Content uploaded by Paul G. Ellis
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Paul G. Ellis on Oct 11, 2017
Content may be subject to copyright.
Antimatter Universe Models and Quasars
This is the original letter submitted to New Scientist magazine, sent 05 June 2009 19:19
(The published (copyright) version is available via New Scientist, issue 2716. 08 & 11 July 2009)
Subject: 27.5 bn year-old idea? (antimatter universe)
The idea of an antimatter universe, receding in time from the big bang (Perry Bebbington,
Letters, p. 7, 6th June) goes back at least to the 1970s when a paper by J R Gott III was
published in the Astrophysical Journal (beating a less technical paper on the same theme, then
undergoing revision for Foundations of Physics). Much more recently, John Gribbin ascribed
the idea to Victor J. Stenger while reviewing Stenger’s book The Comprehensible Cosmos
(Times Higher Ed. April 20th).
If the idea goes all the way back to the antimatter universe itself, it could be almost 27.5 bn
years old…
Paul G. Ellis, London
Historical footnote: An early model for quasars (added 06 November 2016)
This note, copied from the recent ResearchGate answer (url below), explains the reference to “a less
technical paper on the same theme”, edited from the letter for New Scientist’s published version.
Just prior to the appearance of Richard Gott’s paper (1974), Henry Margenau, then editor
of Foundations of Physics, requested a revise & resubmit for a paper involving the same basic
cosmology.
Gott’s essentially mathematical paper sought “the most general solutions to Einstein’s field equations
with symmetries about an event singularity”. Mine, in contrast and with falsifiable observational
consequences, was an early attempt to explain quasars: observed by us, but assuming the mirror-
universe's existence, then in either of the two universes quasars could appear as ‘white holes’ ejecting
mass-energy that had transited via wormholes, after having fallen into co-spatial black holes in the
‘other’ universe. Jacob Bekenstein, approving the physical insight, advised me to make the paper more
quantitative, which, had I had the maths, should have turned out to be the same model as Gott’s.
Which spectral lines do we get from far galaxies? - ResearchGate. Available from:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Which_spectral_lines_do_we_get_from_far_galaxies (p.4)
[accessed Nov 6, 2016].
Gott’s paper available via: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1974ApJ...187....1G