Is it possible that our universe is oscillating between matter and antimatter at a high frequency? How would we know?

Question

Suppose the big bang did create equal portions of matter and antimatter and they exist right over top of each other, such that there is a constant inversion going on. Since a matter and antimatter universe would be identical, we wouldn't know whether we're living in one or the other; therefore, isn't it possible that at any given time we could be in one or the other, or oscillating between the two at a very high frequency, perhaps even at the smallest possible unit of time? Could such frequent inversions be responsible for what we call "inertia", since disturbances could cause a slinky-like reaction where the matter and antimatter pair are annihilating and recreating each other or swinging around each other in a tandem dance across space? Could such a phenomenon be responsible for quantum phenomena such as particles having no definite location, since they would be constantly coming into and out of existence in slightly different locations, with fairly regular offsets giving rise to an apparent quantum field? Wouldn't that explain entanglement as well? And if such a thing is occurring throughout the universe everywhere, perhaps it explains inflation as well, since it wouldn't be an expansion of space, so much as a shrinking of the size of every single particle in existence as the constant oscillation between matter and antimatter loses energy somehow...

Answer 1

You clearly do a great deal of thinking with some lay understanding of physics. Yours is an intriguing idea, and I like the way you think. Since you don't give any info on your profile, so I'm going to guess you're at freshman level or have read many lay physics articles (perhaps like those in New Scientist)

You seem to be describing an oscillation between two (or more) degenerate (equal energy) states (called "matter" and "antimatter") of some quantum system ("The World" or "The Universe"). I am not a cosmologist, but I think that the biggest problem with your idea is that we observe both matter and antimatter and we can measure their properties and behaviours in great detail. We know how they behave when they interact. So, there might be some underlying oscillation of "The World" along the lines you speak of, but my point is that particles and antiparticles are repeatably observable structure further to and on top of any oscillation that we might not be able to detect. We see them, and they are stable (as long as particles and their antiparticles do not meet and mutually annihilate themselves, i.e. change into another state we call photons). All these observations are going on and are fantastically repeatable notwithstanding any fantastically fast oscillation that may or may not be happenning between hitherto undetected constituent states.

Actually, there is known physics rather like your idea, and I speak of what Schrödinger called the "Zitterbewegung" (German for quivvering motion) (can you say this word without smiling? - I can't! It's a wonderful example of onomatopoeia). This idea also serves to illustrate my point above. According to this standpoint, one looks at the Dirac equation description of the first quantised electron and splits it up in a certain way. The electron's state is made up of four, complex valued "spinor" functions of space and time; one then splits this vector $\psi$ of four complex functions into two lots of two (so called Weyl spinors) $\psi_L$ and $\psi_R$ and the equation looks something like this:

$$\begin{array}{lcl}\partial\!\!\!/ \psi_L &=& -m\,\psi_R\\\partial\!\!\!/ \psi_R &=& +m\,\psi_L\end{array}\tag{1}$$

Don't worry about the details: let's concentrate on the equation's "shape". It's simply two first order, coupled differential equations. The fearsome looking $\partial\!\!\!/$ is something like a differential operator: for our purposes it's analogous to a time derivative. In the above, if the term $m$ were nought, we'd have two, uncoupled equations: $\partial\!\!\!/ \psi_L = 0$ and $\partial\!\!\!/ \psi_R = 0$. Guess what: you can write Maxwell's equations for light EXACTLY in this form. The equation

$$\partial\!\!\!/ \psi = 0\tag{2}$$

i.e. the freespace Maxwell equations, describes a lone, first quantised massless particle (like a photon). If we compare (1) and (2) and think about them in this way, the electron looks like two, massless particles coupled or tethered together by the cross coupling term, the quantity $m$ in (1). Massless particles always move at the speed of light $c$ relative to any observer: in the Zitterbewegung picture, an electon is made up of two, mutually tethered massless particles (which Roger Penrose quaintly calls "Zig" and "Zag" - I rather think he is playing on the sound and imagery of the word "Zitterbewegung" here) which "try" to zip off at the speed of light. Before one of these particles gets very far, the cross coupling term $m$ in (1) means that it changes into the other particle, which then "tries" to zip off at lightspeed, only to be converted back to the first particle and the cycle repeats. You get an oscillation - an unbelievably swift one - between the two massless states; indeed (1) looks rather like the decomposition of the second order equation for simple harmonic motion into two, coupled first order equations. The characteristic frequency is $m\,c^2/\hbar$ where $m$ is the electron mass: it amounts to about $10^{20}{\rm Hz}$, well faster than what we can currently measure. From the Zitterbewegung standpoint, the electron gets its mass from the mutual tethering $m$ between the two, constituent "Zig" and "Zag" particles and the nett effect is that it "stays put" - at least as much as something as small as an electron can given the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

The point is that this complex, oscillatory process is going on all the while we do our more mundane experiments with the electron in the laboratory. The electron behaves as a single, fantastically repeatably observable whole and this whole begets most of chemistry and the World we perceive. And it does this through observable structure that is further to and on top of any underlying oscillation between Zig and Zag. These two simply don't enter the description of most of the electron's behaviours, aside from that you can think of them as a mechanism for describing the electron's rest mass. And really, since they are a way of looking at the equation, but we never observe an isolated Zig or Zag, it is debatable whether they exist in the same way as an electron does at all.

Likewise, if there is any underlying oscillation of the kind you are thinking of, it will be in the quantum fields that make up the World and the observable properties of matter and antimatter are structure on top of and further to any such oscillation.

Another piece of known physics relevant to your idea is the theoretically foretold and experimentally observed properties of a real, mutually system of positrons and electrons: the "element" Positronium. This is in many ways analogous to low rest mass, short lived hydrogen. Indeed real tests on actual positronium have been sophisticated verifications of quantum electrodynamics. Positronium chemistry has actually been observed, and is in many ways analogous to hydrogen chemistry. Positronium in raised states can be surprisingly long lived (about a microsecond for the 2S state).

So the more you look at your idea, the more it looks like the germ of QED. And QED shows that positrons and electrons should be separately observable, as they are.

So now let's look at the remaining way your proposal might be true - a very slow oscillation with time. Any oscillation such as you propose would presumably distort chemistry grossly and wipe out any evolution. This is because quantum state evolution is unitary and continuous see my answer here, for example: we don't observe it to "jump" instantanously from one state to another in a way that would leave structure encoded in a "matter" universe reproduced in an "antimatter" universe. So I look at the fossil record and say that without a doubt I am descended from something like Haikouichthys: I have a backbone, and, at an abstract level, almost exactly the same body plan. This creature is 518 million years old. You might haggle and get me to concede certainty only at the level of my being a lizard without a tail (anything else I consider to be preposterous) - but we're still talking Devonian creatures 350 million years old. So therefore, so as not to disturb known evolution, we can see that the oscillation period has to be at least an order of magnitude greater than this time, which highly conservatively puts the period at roughly the age of the Earth (it would be arguable that even observed geological processes could not survive a continuous quantum state evolution from a matter to an antimatter universe). So we're already talking a period that is a significant fraction of, and likely greater than, the age of the universe. Your idea begins to look very complicated indeed if it is going to fit in with observed science.