Scientists believe there may be an “anti-universe” someplace out there that mirrors our own universe and reciprocates nearly everything we do. If this idea of the Anti-Universe is correct, it could explain why dark matter exists.
To begin, some background: “Big Bang” refers to a collection of ideas researched by cosmologists. They are scientists who attempt to rewind the clock as close as possible to the very beginning of the universe. Most people believe that matter exploded. However, there are differing viewpoints on whether the temperature was extremely hot or extremely cold at the time.
There are also differences of opinion about what happened before the bang. Is it possible that the Big Bang was merely the tipping point of a much larger upward trend? Consider when you’re bouncing on the trampoline and your feet are almost touching the ground underneath you; now picture only seeing the upward bounce; it’s worthless without the initial, downward half of the bounce!
If such a phenomenon exists, scientists may find dark matter even more baffling than the Big Bang. That’s because dark matter is a crucial ingredient in solving an enigmatic puzzle. How did the universe around us form today, rather than billions of years ago? The majority of the universe is made up of dark matter, but we’ve never been able to see it anywhere.
What are the properties of dark matter and how does it hide in plain sight? These are massive puzzles that must support a slew of other theories. For the time being, one approach to explain dark matter is to say that it isn’t bright. It is the precise name for something that doesn’t reflect or emit photons in a form that we can recognize. However, we can observe the physical (rather than visual) consequences of dark matter in phenomena such as gravitational waves.
Anti-Universe
The new theory. Is it possible that a newly found “anti-universe” exists alongside our own but in backward time? If that were the case, it would have spread out “backward” in time, before the Big Bang, in the same manner, that our universe has gone “forward” in time. Researchers from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada, argue that the Big Bang may have been smaller and more symmetrical than previously thought in a new paper published last month in the journal Annals of Physics.
“Among other things, we shall describe in detail a remarkable consequence of this hypothesis, namely a highly economical new explanation for the cosmological dark matter,” the researchers write.
One of the coolest aspects of this Big Bang scenario is that it eliminates the requirement for “inflation”. It is a period of time during which the universe significantly expanded to account for its size shortly after birth. Instead, the matter could have spread spontaneously over time in a less aggressive manner, simplifying our understanding of what happened.
And, to make these two before-and-after universes genuinely symmetrical, we’d have to add a particle to our current knowledge of the cosmos. Only neutrinos, extra-small mystery particles involved in gravity and weak interaction, are known today. If our world is mirrored by a universe that runs backward in time from the Big Bang, then dark matter might be a “right-handed” neutrino. Right-handed is a term that refers to the direction of motion in the neutrino In the other universe, it would be the polar opposite of left-handed neutrinos.
You’re correct if this sounds like wild and heady stuff. However, iteration employing this type of new theory is an important aspect of cosmology. Scientists need existing, published ideas to evaluate and decide what their next theoretical step should be. It’s far easier to do that by openly responding with your observations and measurements. This provides a lovely trail of ideas as we expand our understanding and build more sophisticated techniques to study the space and universe over time.