Daydreams of Physics in a Parallel Universe
Not far away in a universe everywhere close to here is a world just like ours. This sister world and the laws that govern it operate in an almost indistinguishable way. If there was a multiverse, this world and its universe would be the most similar to ours than any other. But, the physics there isn’t the same.
So, what’s different and why? Those similarities and differences are in the lines below. Take this surrealist sci-fi out and let it challenge what you know about the mechanics of the universe we live in.
The Shape of an Atom
You might think that matter there is much more exotic than it is here but it is surprisingly similar despite the differences ahead. In our world, an atom has protons, neutrons, and electrons and each has subatomic particles. However, in this alternate world, there are no protons or electrons or their antiparticle equivalents. Instead, protons and electrons are combined as a single and somewhat asymmetrical particle resembling a tiny hollowed bar magnet. Most of the mass of the particle sits on the positive end similar to the nucleus of our atoms. It may sound exotic but if a student from our sister world were shown the same ball and stick models we use in chemistry classrooms, they’d not immediately know the difference. If you had asked them to describe what they see they would tell you that the atoms are the hollow sticks and the balls are coalescing swarms of elementary particles captured in a rotational orbit. They might say that our view of the atom is odd though because, to them, our Bohr model of the atom would seem like it was rotated by 90 degrees and that we are looking at a strange cross-sectional view of one of their atoms.
In this parallel world, atoms are tiny magnetic traps set by the universe to gather, sort, and organize any elementary particles caught by the magnetic fields each atom possesses. These atomic traps escort elementary particles through the hollow proton-electron chute and accelerated out laterally at the negative end into an atomic orbit. There a tiny magnetic field guides its fall back to the positive end where it falls just short of reentering the trap and precipitates out of the void to be placed precisely on the atom's heavier end. In their universe, these are how those hungry atoms form neutrons over time.
Scientists in that parallel universe elegantly call this proton-electron pair, “The Electric Slide”. Breaking this slide releases immense amounts of energy similar to nuclear fission here. Trapped energy in the tightly woven bonds in the slide itself as well as the sorted particles captured in orbit is how fission is powered in their universe. Also interesting, what string theorists here call a vibrating string is somehow again a sliver of a cross-section of these same electric slides in our sister universe.
Scientists from our sister world would be amazed, however, by our periodic table of elements. There, the periodic table is quite a bit simpler than ours and has many fewer elements. If they saw our periodic table it might look like a futuristic map categorizing and classifying all the kinds of atomic crystalline structures matter can have as well as their properties. In their universe, particles themselves are self-similar and all form familiar crystalline structures at familiar universal scales. A periodic table like ours might look like the details we’d find etched into a “Philosopher’s Stone”. If they saw our 3D printers too, a scientist there might jokingly ask you to print them a cup of black coffee like you were on the Starship Enterprise.
The Existence of the Aether
“The aether is like a giant water droplet. The liquid water is analogous to the pervasiveness of the aether and the dust particles captured within are like all the stars and their planets nested within”.
Perhaps the largest difference between our universe and theirs is the existence of an aether. At least that is what we might call it. In that universe, the aether is a giant web of continuous gas-like fluid that permeates everything. It is composed largely of a massive sea of low-energy elementary particles similar to what we’d call photons.
Because of a photon’s nearly neutral internal structure, they move without restriction into the voids they fill and together are the swift medium of slightly entangled particles tasked to track and transmit any actions that happen within the aether. This gives them time along with its characteristic linear form similar to what we have here. There, the aether has the important task of transmitting information about distant parts of the universe to all the rest.
There, the aether fills the spaces in and between atoms, molecules, stars, and planets keeping everything causally connected. Since the aether is a photon sea and all other matter in the universe is made of various configurations of these magnetic particles, scientists in this parallel world make heavy use of what we’d call magnetohydrodynamics.
Their universe is an electromagnetic web and fluid whose density varies by localized energy fluctuations. The density of that web is what we’d call “dark energy”. Similarly, the web’s particulate content is where most of what we call “dark matter” lives. Although, many people there refer to them both as the “Dark Web”.
The Aether Cycle
The Aether Cycle resembles the hydrologic cycle on our world but instead describes how energized matter flows in their universe. Much like ours, energy flows from a higher density to a lower one. All along this energy drop matter can be intercepted, captured, and organized at the necessary energy level where it is used to store energy or used as raw material for building complex substances.
In this parallel universe, all the stars and their planets act as cosmic pumps and or sinks. From stars and planets down to the chemical elements, each sets its own elaborate electromechanical traps designed to sort through falling matter and to capture and organize particles with the right energy level to make substances grow. For some photons, and other smaller energetic particles, the local fauna, and flora, along with the engines deeper within their version of Earth, amount to a scheme that is a multibillion-year energy drop designed to efficiently remove, sort, and organize as much energy as possible.
If the aether were some exotic sea then the Sun would be that sea’s floor. All the planets and their tailing bodies are submerged in this sea and have settled steadily to just the right depth to offset their magnetic masses. In their universe, some scientists wonder if Mars’s dynamo failed in the past causing it to drift off further into their solar system before settling at a new depth equal to its magnetic buoyancy.
In our sister world's solar system, waves of incoming low-energy photons are constantly raining in from all over their solar system. Like currents in the oceans, the torrents of cooler aether rush in to displace lower density jets of boiling aether heated by the Sun’s surface. There, spent aether is re-energized and sent back out into the dark to be recaptured by the floating gardens native to their solar system. All together this exchange is The Aether Cycle.
The Big Booom!
In our universe, the “Big Bang” was a singular catastrophic event that happened billions of years ago and set our universe into motion. Our universe has been expanding ever since. In our parallel universe, the “Big Bang” is still happening. They are reminded that the universe is still “on fire” every morning and they aren’t really sure what to do about it yet. Since their universe is still technically “banging”, it is considered an ongoing problem so clever scientists call it the “Big Boom” instead. To them, the universe is still expanding because their Sun’s nuclear fusion, and her gardens armed with complexity and life, can’t slow and capture all the energy released or introduced by the initial culprit. The Sun slows the burn and the planets help but the surface area to catch the explosion seems to be far less than what is needed. There, light is mass and every high-energy photon and particle that misses a stellar playground is forced onto a deep-space journey they don’t yet understand. Do photons carry on straight forever, or do they eventually bend at the edges of space only to fall back for billions of years before being caught again? Regardless, the surface area catching the explosion is far less than what’s needed to slow or prevent the expansion of their universe.
Fortunately, scientists, there are generally not too worried about the expansion of space. To start, their universe seems to be half the size of ours. A bragging point for some. Additionally, they’ve begun wondering if the aether itself is their universe growing another digital or informational universe within it that is somehow larger. Some scientists jokingly wonder if all the magnetic particles in their universe could be used as the metallic surface of an old dependable hard drive. If their self-similar universe were somehow deterministic, or even partially, they might be able to use it as an index and clock so they can design and build a digital multiverse atop it. But who knows, maybe they’ll find one already there.
