Mirror Matter History

Physicists and engineers have been studying mirror matter, which is also called antimatter in the scientific community. Mirror matter is a mirror image of “ordinary matter;” and can be a solid, liquid, gas or plasma.  Like ordinary matter, mirror matter is composed antimatter elements that have been incorporated into the Periodic Table of Matter & Antimatter Elements. Each antimatter element’s physical, chemical, and nuclear characteristics have been defined to such an extent that people know all most as much about mirror matter as ordinary matter. 

In 1898, Arthur Schuster, a British physicist, coined the names "antimatter" and "anti-atoms." He believed there were entire stellar systems of antimatter that were indistinguishable from our solar system. He believed matter and antimatter would annihilate each other to produce an enormous quantity of energy and anticipated the concepts of special relativity and quantum physics.

In 1905, Albert Einstein unveiled his special relativity theory to explain the relationship between space & time, and energy & mass by famous equation: E=mc². Hermann Minkowski observed that space and time were coupled together by a forth-dimensional. In 1919, Theodor Kaluza unified Maxwell's Electromagnetism and Einstein's Theory of General Relativity and Gravity by adding the fifth dimension.

In the 1920’s, Max Planck proposed light was composed of little packets called "quantum” to explain how light was not just a wave or just a particle, but a combination of both. Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg apply the concept to the atoms and developed quantum theory of physics for slow moving particles.  

In 1928, Paul Dirac combined quantum theory and special relativity. The solution contained an electron with positive energy, and a positive electron (positron or hole) with negative energy. Carl Anderson discovered the positron in cosmic showers. Dirac and Anderson both received the Nobel Prizes. Paul Dirac theorized for every particle there exists a corresponding antiparticle, which exactly matches the particle but with opposite charge. Dirac also speculated on the existence of anti-planets, and anti-stars. 

In 1956, Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, Chinese physicists, proposed antimatter or “mirror matter” was need to solve the  τ-θ puzzle. Mirror particles interacted in the same way as ordinary particles, except that ordinary particles have left-handed interactions, mirror particles have right-handed interactions. In 1955 and 1956, anti-protons and anti-neutrons were discovered. In 1962, Lee and Yang received the Nobel Prize in Physics.  The conclusion was that there was symmetry between “ordinary matter” and “mirror matter” in the Universe.  

In 1948, Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle had proposed the Steady State Universe Model, which assumed the universe was composed of equal qualities of matter and antimatter.  The alternative theory was the expanding universe model that assumed the universe contained only matter. The discovery of microwave background radiation in 1965 split community into two concepts: scientific Plasma Universe Model and religious Big Bang Universe Model. 

In 1927, Georges LeMaitre, a Catholic Priest, conceived the Big Bang Model. In 1929, Edwin Hubble used the Mt. Wilson Observatory and discovered galaxies were moving away at high speeds, which supported LeMaitre’s theory for a big explosion. After the discovery of antimatter, the religious Big Bang Model was modified to assume most of the antimatter annihilated in a Big Bang that took place billions of years ago.

In 1966, Hannes Alfven, Father of Modern Plasma Science, developed the Plasma Universe Model that assumes equal quantities of matter and antimatter in the universe. Alfven received the Nobel Prize for his contributions to basic plasma physics and space plasmas. Anthony Peratt developed computer models that simulated the known galaxies in the universe. In our galaxy, the sun is one of the billions of stars that are composed of matter and there are a similar number of antimatter stars.  

For the last fifty years, high-energy physicists have built accelerators to discover new elementary particles. In 1967, Steven Weinberg theorized that weak forces and electromagnetic were the same at high energy levels, which was confirmed by physicists at CERN and Fermilab in 1973. Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Glashow, and Abdus Salam, were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1979.  

In 1982 and 1984, UA1 and UA2 collaborations at CERN discovered W and Z bosons. Carlo Rubbia and Simon Van der Meer received a Nobel Prize for their contributions for making, storing and colliding antimatter and discovering the W and Z bosons.  Today, the Standard Model unifies the weak and electromagnetic theories into electro-weak theory.   

Scientists have confirmed matter-antimatter symmetry between elementary particles. Physicists have identified the elementary building blocks (six quarks, six leptons, six anti-quarks and six anti-leptons) along with their force carriers. Physicists at Fermilab are looking for the Higgs bosons that give particles mass; and physicists at CERN will be using the Large Hadrons Collider to look for the Higgs boson at high energies.

In 1988, Robert L. Forward, American physicist, used “mirror matter” rather than antimatter to emphasize that antimatter was a mirror image of “ordinary matter.”  In his book, Mirror Matter: Pioneering Antimatter Physics, he describes how to make, capture, store, and use antimatter. Forward consulted for years with NASA and U.S. Air Force on how mirror matter or antimatter could be used for space propulsion. 

In 2002, comets were discovered to be natural source of antimatter or “mirror matter.” The announcement was made at the April 2002 joint meeting of the American Physical Society and American Astronomical Society. This is the greatest discovery since mankind discovered fire. Since comets are measured in the hundreds of billions of metric tons, one of the hundreds of comets in our solar system could supply the entire World’s energy needs for billions of years.