Cosmology, antimatter, symmetry

9 May 2001

...In this issue, on page 26, you will find an article signed by Gabriel Chardin and Marc Déjardin, physicists at the Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique. The following pages are sufficient to establish the strong kinship between these ideas, presented by these authors, and my own work. This follows up on the February 2001 issue of Sciences et Avenir and the March 2001 issue of Pour la Science. Clearly, we are now swimming in parallel universes, twin universes, reversed time arrows, and antimatter. Let me remind you that my first published work in theoretical cosmology, in 1977, was titled "Enantiomorphic Universes with Opposite Time Arrows" (Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris, presented by André Lichnérowicz). One might wonder how it is that these learned journals never once considered contacting me or even citing my own work on this subject—work that has been abundant over the past 15 years and published in high-quality, peer-reviewed journals. The answer was given to me by telephone in March by Larousserie, author of the article in Sciences et Avenir:

• We cannot mention your name in the magazine. We would immediately face backlash from all your colleagues, who cannot stand the fact that you've shown interest in extraterrestrials!

...At least, you now have a reason. When one takes interest in this taboo subject, one is barred from scientific popularization journals, has great difficulty presenting one's work at seminars—except, perhaps, by breaking down their doors (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris), figuratively speaking, of course. Editors of scientific journals erect powerful barriers (case of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, final refusal from James Lequeux after a year-long struggle with his referee). Fortunately, my readers need not worry—these publications are on their way. It won't be long now. But what a battle!

...I sent a message to the editorial office of La Recherche, offering my services for a possible article on these topics. But I doubt they will respond. Overwhelmed by angry emails, Larousserie of Sciences et Avenir published a clarification in the next issue, a fine example of bureaucratic jargon. As for Pour la Science, there was simply no reply. But I expected as much.

...In the end, one must have anticipated that this set of ideas would eventually emerge—just under different names than mine. One must take it philosophically. Fortunately, I have other interests in life beyond research...

....................................................................................................Jean-Pierre Petit

Some comments on these pages.

On page 29, the authors write: "...suppose that these spaces, where charge, mass, and time are reversed, should be considered as physical realities." One ingredient is missing from this symmetry: the P symmetry (for "parity," enantiomorphism). The inversion of mass (and energy) goes hand in hand with that of time, as demonstrated by Souriau in 1970. This is a property emerging from the action of the Poincaré group on its momentum space. In my work, I favor a CPT-symmetric twin universe to our own, where matter-antimatter duality also exists. In fact, the CPT-symmetric counterpart of a matter particle (retrograde, mirrored, and carrying opposite charges) is not identical to our own matter, since T-symmetry implies the inversion of mass. It is a particle with... negative mass, which it is preferable to locate in a twin universe of our own, to avoid annihilations upon encounters between particles of opposite energies—whose result is not radiation, but simply... nothing, which is problematic. The PT-symmetric counterpart, or "Feynman's antimatter," is "the antimatter of the twin." It too has negative mass. This twin matter and its antimatter contribute negatively to the gravitational field. Thus, as long suspected by superstring theorists (E8 × E8 model), these two universes communicate only through gravity.

....Thank goodness, all of this will soon be published, of course in proper form.

28 May 2001

...Below is a copy of a letter sent by a reader to La Recherche:

Philippe Looze, Physicist Engineer, ULG 1978 (University of Liège, Belgium), May 2001

Madam,

...I appreciated your special issue, which provides a good synthesis of the current state of research on this fundamental topic: spacetime. While reading the article by Gabriel Chardin and Marc Déjardin on page 26, I noticed that certain concepts presented are very close to those developed for some time now by Mr. Jean-Pierre Petit, Research Director at CNRS. At the end of the article, on page 29, the authors speak of "a definition of antimatter where antiparticles are in fact the time-reversed and charge-reversed image of particles located in a conjugate universe to our own." The idea of a repulsive gravitational coupling between material particles of positive mass located in two conjugate or "mirror" universes (in the sense of general symmetry laws [C, P, T]) is very close to the idea defended by Jean-Pierre Petit, already presented in his book "We Have Lost Half of the Universe," published by Albin Michel in 1998. The concept of mirror twin universes (enantiomorphic) was already proposed decades ago by Andrei Sakharov. I am therefore surprised that you did not cite these researches by your compatriot, whose main ideas are clearly visible on his website http://www.jp-petit.com, pending official publications in appropriate journals. Could you please explain whether this omission was accidental, or, if not, why Mr. Petit's theories are not considered worth citing?

...Sincerely,

.............................................................................................Philippe Looze, Physicist Engineer, University of Liège