Is Antimatter a Misnomer?

[nitsuj]

My least favorite physics word - Entanglement

 

[Drakkith]

My least favorite physics word - Entanglement

Entanglement: The state of my extension cord after using it a dozen times and never rolling it up before putting it away.

 

[Dickfore]

This is my first post on PF. Hello all.

Noting the fact that antimatter has a positive inertial mass and probably an equal, positive gravitational mass, isn't the term a misnomer? I know it has an opposite electrical charge and magnetic moment compared to normal matter, which means the two are partially each others opposites. However, I feel it is a stretch to call them mirror images of each other. Antimatter can indeed annihilate with ordinary matter, but this makes new particles, sometimes even massive ones, rather than the two cancelling each other out. I therefore propose that what is now called antimatter should really be called "complementary matter" or "Dirac matter".

I'm suggesting this renaming scheme because it's conceivable that one day "true" antimatter with a negative mass may be discovered or predicted in some theoretical framework. What would you call this stuff then?

Discuss.

Antimatter is not a "mirror image" of matter. It is obtained from matter by applying the operation of charge conjugation (C). Mirror images, on the other hand, are obtained by a parity transformation (P).

EDIT:
There is no such thing as negative mass, therefore it makes no sense to reserve the term 'antimatter' for a non-existant property.

 

[Alex-NL]

Antimatter is not a "mirror image" of matter. It is obtained from matter by applying the operation of charge conjugation (C). Mirror images, on the other hand, are obtained by a parity transformation (P).

That is the definition yes. My point is that it's not a very good definition. The term "conjugated matter" would then be a better in my opinion.

EDIT:
There is no such thing as negative mass, therefore it makes no sense to reserve the term 'antimatter' for a non-existant property.

Not that we know of and maybe it doesn't make sense within the context of our visible universe. It would make sense if our visible universe had an invisible counterpart consisting of what I call true antimatter traveling "with" it. This would solve completely the conservation of energy issue that is so awkward in big bang cosmology.

 

[Drakkith]

Not that we know of and maybe it doesn't make sense within the context of our visible universe. It would make sense if our visible universe had an invisible counterpart consisting of what I call true antimatter traveling "with" it. This would solve completely the conservation of energy issue that is so awkward in big bang cosmology.

Which conservation of energy issue are you referring to?

 

[Alex-NL]

Which conservation of energy issue are you referring to?

I'm talking about the everything from nothing "problem". I'm not making the common error here to mean "that there's so much stuff in it and the universe is so big, it just couldn't have come from nowhere". What i mean is that, if the visible universe inflated out of something which previously existed (which isn't standard big bang cosmology) it would make sense that from the point of view of this previous verse, mass-energy was conserved. This would be the binary event that I'm suggesting.

I'm not trying to provide a rigorous proof here. It's just an open discussion. I have some ideas about the stability of particles comming from from some sort of annihilation effect, which makes it look like particles are "stuck" in in time from our perspective. In this views, massive particles are a bit like what is sometimes called a white hole. They constitute forbidden areas of space. The cause of this, I postulate, is something called the quantum Zeno-effect. I'm suggesting that the mass-energies of the most fundamental particles are quantized and do not just combine in a random fashion because these particles are in fact, constantly "busy" doing their dance with their counterparts that are traveling "with" them. In this view, particles are more like holes in space.

I feel very strongly that relativity is also caused by the quantum Zeno-effect. In my view it provides the link. To put it succinctly: Particles only interact in pairs at any Planck clock tick. If a particle is in a region of space with a high mass-energy density, it is updated more often with regards to this frame of reference, i.e. tha particles in it. From the point of view of an area of space outside of this frame, the paricle (or the clock of which it is a constituent) seems to go slower than normal. Similar arguments can easily be made for Lorentz contractions and other relativity effects.

 

[berkeman]

Thread closed for Moderation of overly-speculative posts...