saḿhitā 5.58)

Can somebody reconcile this for me? It sure sounds like the big bang, but with Vishnu as the source of all.

By the way, I don't get the Mad Max reference. Mad Max was set in the future, but wasn't really science fiction. I believe the original poster was referring to: Buckaroo Banzai. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086856/)

Perhaps not so much a big bang but an expanding and contracting universe with Maha-Visnu inhaling and exhaling?

[Murali_Mohan_das]

Originally Posted by GuesterlyWinds Perhaps not so much a big bang but an expanding and contracting universe with Maha-Visnu inhaling and exhaling?

Huh? My claim is that the two (big bang and Maha-Vishnu's breathing) are functionally equivalent. Can you explain how they are different?

Think of your own breathing. To a microbe in your lungs, your exhalations must seem like explosive events. Think of Maha-Vishnu (may I always dwell on His Lotus Feet). If all universes are contained within Him, wouldn't that make Him rather large (not necessarily, since the lord can contain all Universes within the smallest portion of Him--in fact, Maha-Vishnu could be a singularity)? Remember, a single breath of Maha-Vishnu is 100 years of Brahma (or some 4 billion years--no, actually, it's even longer).

[mahak]

hey, murali, i think i am mad mahax, who at one time spouted off about how an unseen universe exists right here among us, multiverse. Ya see, when I read of subterranean planetary systems, I think of those universes contained within the globe of the earth (martyaloka.) not below the earth as drawn in Srimad Bhagavatam mid cantos. Such pictures show the talas as being above us residents of earth, because we are a globe, and if they are belkow this globe, they are still above us, not subterranean. Just ask aussies, the stars they see are below us but they still look up to see them.

Multiverse is a situation of simultaneous existance, which is very compatible to vedic understanding of the highest level. This idea of transcendence, out temporary plight of being caught up in the mahattattwa, the whole thing. Physics when fully developed, with reveal Krsna. Big bang is energy, but nothing in physics existsw where there is no original energetic source of energy. So the big bang is a big bullett from a big gun, but the big gunslinger is Lord Narayana.

Multiverse is best displayed in the plot of Men in Black, the Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones vehicle for entertainment, (and it is a funny movie). The cat in the flick wears a jewel, and within that jewell is a universe just as potent as our own, but it is just a jewel around a feline neck. The closing scene is also profound, where everything that we think of as huge is rolled up in a plaything of someone who views everything seen by the Hubble telescope as nothing but a toy.

There is a parallel universe, many of them. Whole civilizations exist one inch off the surface of the earth orb, and it is all invisible for those of us who live one inch below their surface, as the concentric talas, rasatalas, naga realms, and ptriloka (The abode of Lord Yamaraja who hangs with me often) are just inches below us as well.

Maybe the hollow earth folks will have contributions, because, like pink floyd says, there is no dark side of the moon, it is all dark.

Santa Cruz in Summer, eh? any reggae festivals there.

hare krsna, ys, mahaksadasa