Is "Dark Matter" actually "Mirror Matter" (having inverse parity to "normal" matter)?

From PhysOrg.com:

The inspiration for mirror matter came from an experiment performed in 1956 that showed that the laws of nature are not left-right symmetrical (also called parity-symmetrical, or p-symmetrical). Specifically, the experiment showed that particles in weak interactions display a preference for left-handedness, so that in a way, the Universe is left-handed. Since the other two forms of symmetry - rotational and translational - do seem to be symmetrical everywhere in nature, scientists wonder why nature doesn’t have p-symmetry as well. But if mirror matter exists, it would solve this problem by having slight right-handedness and restoring the Universe’s p-symmetry.

Full article

---

• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site

Invisible hand in invisible matter

From PhysOrg.com:

An international team of astronomers have found an unexpected link between mysterious 'dark matter' and the visible stars and gas in galaxies that could revolutionise our current understanding of gravity.

Full article

---

• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site

Hunting Hidden Dimensions

From Science News:

In many ways, black holes are science’s answer to science fiction. As strange as anything from a novelist’s imagination, black holes warp the fabric of spacetime and imprison light and matter in a gravitational death grip. Their bizarre properties make black holes ideal candidates for fictional villainy. But now black holes are up for a different role: heroes helping physicists assess the real-world existence of another science fiction favorite — hidden extra dimensions of space.

Full article

---

• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site

New Theory Nixes "Dark Energy": Says Time is Disappearing from the Universe

From The Daily Galaxy:

Remember a little thing called the space-time continuum? Well what if the time part of the equation was literally running out? New evidence is suggesting that time is slowly disappearing from our universe, and will one day vanish completely. This radical new theory may explain a cosmological mystery that has baffled scientists for years.

Full article

---

• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site

Is Everything Made of Mini Black Holes?

From PhyOrg.com:

In trying to understand how gravity behaves on the quantum scale, physicists have developed a model that has an interesting implication: mini black holes could be everywhere, and all particles might be made of various forms of black holes.

Continued

---

• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site

New findings reveal that the shape of the Universe is a Dodecahedron based on Phi

From Weird News:

The standard model of cosmology predicts that the universe is infinite and flat. However, cosmologists in France and the US are now suggesting that space could be finite and shaped like a dodecahedron instead. They claim that a universe with the same shape as the twelve-sided polygon can explain measurements of the cosmic microwave background – the radiation left over from the big bang – that spaces with more mundane shapes cannot.

Continued

---

• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site

Universally speaking, Earthlings share a nice neighborhood

Universally speaking, Earthlings share a nice neighborhood from PhysOrg.com

We don't have spacecraft to take us outside our solar system--not yet, at least. Still, astronomers thought they had a pretty good understanding of how our solar system formed and in turn, how others formed. In the last dozen years, nearly 300 exoplanets have been discovered. Are the solar systems in which they reside indeed like our own?

[Continued]

---

• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site

Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?

The New York Times has an article today (Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?) that discusses the philosophical issues arising from the latest theories of cosmology:

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science.

If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

Full article

---

• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site

The Mathematical Universe

In the paper The Mathematical Universe (PDF,) cosmologist Max Tegmark takes the (epistemological) position that the External Reality Hypothesis (ERH) strongly implies the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH.) MUH holds that reality isn't just described (modeled) by mathematics, but that mathematics and reality are actually deeply equivalent.

The abstract of the paper says "I explore physics implications of the External Reality Hypothesis (ERH) that there exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans. I argue that with a sufficiently broad definition of mathematics, it implies the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) that our physical world is an abstract mathematical structure. I discuss various implications of the ERH and MUH, ranging from standard physics topics like symmetries, irreducible representations, units, free parameters and initial conditions to broader issues like consciousness, parallel universes and Gödel incompleteness. I hypothesize that only computable and decidable (in Gödel's sense) structures exist, which alleviates the cosmological measure problem and help explain why our physical laws appear so simple. I also comment on the intimate relation between mathematical structures, computations, simulations and physical systems."

In another paper, Parallel Universes, Tegmark defines a taxonomy of different types of Universes (reminiscent of Georg Cantor's taxonomy of different types of infinities.) The existence of Type IV Universes would be a probable consequence of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis.



In addition to making me think more deeply, and more outside the box, than anything I've read since encountering Eliezer Yudkowsky's essay Staring into the Singularity, these two papers by Tegmark strongly remind me of several things that may be deeply related:

• Gödel's incompleteness theorems


• General semantics


• Pan-critical Rationalism


• The Laws of Form

---

• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site

End of the Universe as we know it?

The article "Is the evidence for 'alien' universes all around us?" (New Scientist) discusses the possibility that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) left over from the big bang shows evidence that our universe must have collided with others during it's initial period of space-time inflation.

As intriguing as that sounds, it raises yet another issue that just might be of more importance. Apparently, this would mean that there is yet another way for our Universe to end--without warning, and with no known way to prevent it. If you were thinking that the Big Crunch or the Heat Death of the Universe were the only two options, think again:

If universes really are crashing into us willy-nilly, should we be worrying about a fatal collision? "It's true, there is always a chance we will be hit by a lethal bubble, which would come without warning," says Vilenkin. "But since we'll just evaporate in an instant and there's nothing we can do to stop it, there's really no use in worrying."

Life is a major cause of death.

---

• Chronos blog home page
• Chronos Date/Time Library web site