Our Universe Has an ‘Anti-Universe’ On the Other Side of the Big Bang

 

Marvel's Doctor Strange is an interesting fantastical take on the idea of the multiverse and how magic binds them together if the multiverse does exist we can be sure that it will be physics not magic explaining their existence however there is one alternate universe or dimension that doctor strange may have predicted right the mirror dimension is a universe just like ours but in reverse well at least in theory according to a new wild theory there may be another anti-universe running backward in time prior to the big bang and if this is true we can perhaps decode the mystery of dark matter once and for all but what makes them connected welcome the Science Reads and today let's find out if our universe truly has an opposite twin or not it's been a week but you are still confused about where did that one hour go when daylight savings happened well as stupidly confusing as the concept of daylight savings is we should feel relieved that we do not have to live in what scientists are calling the anti-universe from a physics point of view

 parallel universes are one of those

 intriguing ideas that are imaginative

 compelling but very difficult to test

 they first arose in the context of quantum physics which is notorious for having

 unpredictable outcomes even if you know everything possible about how you set up your system now think of a hypothetical mirror universe to the one we know and reside in but the time is running freaking backward we can imagine this universe perhaps looking like mirror dimension in doctor strange movies or upside down in the stranger things series but it will behave how time reversal worked in Christopher Nolan's Tenure yep that very movie which most of us haven't yet figured out don't try to understand it in tenet whenever John David Washington's unnamed protagonist traveled in time he had to wear a special suit and oxygen mask because the polarity of the atmosphere was reversed during the time running backward this is exactly what you can expect from the anti-universe according to physicists there are three fundamental symmetries in the nature of our universe charge parity and time

 flipping the charge of a particle in

 a given interaction results in an equal and opposite charge similarly the mirror image of a particle interaction will look the same as the original and time running backward will create the same timeline of interactions only in a different order but the sequence won't change according to scientists these three

 fundamental symmetries together

 suggest the existence of a mirror universe that would be the exact opposite of ours that means it would be filled with oppositely charged and mirrored particles that are going backward in time interestingly if such a mirrored universe does exist it could shed light on one of the biggest mysteries of our universe the ambiguity of dark matter dark matter makes up 27 of our universe and yet we know very little about it being completely invisible to us mysterious dark matter is often credited for the inflation of our universe if this new theory is accurate that would mean dark matter isn't all that mysterious but is just the new flavor of a ghostly particle called a neutrino that can only exist in this kind of universe a neutrino is a subatomic particle that is very similar to an electron but has no electrical charge and a very small mass which might even be zero neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the universe because they have very little interaction with matter however they are incredibly difficult to detect the science community notes that there are only three known types of neutrinos that are all left-handed meaning they spin to the left while all other known particles have both left and right-handed variations that could mean there are right-handed neutrinos somewhere out there that we can detect as scientists have suggested in the past these right-handed neutrinos would likely be invisible but would nonetheless influence the rest of the universe when interacting with gravity if symmetry exists everywhere else it would necessitate right-handed neutrinos in as great in abundance as their left-handed counterparts this makes right-handed neutrinos an intriguing candidate for dark matter the mysterious component of the universe whose existence and gravitational influence are needed to fully explain the motion of stars within galaxies our universe is constantly expanding and is full of many particles and phenomena that do a lot of interesting things their activity in turn keeps the universe evolving and we perceive it as time moving forward the concept of charge parity time symmetry demands that to maintain the balance across the multiverse there should be an equal and opposite universe to balance our own this universe would have all the charges opposite hours flipped in the mirror and run backward in time this would make our universe just one of a pair of twin brothers what would be the consequences if this is true first a universe that respects the cpt naturally expands and fills itself with particles without the need for a long theorized period of rapid expansion called inflation while there is a lot of evidence that an event like inflation happened the theoretical picture of the event is very vague it's so ambiguous that there's plenty of room to come up with viable alternatives inflation is now a built-in piece of

 our standard story of cosmic evolution

 but it's still controversial in 2014 researchers claimed to have seen ripples from inflation imprinted on the cosmic microwave background but this proved mistaken and it's not clear what would have made the early universe inflate anyway so if for a moment we take inflation out of the universe evolution equation a cpt-respecting universe would sprinkle itself with neutrinos there are three no neutrino flavors the electron neutrino muon neutrino and tau neutrino strangely as we mentioned earlier all three of these neutrino flavors are left-handed unlike other particles in the universe

 frankly a cpt-respecting universe ought to have at least one right-handed neutrino species and that's where dark matter comes in it's a shame that if a mirrored anti-universe that is equal but opposite to our universe does exist we will never have the means to go there as our universe and mirrored universe share their origin point that is the big bang while our universe started moving forward in time from there the mirrored universe would

 have moved backward in time

 that means unlike star trek where access to the mirror universe and its proliferation of sinister looking goatees is but a transporter malfunction away we will likely never be able to visit or even directly measure our anti-universe counterpart as the mirrored universe supposedly is behind our universe as in before the beginning of the cosmos there would be nothing to visit there however do not feel disappointed we can still test its existence and maybe prove it for one researchers predict that the three known left-handed neutrino species would all be major anaparticles which means that they are their own anti-particles in contrast to normal particles like the electron which have anti-matter counterparts called the positrons as of now physicists aren't sure if neutrinos have this property or not additionally they predict that one of the neutrino species should be massless currently physicists can only place upper limits on the neutrino masses if physicists can ever conclusively measure the neutrino masses and one of them is indeed massless that would greatly bolster the idea of a cpt symmetric universe lastly in this model the events of inflation never occurred instead the universe is filled with particles naturally on its own physicists believe that inflation shook space-time to such a tremendous degree that it flooded the cosmos with gravitational waves many experiments are on the hunt for these primordial gravitational waves but in a CPT symmetric universe no such wave should exist so if those searches for primordial gravitational waves turn up empty that might be a clue that this CPT mirror universe model is correct but more importantly if the right-handed neutrinos are what we call the dark matter we would be able to understand our universe a lot better moreover if the CPT mirror universe model is correct we might have to redefine our thinking towards multiverse theory as well multiverse theory has its most prominent example set in the inflation theory suggesting a hypothetical event that occurred when our universe was very young less than a second old in an incredibly brief amount of time the universe underwent a period of rapid expansion inflating to become many orders of magnitude larger than its previous size but if the CPT mirror universe model proves that inflation never happened we might have to redefine the universe from scratch but then again these are revolutionary times in astronomy when we are reviewing Einstein's work and questioning him as well who knows what the universe holds for us next tell us in the comments what this mirrored universe would look like according to you