back to article Is there ANOTHER UNIVERSE headed BACKWARDS IN TIME?

Cosmologists reckon we could be sitting opposite an alternative universe where time is moving backwards, thanks to the Big Bang. Dr Julian Barbour of College Farm, Dr Tim Koslowski of the University of New Brunswick and Dr Flavio Mercati of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics have tried to figure out the age-long …

  1. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Trollface

    Ah!

    That explains the rise of UKIP

    1. codejunky Silver badge

      Re: Ah!

      Disorder to a well ordered government system?

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: Ah!

        "Disorder to a well ordered government system?"

        Sounds about right. And like a perfectly ordered universe, the UKIP is hostile to life. A singularity is the epitome of perfect order, but you wouldn't want to live there.

        1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

          Re: Ah!

          You mean UKIP consists of Auditors?

        2. codejunky Silver badge

          Re: Ah!

          @ Trevor_Pott

          You may need to re-read my comment, I didnt suggest UKIP was the order nor can I imagine anyone who would make that mistake. They are the reason for most of the political discussion currently by offering choice (disorder). Like them or not UKIP can be a force for good regardless of them winning or losing.

          They also seem ahead of the curve. They target people based on their individual concerns and personal beliefs, while the main 3 aim for popularism and the magic 'centre'. When all options converge on a single mindless position because it might win the most votes it makes sense that everyone else is fair game for a party that appeals to them. You may like or dislike UKIP but it is because of what they stand for. Compare that to the main 3 who are liked/disliked based on what they used to stand for.

          I guess you could say that one looks to the future and the other 3 look to the past

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: Ah!

            "Like them or not UKIP can be a force for good"

            No, they can't.

            "They target people based on their individual concerns and personal beliefs, while the main 3 aim for popularism and the magic 'centre'. "

            Yes, instead of simply accepting as fact that we have moved beyond Bigtory-as-a-Service and are into a world where we are accepting of others as human beings, regardless of any qualifier, the UKIP cater to bigots, xenopobes and paranoid control freaks.

            The UKIP demand order. The order of absolute, rigid control. With theirs being the boot on everyone's throat, and the guns pointed at the faces of anyone not "just like them". Nice bunch. I see a lot of "good" in their future. /s

            1. codejunky Silver badge

              Re: Ah!

              @ Trevor_Pott

              When there is only one opinion which can be right then there is no need for democracy. When an opinion which does not match yours causes your unthinking outburst of "bigots, xenopobes and paranoid control freaks" with what I can only assume is total blindness to the current state of affairs then I suggest it is your world I do not wish to live in. I wouldnt like a world with your kind of boot on peoples necks because they are not like you.

              If you are interested at looking in the mirror I suggest you look at the hateful, assuming rant you accuse them of resembling and ask how you are not a (in your words) 'paranoid control freak' because you do seem to have shouted down a party based on some unfounded and intolerant beliefs.

              As for rigid control I do believe there is a 'face sitting' due to a government decision matching your description.

              1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                Re: Ah!

                Awww, does it hurt your feelers when I tell you you're an asshole?

                I find it pitiful and cowardly that you seek to vilify someone as intolerant because the one thing they don't tolerate is intolerance. It never ceases to amaze me how often the world's douche canoes try that old shtick. "If you don't let us [practice our religion/maintain our culture/preserve our nation] by [denigrating others/creating predjudiced or outright racist laws/clamping down on immigration/forcing our religion upon others with the mechanisms of the state] then you're the intolerant one who doesn't respect our [race/religion/culture/beliefs/etc]".

                Fucking clownshoes.

                It is not intolerance to tell someone they're douchebags for wanting to control others. It is not attempting to control you by preventing you from controlling others.

                To use the extreme arguments - because they have some grounds in history - you are not "intolerant of slavers' beliefs" because you create laws that prevent slavers from owning slaves. You are not "intolerant of a person's religion" because you prevent that person from forcing their religion on others. And you are not intolerant of someone's race/history/culture by creating laws that ensure everyone is treated equally under the law.

                It is those who seek to force their religion on others, who seek to keep an identifiable group as an underclass (or outright as slaves) and those who seek to preserve "racial/national/ethnic purity" by keeping anyone different out who are intolerant. You can attempt to twist the language and change the conversation all you want, but every single person here can see through your bullshit for what it is.

                The UKIP are a party founded on intolerance. They preach intolerance. Their most prominant members are rabidly intolerant and the visible population of their supporters are intolerant. Not merely intolerant, they absolutely have demonstrated themselves to be a party of "bigots, xenopobes and paranoid control freaks".

                I don't disagree with the need for a shakeup in politics. Every nation needs them from time to time. But I absolutely will not abide by attempts to romanticize or rationalize any group whose aim is to "shake up" said politics by repealing the social gains towards equality that so many people have died for.

                If you are a bigot who wants to tell others what they can and can't do then man up and fucking own it. Don't waffle and try to pretend you're something else.

                I own my beliefs, sir: that no group should be able to tell another group what they can and can't do. And I see absolutely no contradiction in the fact that by enforcing that, I would prevent those who want to force their beliefs on others from doing so.

                Now, if you propose to call me a bigot for my beliefs, then back up that claim sir. And start it by explaining to me how I am a bigot for saying "believe what you want, but you must allow others to do the same" but someone forcing their beliefs on another is not bigotry. That's some massively fucked up cognitive dissonance right there.

                Now, if you want to try to convince me the UKIP are, in fact, socially progressive fuzzy wuzzies who would never force their beliefs on others, or act in a prejudiced fashion towards others please, do explain pretty much every word out of the mouth of every single prominent UKIP spokeOldBoy in the past five years.

                Believe it or not, I can have my opinion of the party changed. You just need to present enough evidence to convince me not to base my beliefs on the face value of their members' statements.

                1. codejunky Silver badge

                  Re: Ah!

                  @ Trevor_Pott

                  "Awww, does it hurt your feelers when I tell you you're an asshole?"

                  Not at all. I find it amusing. A commenter on a thinking website posting an unthinking rant. I feel no more hurt than when the 'believers' of some-such Armageddon tell me I will burn in hell. I hope it doesnt hurt your feelings that from that insult I actually feel nothing.

                  I am going to take a long shot here but I guess you are not a fan of UKIP. No biggie, makes absolutely no difference to me nor my little world which you know nothing about. As I said I think they can be a force for good regardless if they win or lose. Their mere presence has opened up debate on decisions of this country which the public get little to no say. The mere success of UKIP so far has caused changes to the lead parties where labour/libs stand for the EU and the tories offer a half hearted referendum but that is very different to before.

                  It is interesting that intolerance is such that on a topic of scientific theory people (the first comment I add) mention a political party as if it is such an important part of their mind at that moment. And of course yours. You ask me to change your opinion, why do I care about your opinion? I hope you are feeling better after getting out all of that bottled up intolerance and amusing accusations but you seem to think I am a rep for them or that I am a valid target of your bigotry. You ask me to back up my claim of your intolerance, I point to your posts.

                  My original response to the original comment was of course the established order being shook up with choice. To me it also provoked thoughts of times of old when there was a single opinion by a ruling monarch and his yes men, the old democratic choice of different views, the move to 'centrist' policies and now/future which looks to be returning the government of different choice. Whatever you take from that is your problem and your opinion and your beliefs and I agree that you own that in its entirety. But I have no interest in trying to convince you of anything. I do wonder if you apply your requirement to explain everything out of their mouths to other parties too. Since that is where a lot of the offenders have come from (and in cases been kicked out of UKIP for). But of course you do. And as a result I assume you dont vote.

                  1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                    Re: Ah!

                    "As I said I think they can be a force for good regardless if they win or lose. Their mere presence has opened up debate on decisions of this country which the public get little to no say."

                    The problem is that the debate you seek is on whether or not to turn your company back to a time before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That isn't something that should ever be up for debate. That is an absolute hard line in our history. There is no going back.

                    Debate about budgets and local politics, about social programs and so forth? Good. Fine. But debate about whether or not the principles of the UDHR should be applicable to a nation? No. That's not optional. The principles in the UDHR are fundamental. They are - quite literally - worth dying to preserve...by the tens and hundreds of millions, if necessary.

                    No force which seeks to turn the clock back to before the UDHR can ever be or will ever be a force for good.

                    "You ask me to back up my claim of your intolerance, I point to your posts."

                    Attempting circular reasoning because you don't actually have the ability to defend your points? Oh, bravo. Extra troll points.

                    "My original response to the original comment was of course the established order being shook up with choice."

                    I'm probably the most ardently passionate commenter on El Reg about the need for choice in all things. But in this, the UKIP are not adding choice to the mix. As a party they stand quite loudly and proudly for the removal of choice from others.

                    You say that their mere existence adds choice and thus it is bigotry to speak out against them. I find it hilarious you're so gullible. They aim to limit choice for a great many people all in the name of providing greater choice.

                    War is peace, sir...and freedom is slavery.

                    You do a lot of ranting about your hatred of centrist policies. You do have an extremist left party as well as a centrist party and a right-wing party. You felt the need for an extreme right wing party too? That adds the required mix to make you happy?

                    I absolutely do believe that all parties should have their feet held to the fire and be forced to explain themselves...but given the horribleness of the UKIP's stances, there is a criticality to debunking their crap. The same requirement for urgency just doesn't apply to the other parties.

                    It is that hard line I talked about above. Where they seek openly to renege on the basic tenets of the UDHR and regress the UK back to a point where not all people are equal.

                    You wonder why I would be passionate about debunking the UKIP's lies? The honest truth is that it is because I do not want my nation to have to expend the lives of it's young men and women fighting the nation that the UKIP would build. It is because what the UKIP stands for is social regression of such extremes that it becomes the duty of the citizenry of the world to warn - and ward - against.

                    I don't particularly care what you believe, but I do care that you attempt to dress up the UKIP as somehow more acceptable than it actually is. Do remember that before World War II started, the Nazi party was the small extremist party of passionate people who agitated for "change". They focused on the economy and reshaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower.

                    They did not start off with invasions of other nations and outright genocide. They started off being a nationalistic ultra right wing party that sought to "throw off the shackles of it's European oppressors".

                    Oh, there was racism, but it was - at least initially - not hugely overt. They downplayed it to the public and you only really got doses of it if you were a believer and went to the meetings.

                    Everyone knew that the Nazi party were racist, but they managed to toe the line in public rather well...and they had A Plan For Change. One that involved not only building Germany's economy, but restoring pride to everyday Germans.

                    They got themselves elected. Then they played power politics and took over. Then it all went - pretty literally - straight to hell.

                    Now, I realize that this is the point where a UKIP supporter will simply cry "Godwin's law", but Godwin's law doesn't apply where the comparison is valid. And I am not comparing the UKIP to the Nazi party during WWII, but to the early Nazi party circa 1920, with the biggest difference being that the UKIP lacks a charismatic and driven leader like Hitler.

                    Like the Nazi party of 1920, the UKIP is focused mainly on what we would today call "libertarian" principles, but it doesn't take much digging at all to see that it is "libertarianism for the select few" being espoused; abject subjugation for the rest.

                    Now, there are differences in the party policies (thank $deity!) but the concepts of xenophobia and bigotry tying together an almost anarchistic individualism tied together with a demand for provisioning of state services for the privileged (cognitive dissonance alert!)...those are very much the same.

                    The parallels are highly worrisome. Especially given that repealing Human Rights is their oft-stated goal.

                    So you'll just have to forgive me (or not, I really don't care) if I feel that whether or not some fuckpotato in parliament is embezzling a few hundred thousand for a second home is completely fucking irrelevant when compared to the fact that not only does this part of bigotry and hatred exist, but that is is gaining enough support to elect people.

                    If the UK were some third world country with some aging MIGs and a few vietnam era tanks, I wouldn't be worried. Go right ahead and destroy yourselves. But your nation has enough firepower to turn every single population center in my nation into smoking craters and the means to get that firepower across the pond to accomplish the task.

                    Choice is fine and wonderful, but some lessons you learn. And when the same old monsters come round again, you resist. Even if all you can offer is calling "bullshit" in the forums when people try to make the UKIP out to be "a force for good".

                    Last but not least, don't think your attempts to dodge discussion of the issues by attacking me personally go unnoticed. I'd say "I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable", but really, I'm not.

                    1. Hollerith 1

                      Re: Ah!

                      Trevor, you are now as a god to me.

                      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                        @hollerith 1

                        Sir, I would make a terrible god. Well, actually, it would be a bit more Jabba than Cthulu, but still...I submit I am a non-ideal deity.

                      2. JLV

                        Re: Ah!

                        correction:

                        Trevor, you are now as a god sky fairy to me. ;-)

                        @ Trevor - good show sir!

                        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                          @JLV

                          This, but more horrible.

                    2. codejunky Silver badge

                      Re: Ah!

                      @ Trevor_Pott

                      I see this is something you need to get out of your system so ok.

                      "The problem is that the debate you seek is on whether or not to turn your company back to a time before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That isn't something that should ever be up for debate. That is an absolute hard line in our history. There is no going back."

                      Some things should be for debate others not. Absolute lines you would never cross not even for discussion. Pro democracy? I am not arguing for the removal of UDHR but you argue against discussion? If that floats your boat then fine but absolutes and hard lines are things that have caused a lot of suffering in this world and all have been 'for good'. Just ask the believers.

                      "Attempting circular reasoning because you don't actually have the ability to defend your points? Oh, bravo. Extra troll points."

                      So you post intolerance and ignorance but you dont see that as proof of your..... never mind.

                      "I'm probably the most ardently passionate commenter on El Reg about the need for choice in all things. But in this"

                      Do you also say 'I am not a racist. But...'? Didnt you say you opposed them because you believe they would try to impose their beliefs on others? You claim they are a party to remove choice so you would remove choice because they are against your beliefs? I see why you say "War is peace, sir...and freedom is slavery." I am sure you believe that.

                      "I don't particularly care what you believe, but I do care that you attempt to dress up the UKIP as somehow more acceptable than it actually is."

                      This returns to your belief in the removal of choice. I had some respect a few months ago for the libs because they actually took a position on the EU. I still see them as liers, cheats and thieves but they gave a view to stand for, an absolute position they stood for. Before UKIP upset the main 3 they shifted their beliefs regularly and what they stood for nobody could tell. This is a little less now as they have to define what they are standing for to retain the voters disillusioned with them. How is it wrong that in our democracy the main parties are having to stand for something and actually have some difference in their policies? Or is that against your beliefs of choice?

                      I assume you are resisting monsters currently? You seem almost fanatical as you see nazi's everywhere so I assume you are opposing the torture, bombing, invasions and camps for the experimentation of torture methods against certain ethnicities? And of course you wouldnt vote for their accomplices? Also apparently someone sees you as a god. Maybe you can ask them to salute? And as always Gut mit uns.

                      You also comment about personal attacks, I assume you can read what you have written? The discomfort you sense is that of a stranger being slightly disturbed by your dictatorial and potentially offensive views. But as we have agreed, they are your opinions. I have not tried to dodge discussion (although we are well off topic) but while I am discussing how democracy benefits from choice and the main 3 being forced to offer choice, you seem to be attacking me because you want me to be everything you seem to have very personal issues with. To that I can only suggest you talk to someone more qualified than me.

                      1. Nightkiller

                        Re: Ah!

                        One should not forget that systems administrators fully support Totalitarianism by nature.

                        1. captain veg Silver badge

                          Re: Ah!

                          I used to say that there are two types of sysadm -- fascists and incompetents -- and that it was tricky to chose which kind to wish for.

                          However, following a reorganisation of corporate IT a while ago I now realise that there is a third variety: incompetent fascists.

                          -A.

                        2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                          @Nightkiler

                          Benevolent dictatorship. Totalitarianism is so arch...

                      2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                        Re: Ah!

                        You say "Some things should be for debate others not." Yet you feel that "the removal of UDHR" is something that should be up for discussion. Lovely person you are. Just lovely.

                        "Do you also say 'I am not a racist. But...'? Didnt you say you opposed them because you believe they would try to impose their beliefs on others? You claim they are a party to remove choice so you would remove choice because they are against your beliefs?"

                        The UKIP is attempting to create for itself a "right" to remove the right to choice from others. So absolutely, I would deny them any avenue to power before they are given the opportunity to enact that plan. Nobody has the right to remove rights from others, and denying people the option to give themselves such a "right" is not "removing choice"...it's defending it.

                        "How is it wrong that in our democracy the main parties are having to stand for something and actually have some difference in their policies? Or is that against your beliefs of choice?"

                        It is the choice of those who create parties and run them to stand for something...or nothing at all. You can create a party whose sole purpose is the promotion of the consumption of limes. That's democracy.

                        If you don't like the equivocation of extant parties then either join one of those parties and raise a ruckus enough that you shame the cowards into taking a stand, or form your own party. That's the very definition of choice.

                        But you know what? I'd take "waffly and largely ineffective populist party" over "stands for something and that something is evil" any day. I'd personally prefer a party that takes a stand along the lines of "socially progressive and fiscally conservative" but your populace apparently hasn't organized one of those yet.

                        "You seem almost fanatical as you see nazi's everywhere"

                        No, just the UKIP, an actual neonazi organization in Germany, the Wildrose party here at home and three branches of the Tea Party in the US. They're the only organizations I am currently aware of that are "on disturbingly Nazi-like trajectories".

                        "so I assume you are opposing the torture, bombing, invasions and camps for the experimentation of torture methods against certain ethnicities?"

                        Nope, I oppose "torture, bombing, invasions and camps for the experimentation of torture methods" against all sentient life. I'm not only unwilling to limit my sympathies to specific ethnicities, I am capable of compassion for other species, too.

                        "You also comment about personal attacks, I assume you can read what you have written?"

                        You mean the part where I have called an organization and the ideals it espouses out onto the carpet to be disinfected by the sunlight? Why yes, I can read that. That's far from a personal attack. When I make a personal attack, sirrah, you'll know. It will involve the word "twatdangle". That's a key giveaway.

                        "The discomfort you sense is that of a stranger being slightly disturbed by your dictatorial and potentially offensive views."

                        Anyone discomfited by a staunch defense of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a public questioning of the ethics of those who seek to regress away from that document is a person (or persons) that I am absolutely fucking chuffed to bits about offending.

                        "While I am discussing how democracy benefits from choice and the main 3 being forced to offer choice"

                        I am unsure why you are so enamored of the idea of forcing others to do things.

                        "you seem to be attacking me because you want me to be everything you seem to have very personal issues with."

                        I am not attacking you at all. I am calling the UKIP into question in public. You keep responding as though this is a personal attack on you. You seem to have some element of your own self-image tied up with that organization, as though by questioning them I am questioning you.

                        More to the point, perhaps, the UKIP is not "everything I have issues with" Not by a long shot. They represent a decent % of the traits I find deplorable in humanity, yes...but I can find things to deplore everywhere.

                        The UKIP are a threat. That makes them worthy of special attention. If all they were was an old white boy's club sitting in their pub under the heads of African animals whining about the loss of empire, I'd not give a fig. But they have been accruing power, and the rest of the world may pay for that in lives.

                        1. codejunky Silver badge

                          Re: Ah!

                          @ Trevor_Pott

                          I suggest you have maybe fallen into another universe. Either that or you are trolling. If you think calling someone an asshole isnt a personal attack then you may want to see someone about that. You also seem to think that you are arguing for choice while I argue for less choice. I suggest you re-read the comments and try processing them accurately.

                          I am not sure what you are arguing about as you seem to be randomly calling people nazies and thinking you have some sort of point. Maybe in your head you do. But because you think people who dont agree with you are nazis or that choice is evil I am wondering if you can actually be serious and if your condition is.

                          I dont know why you argue to force people to be your way. I dont know why you argue against discussion, democracy or free thought. I can only guess you are happy in your own little world and I am sorry you felt it necessary to share it. However I do suggest you look in the mirror when talking about a threat. Because you are scarily nutty

                          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                            Re: Ah!

                            "You also seem to think that you are arguing for choice while I argue for less choice. I suggest you re-read the comments and try processing them accurately."

                            Okay, I re-read them. You are arguing that the UKIP is a force for good and that by allowing them power you can force the other political parties in the UK to do what you wan them to do (take more extremist stances, away from "the center", which you hate.) This is a Good Thing to you despite the fact that the UKIP stand for removing a great deal of choice from tens of millions of people.

                            So...you get one additional choice (that of voting for an extreme right wing bigotry party) and many - many - others get less choice. (All those people in the other parties that were "forced' to behave the way you wan them to, to say nothing of those people who will be affected if the UKIP gains real power.)

                            I, meanwhile, have said that by working to counter the false pretense that the UKIP are "the good guys" people who actually do care about things like human rights can help prevent (or at least slow) the rise of the UKIP to power, and thus preserve choice. This is done by preventing people who would have as their stated goals the removal of choice from others from reaching power.

                            So I would provide arguments that allow people to make a choice (support/don't support the UKIP) as fully informed as possible in the hopes that they choose not to support the UKIP. In turn, if enough people choose not to support the UKIP then they won't achieve a position of great enough power to remove choice from others.

                            Yep, I think I got this thread taped up tight.

                            "I am not sure what you are arguing about as you seem to be randomly calling people nazies and thinking you have some sort of point."

                            I can't help you comprehend what you choose not to comprehend. But there is nothing random about my comparing the UKIP to the Nazi party circa 1920. That you can't distinguish that from "calling them Nazis" (and there was quite a bit of nuance and context provided) is only a further indication of your choice not to understand.

                            "but because you think people who dont agree with you are nazis or that choice is evil"

                            Yeah, you're off the plank here. I like people who don't agree with me. They make for great arguments, and I like arguing. I view very few people as evil.

                            But I absolutely do view as evil anyone who would seek to regress away from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In fact, I'm pretty sure that "people who what to violate the UDHR on a nation scale" is not only the definition of evil, it's the definition of monster. Sorry mate, but you're not going to convince me that wanting to back out of human rights is somehow "just a choice" no different than which pair of pants to wear. No matter how many times you keep posting that you think I'm crazy.

                            "I dont know why you argue to force people to be your way."

                            Funny, I don't appear to be using any of the techniques that are generally recognized by law enforcement of practicing psychologists as "coercion". There's no "forcing" involved in my words at all. There's discussion. There's argumentation. There is questioning. But these all lead to the reader being able to make a choice about what to believe - or not.

                            Even by the most outside definition of the word "force", I have at no point applied force in this thread. Sorry mate, but you'll have to do better than that.

                            "I dont know why you argue against discussion, democracy or free thought."

                            Did you not just tell me that by presenting my viewpoint and arguing it with some modicum of passion I was "trying to use force"? How can discussion or democracy be anything other than an exercise of force to stifle free thought if the mere questioning of a political party on an internet forum is somehow an exercise of force?

                            Also: how does defending human rights make me against "discussion, democracy and free thought"? You'll have to spell it out for me, because I don't understand at all how you joined those dots up.

                            "However I do suggest you look in the mirror when talking about a threat. Because you are scarily nutty"

                            You find me "threatening" because I asked hard questions?

                            You could pay a journalist no higher compliment. Thank you.

                            1. codejunky Silver badge

                              Re: Ah!

                              @ Trevor_Pott

                              Just in the hope of enlightening you-

                              "Okay, I re-read them. You are arguing that the UKIP is a force for good and that by allowing them power you can force the other political parties in the UK to do what you wan them to do"

                              Then you have either not re-read my comments or not understood plain English. I said they could be a force for good no matter if they get power or not. That is because the main 3 parties offer no choice, they are so similar and target the same small pool of voters. There used to be a big difference and choice between labour and tory and even libs. Now people vote for them (or not) based on past performance not what they actually offer the country going forward.

                              If you can be so completely wrong in your first statement, your first actual sentence, then what else have you been misreading?

                              1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                                @codejunky

                                I have read and reread your statements on that in multiple comments. I don't agree with your take on the matter. I have explained why several times.

                                I get that you think you are right, and that "forcing" other parties to behave more like you wish they would is somehow a good thing, but I completely disagree. Not only does this open up a world of threats from the UKIP, it doesn't let the old parties die a natural death.

                                No political party should last forever. They all evolve and either die off or reinvent themselves. if you don't like the parties that exist, get out there and start a new one. Your whole premise is based on the false assumption that in order for anything to get done the existing three major parties must be the ones to go forth and make it so. That's bull.

                                A new party with a strong message, resources and a charismatic leader can create change. They can do that without needing to let a threat come to power and without forcing others to behave the way they want. They can do it by uniting those of like belief and advocating for others to join them. That democracy, and it's how you enable choice.

                                I live in a country where it has been the "common wisdom" that there were only two parties of consequence: the conservatives and the liberals. Both those parties have within my lifetime been nearly annihilated; reduced to a handful of seats while other parties took the parliament by storm. Politics are dynamic, and you are using your false belief in voter intractability to attempt to justify the UKIP's rise to power.

                                I wholly and roundly reject your viewpoint as flawed an inaccurate. Not matter how many times you restate it, I will still reject it.

                                1. codejunky Silver badge

                                  Re: @codejunky

                                  @ Trevor_Pott

                                  "I get that you think you are right, and that "forcing" other parties to behave more like you wish they would is somehow a good thing, but I completely disagree. "

                                  The other parties do as they please. So far that has been to ignore voters as they all aim for the centrist policies. Not varying policies representing views of voters so a choice can be made, just the same choice no matter which of the 3 parties no matter how damaging. A status quo where they do as they please and ignore the voter. Now with the rise of UKIP the main 3 parties have to offer choice and have to appeal to voters. How you see that as wrong I dont know unless you oppose democracy.

                                  "A new party with a strong message, resources and a charismatic leader can create change"

                                  I think you disprove this by your continued attacks against exactly that. He doesnt offer what you or some others want thats fine. Yey democracy. And the party offers change which causes the other parties to either defend the status quo or offer change, instead of the 3 main parties protecting their position against the people.

                                  "I wholly and roundly reject your viewpoint as flawed an inaccurate. Not matter how many times you restate it, I will still reject it."

                                  I know. And that is why I said early on that I have no interest in convincing you to change your opinion. I just dont like you misrepresenting my comments to promote an anti-democratic view. If that is your view then stand by it, but dont try to attribute your bigotry to me.

                                  But as you will roundly reject my viewpoint no matter what I ask that you reread your early comment where you believe your opinions can be changed. Quoting portal2: 'This statement is false'

                                  1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                                    Re: @codejunky

                                    "The other parties do as they please. So far that has been to ignore voters as they all aim for the centrist policies. "

                                    How can centrist policies both be popularist (as per one of your previous posts) and "ignoring voters"? Surely by catering to the opinion of the majority the main parties are in fact listening quite clearly to voters.

                                    "Not varying policies representing views of voters so a choice can be made, just the same choice no matter which of the 3 parties no matter how damaging. A status quo where they do as they please and ignore the voter."

                                    How can they be ignoring the voter if they are being popularist? Also: If you are correct and that voters are just crying out for something - anything - different to vote for, then in what rational universe would all three parties choose the exact same policies? Surely one of them would differentiate themselves in some fashion so as to pick up votes and win.

                                    Or are you suggesting a conspiracy between the 3 main parties? Because I'm pretty sure that would be illegal and you could use the court systems to rectify it.

                                    "Now with the rise of UKIP the main 3 parties have to offer choice and have to appeal to voters. How you see that as wrong I dont know unless you oppose democracy."

                                    They had to offer choice to the voter before. And they did. They were - and are - quite differentiated. I see the UKIP as wrong because everything they stand for is wrong. I have no problems with democracy. I have all sorts of problems with any organization that seeks an end to human rights.

                                    "I have no interest in convincing you to change your opinion."

                                    Yet you keep commenting.

                                    "I just dont like you misrepresenting my comments to promote an anti-democratic view. If that is your view then stand by it, but dont try to attribute your bigotry to me."

                                    I don't have an anti-democratic view. You're the one who is completely twisting the facts of UK politics into a knot in a desperate attempt to justify the existence - daresay try to convince us of the need - of a political party that seeks an end to human rights.

                                    "But as you will roundly reject my viewpoint no matter what I ask that you reread your early comment where you believe your opinions can be changed.

                                    Quoting portal2: 'This statement is false'"

                                    You have to actually provide evidence, logic and some semblance of rationality to change my viewpoint. You have not done so. You have used a bunch of brodering-on-conspiracy-theory assertions about the 3 main political parties backed by some really fucked up logic (ignore voters by catering to the whims of the majority of voters!)

                                    I can have my opinion changed. It has happened before, it will happen again. But repeatedly asserting bunk isn't the path to achieving that end.

                  2. lorisarvendu

                    Re: Ah!

                    @codejunky

                    "Their mere presence has opened up debate on decisions of this country which the public get little to no say."

                    I agree with you that a more extreme party can sometimes open up discussions that mainstream parties have been traditionally reticent to address. Both Labour and Tory supporters have issues with immigration, but no party has wanted to be the first to speak about it because of how close they would have to skirt to accusations from the other parties of bigotry and racism (and believe me their political opponents would be unable to resist jumping on that bandwagon!)

                    However now that UKIP have taken the plunge (and are indeed being branded the party of bigotry and racism), the other parties are free to comment, and the discussion has indeed "opened up". I seriously wonder if 2014 would have seen the Government try to address Common Travel and Immigration within the EU if UKIP didn't exist.

                    I also wonder though whether allowing UKIP to open up such discussions (in quite frankly a very confrontational and direct fashion) is worth the fact that it has brought with it an unpleasant groundswell of intolerance towards the non-Christian, the non-British, and the non-White.

                    Personally I think UKIP have just tapped into an intolerance and xenophobia that was always part of the UK's soft white underbelly, but I worry that by UKIP being seen as a "serious" political party (in a way that the BNP never were) these xenophobic attitudes are slowly gaining a dangerous legitimacy.

                    Ten years ago if I'd heard a member of the public complaining that foreigners were taking all the jobs, I'd have marked him as a racist or a xenophobe without a thought. Now I mark him as a supporter of a particular political party, airing a view that is currently under serious discussion. This to me seems wrong.

                    Oh, and on the subject of Homosexuality, again all of the above.

                    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                      Re: Ah!

                      "I agree with you that a more extreme party can sometimes open up discussions that mainstream parties have been traditionally reticent to address. Both Labour and Tory supporters have issues with immigration, but no party has wanted to be the first to speak about it because of how close they would have to skirt to accusations from the other parties of bigotry and racism (and believe me their political opponents would be unable to resist jumping on that bandwagon!)"

                      Canada has immigration problems too. And there is the same reluctance to touch that live wire because of the issues surrounding racism, etc. Despite this, our conservative party absolutely did open the topic up for debate, and simultaneously lashed out at those within it's own base that sought bigotry and xenophobia, beating them back under the rocks from which they came. This proves to me that such debates can be raised and handled in a manner which doesn't give oxygen to the sorts of ideologies that would regress our nations to before the UDHR.

                      So really, to rephrase the question of the UKIP's value as an agitator let's be a lot more honest:

                      "Is giving voice and power to a party and platform of rampant xenophobia and bigotry an acceptable price to pay for ignoring the outright cowardice of politicians in mainstream parties? It this an acceptable price to pay for their consistent inability to raise difficult subjects in a controlled manner so as to be able to have the conversation in a rational - and non-radicalised - fashion?"

                      The answer to that question may well be measured in lives.

                    2. codejunky Silver badge

                      Re: Ah!

                      @ lorisarvendu

                      "I agree with you that a more extreme party can sometimes open up discussions that mainstream parties have been traditionally reticent to address. Both Labour and Tory supporters have issues with immigration, but no party has wanted to be the first to speak about it because of how close they would have to skirt to accusations from the other parties of bigotry and racism (and believe me their political opponents would be unable to resist jumping on that bandwagon!)"

                      Thank you for your response. Reading the forever and growing rants of trevor I was worried I wasnt being clear.

                2. This post has been deleted by its author

                3. Mark 85

                  Re: Ah!

                  It sounds like the UKIP is the UK equivalent to the US's Tea Party. Without invoking Goodwin's Law, a look back in history about 70 years shows the result of that thinking. It would seem that those who haven't learned from history are trying to drag the rest of us into repeating it.

                  1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                    @Mark 85

                    The US Tea Party is massive. There are an order of magnitude more Tea Partiers than there are UKIP. The Tea Party is also fragmented; it is a series of anarchistic local chapters that each believe something slightly different. If you knew anything about the fragmentation of the Protestant faiths across America into these little tiny one-church or two-church religions, you'd understand.

                    The UKIP is comparatively cohesive, but oddly enough nowhere near as well funded. You need to pour a lot of money into the Tea Party to keep the who lot of them pointed in roughly the same direction. (This is what the Kotch Brothers do for the movement.)

                    The UKIP, by comparison have direction, rough unity, a party structure and the trappings of a formal bureaucracy.

                    The Tea Party is a bunch of anarchists loosely held together by massive amounts of propaganda and the hard work of party hardliners. The UKIP is mostly a bunch of racists who have adopted a veneer of libertarianism-based pesudo-legitimacy in order to gain power. In essence, the UKIP would be a faction of the Tea Party in the states, but the main bulk of the Tea Party actually are far more concerned with tax avoidance and keeping the government off their property than bigotry.

                    The two organizations are only rough analogues. The details and differentiations are actually quite fascinating...and terrifying.

                    1. Mark 85

                      Re: @Mark 85

                      Very well put, Trevor. I just spun it a bit more simplistic than you. But yes, every Tea Potter has their own followers and they don't often agree with the other Potters. The religion analogy works well. And yes, they all are terrifying. Moreso IF they get control.

                    2. John Gamble

                      Re: @Mark 85

                      "The Tea Party is also fragmented; it is a series of anarchistic local chapters that each believe something slightly different."

                      Just to augment that point a bit: at the same election year that gave Tea Party loyalist Ted Cruz a senate seat, Tea Party affiliation was used as a negative campaign ad point in my own area -- and it worked, the incumbents lost. I find that the "slightly different" beliefs are effectively insignificant, but the districts that they run in do affect their campaigns, since being labeled as loons doesn't help.

                      And in fact, several Tea Party organizations have already changed their names to avoid looking like Tea Party organizations.

                      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                        Re: @Mark 85

                        Tea Party Chapter 1 may be only slightly different from Tea Party Chapter 2 which is only slightly different from Tea Party Chapter 3...but 50 is quite a bit different from 1 and 500 is way out in the weeds workin gon something altogether dissimilar.

                        Pretty much just like every religion, ever. We humans don't do "consistent" very well.

                4. Jack Douglas

                  Re: Ah!

                  Why are you flinging insults about, do you think it makes your argument more credible? It makes me treat the rest of your rant with a lot more suspicion - and yes, you do come across as intolerant.

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: Ah!

                    @ Jack Douglas

                    I wish I could upvote you more than once. I don't bother reading trevor pots posts anymore since the tl;dr summary is usually - insult, insult, insult, rant on about a small angle of one fact that has nothing to do with what the OP is saying, insult, insult. It reminds me of eadon's posts but very long winded.

                5. P. Lee

                  Re: Ah!

                  Toleration: coexisting with those with whom you disagree without forcing them to change. The word has been hijacked and twisted to mean: accepting the values and actions of other people as good.

                  So today, being tolerant of promiscuity means, "I think how you behave is good and should be taught to our children as an acceptable lifestyle," rather than "I think what you do hurts people, damages your ability to create strong relationship bonds, is detrimental to children's well-being etc. which makes you a bad person - but I'm not going to try to get you thrown in jail or castrated for it."

                  >that no group should be able to tell another group what they can and can't do. And I see

                  >absolutely no contradiction in the fact that by enforcing that, I would prevent those who want to

                  >force their beliefs on others from doing so.

                  I suspect most of us here agree with this. The problem is that government has become quite intrusive and is forcing people to do things they disagree with. It would be bizarre for the Labour party to be forced hire UKIP members or the British Atheist Society forced to hire ISIS members as secretaries and receptionists just because they aren't spokesmen or policy makers, but that is just what is happening for religious groups. The State starts getting involved with morality decisions in business under "diversity" legislation. It gets involved in morality education in state schools, so people who disagree retreat to private schools. Business diversity legislation and national curriculum is then used to interfere with the hiring and teaching practises of private schools, which have been set up, specifically because not everyone believes the same and some people are trying to force their beliefs on the rest of the populace. Do you want to set up a B&B for people with like beliefs to come and stay with you? That's banned. Want to put biblical text up in your obviously christian-themed cafe? The police will shut you down. Neither of those things damage the public, but some lobby groups have pushed hard to try to eradicate all opposition to their beliefs from the public arena. They are the intolerant ones.

                  Standing up for what you believe generally means you are against the opposite. That's just the logic of "A neq not A" This is where toleration comes in. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of hate-spewing people around, but to a large extent you can't eradicate that in a free society. I would far rather deal with someone who opposes what I believe and talk about the issues than have some mealy-mouthed "everyone's beliefs are equally valued" politician who squashes my freedom trying to maintain that stance.

                  I shouldn't be allowed to discriminate based on what you are. I should be able to discriminate based on your beliefs and actions. I shouldn't be able to discriminate against you based on your skin colour, but if you always answer the phone with, "Wazzup Homey?" then its reasonable not to give you a job as a receptionist where that culture isn't appreciated. And for balance, if you use the word "like" inappropriately, you also wouldn't be short-listed for a sales job with non-teens.

                  The so-called "centre" of politics isn't about moderation, its about not being associated with any given course of action which might be unpopular in the future. The left and the right generally have some values - they have a standard and content to their beliefs which I can judge as good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate responses to the current situation. With stated principles I can make an educated guess as to what someone will do in a given situation. The centre of politics is about managing me so I don't upset those in power. It is about not having inconvenient principles. Sadly that puts the politicians at the beck and call of those who can sway, or appear to sway public opinion, leading to short-termism, knee-jerk reactions and preventing sustained consideration of policy, because policy is as fickle as the latest poll and long-term consideration and observation doesn't sell newspapers.

                  1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                    @P. Lee

                    "The problem is that government has become quite intrusive and is forcing people to do things they disagree with. It would be bizarre for the Labour party to be forced hire UKIP members or the British Atheist Society forced to hire ISIS members as secretaries and receptionists just because they aren't spokesmen or policy makers, but that is just what is happening for religious groups."

                    I think you'll find that my feelings on this subject are as yet rather undefined. I can see both sides of the argument, and think that we have not yet found the right compromise as a society. I don't think you should be able to fire someone because they're gay. But I also don't think you should have to have a minimum quota of gay people on staff. This is a really complex issue.

                    "Do you want to set up a B&B for people with like beliefs to come and stay with you? That's banned. "

                    See, it's not, here. If I operated a B&B I couldn't ban people who had different beliefs for staying there - the service must be available to all - but there's nothing preventing me from advertising exclusively to those who share my beliefs.

                    "Want to put biblical text up in your obviously christian-themed cafe? The police will shut you down. Neither of those things damage the public, but some lobby groups have pushed hard to try to eradicate all opposition to their beliefs from the public arena. They are the intolerant ones."

                    Yep, that sounds pretty dickish. Is that really a law there? That's pretty crap. I presume pictures of the flying spaghetti monster are also banned? I would hope so. Equality for all, not just for some!

                    "I shouldn't be allowed to discriminate based on what you are. I should be able to discriminate based on your beliefs and actions."

                    And here we'll vehemently disagree. I don't believe you should be able to discriminate based on belief. Only on actions. What a person believes is not your purview, nor the governments. This is the basis of human rights. You don't get to treat me differently because of what I believe, only only I behave.

                    Honestly, i can't even begin to understand what rationale or logic you could use to justify discrimination based on belief. You don't have to be friends or go out for beers with people who believe something in opposition to you, but you do have to treat them with all the same legal rights and privileges as everyone else.

                    "The so-called "centre" of politics isn't about moderation, its about not being associated with any given course of action which might be unpopular in the future. "

                    Again, I have to disagree. I'm largely a centrist. I absolutely have strongly held beliefs and they focus on pragmatism and finding the best solution for society as a whole. Usually that involves negotiation, compromise, and working with the extremes to forge a future everyone can live with.

                    The ideal most important to he centrist is that of unity. The concept that we're all stuck together and we have to learn to live with one another. That we won't convert everyone else to our way of thinking and that killing people who disagree with us is a dick move. As a Canadian, this is easier for me than for someone from another nation: multiculturalism works here. We have a unique culture that is founded on our ability to find a happy medium, seek compromise and recognize the value of different belief systems. So being a centrist is pretty natural for us.

                    Where it goes wrong - where it always goes wrong - is the belief that your particular ideology needs to "win". That the end goal is the eradication of other beliefs, or at least the subjugation of those who believe differently.

                    But at least you admit that you want to discriminate against people based on their beliefs. I can respect that, even if I believe that it is a dangerous and foolhardy approach to building a society. So, kudos for that.

              2. Florida1920
                Megaphone

                Re: Ah!

                If you are interested at looking in the mirror I suggest you look at the hateful, assuming rant you accuse them of resembling

                You know there are other news sources in the UK besides El Reg, right? Try reading them. Even from this side of the pond it's no challenge to see UKIP for the xenophobic, intolerant thugs they are. But hey, I guess even football hooligans deserve a party, yeah?

            2. captain veg Silver badge

              bigots, xenopobes and paranoid control freaks

              Don't forget fruitcakes, loons and closet racists.

              -A.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Ah!

            Like them or not UKIP can be a force for good

            No they can't. They only have two policies. The first one is that they are suspicious of anyone who is a funny colour or has a funny name and that Europe is bad because well Romanians you don't want them over here taking your jobs do you? Except as well as taking your job they are going to claim loads of unemployment benefit get given a free house and rob you blind because well Romanians aren't they? Europe is a cancer there are too many people coming here taking our jobs. Meanwhile Frau Farage (who I believe was born somewhere south of Dover and North of the Black Forest) continues to take a handsome salary and hasn't been mentioned in the first against the wall terms for when he rides to power on a horse with a pint of ale in his hand.

            Their second policy is that they need to allow smoking in pubs again so they can smoke all their fags and use the back of the packet to sit round a table in the pub and write the rest of their policies, because this is jolly old England and it rains outside and we love that and that is the way it should remain with our white heads firmly tucked in the sand while the rest of Europe continues to leave us behind in things like healthcare, public transport, education and well just about every sport imaginable apart from cricket, but we can't show the Romanians how to play cricket now can we? They might pinch the ball...

            Nothing more English than the sound of willow and cork striking each other and fielding a team full of people born and bread in Africa...

          3. PNGuinn
            Mushroom

            Re: Ah!

            "while the main 3 aim for popularism and the magic 'centre'"

            If only the magic centre were a dirty great hungry black hole.

            1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
              IT Angle

              Re: Ah!

              Entertaining as the above discussion is...

              Can someone explain how this:

              After a couple of years training some british operators to be able to setup the machines I program all day, when they ask for a pay rise to reward their efforts, they get told to fuck off because we can hire some min wage immigrants who dont know their rights in the workplace to do their jobs

              Then when we want a raise for the skilled british guys remaining, we get told to fuck off because the company can get in more migrants to do our jobs for cheaper, and if we dont like it, theres the door.

              What reward is there for the lower skilled among us to boost our skill levels, to get educated, to learn the ins and outs of complex CAM software if the attitude among senior management is to hire in skilled staff from abroad for cheaper?

              The tories dont care because it cuts costs to their business sponsors, labour want more migrants to increase their dwindling voter base and the liberals will be exterminated for jumping into bed with the tories.

              Which bunch of liars do we vote for?

              1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                @Boris the Cockroach

                And you've hit the nail on the head. But this isn't an "immigration versus not immigration" issue. If it wasn't local minimum wage workers, it would be outsourced to another country where wages or low (India), or automation is high (American Public Cloud).

                Even your low-paid migrant workers unaware of their rights are vulnerable to having their jobs outsourced, or losing out to "the cloud". How do we solve this? Closing our borders won't help. Protectionist economic policies will trigger retaliation, and are legal nightmares given the complex strictures of treaties that have been negotiated over the past several years.

                It's a complex problem that won't find a single, simple solution amenable to a sound bite. But it absolutely is a problem that needs to be addressed. We're trying hard to tackle it here in Canada now. The States are going through this on a massively public scale. Australia are trying the ultimate xenophobe approach. The UK are trying to ostrich it out.

                The Scandinavian countries are trying to compromise and promote a sense of social responsibility amongst corporations. The French are trying massive regulation. Of all the approaches beign tried, none have worked to the satisfaction of the populace...and maybe none ever will. It's human nature to always want more than we have.

                But for the first time in a while a major election has occurred in which "it's the economy, stupid" wasn't the #1 driver. Japan is showing that other things can affect our consciousness. There are critical questions that need to be addressed regarding immigration, outsourcing, human rights abuses by domestic and foreign corporations and the minimum wage.

                If your mainstream parties aren't brave enough to address them in an adult manner maybe what's needed is for you to step up and stat a party that will.

          4. Mark 85

            Re: Ah!

            Like them or not UKIP can be a force for good regardless of them winning or losing.

            I suspect that you might be right in the context of them being held up as a bad example.

          5. The First Dave

            Re: Ah!

            @ codejunky

            What is this bollocks about "the big three" - I take it you weren't paying attention when the SNP, despite only having a base in Scotland, became the third largest UK party a few weeks back?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Sliders

      I loved that show

    3. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      It all went the other way...

      Feynman pointed out that anti-matter is fundamentally the same as normal matter going the other way in time. This conclusion was based on our observations of the local stuff - typically created recently.

      Therefore at the Big Bang, all the original anti-matter went the other way in time. Because that's all that anti-matter is: it's just normal matter headed the other way in time. So you won't find it here, today.

      That's it. Done. Beer time.

      1. JeffyPoooh
        Pint

        Re: It all went the other way...

        I need to go find a UKIP news items somewhere, so I can post some screeds about anti-matter.

      2. lorisarvendu

        Re: It all went the other way...

        "Therefore at the Big Bang, all the original anti-matter went the other way in time. Because that's all that anti-matter is: it's just normal matter headed the other way in time. So you won't find it here, today."

        So what does that make the anti-matter that we do find today (and those few particles that we make in the LHC)? From its point of view, has it just been annihilated at the point in time in which we created it? And when it finds its opposite particle and both vanish in a flash of energy...that would then be its creation...from its point of view?

        So that must mean that when a matter/anti-matter particle pair destroy each-other, one of them (the matter particle) experiences its death....while the other (the anti-matter particle) experiences its birth.

        Which would seem to indicate that they are actually the same particle, one travelling forwards in time, the other travelling back, and the only reason we think we see two is that we are seeing two different pieces of the same timeline in parallel.

        Possibly...

        1. JeffyPoooh
          Pint

          Re: It all went the other way...

          @lorisarvendu "same particle"

          That would help to explain the "ultimate free lunch" aspect of the Universe.

          +Universe + -Universe = 0

          Apologies to TP and the other UKIP master debaters for the on-topic post. Carry on...

          1. lorisarvendu

            Re: It all went the other way...

            @JeffyPoooh

            "That would help to explain the "ultimate free lunch" aspect of the Universe.

            +Universe + -Universe = 0""

            So it kind of looks like this:

            Created ------------------------> Particle -----------------------> Annihilated

            (Energy Input) ........................................................ (Energy Output)

            Annihilated <--------------------- Anti-Particle <------------------ Created

            Extrapolating that ultimately as far as it will go gives us not only a perfect explanation of how the Universe begins and ends, but also puts to rest the old chestnut of "what caused the Big Bang".

            Created ------------------> Universe --------------------------------> Annihilated

            (Big Bang) ................................................................. (Big Crunch)

            Annihilated <--------------- Anti-matter Universe <---------------- Created

            Since a release of energy (or explosion) with an arrow of time reversed looks like a condensation of energy (or implosion), we see that the Big Bang is a Big Crunch in reverse, and vice versa. Unless there's a Big Bounce in the middle and the Matter and Anti-matter universes both undergo a Time Arrow reversal. Which kind of explains where all the anti-matter is - it's us, in the Future.

            1. JeffyPoooh
              Pint

              Re: It all went the other way...

              @ lorisarvendu

              No, more like this:

              "In the Beginning There Was Nothing, which exploded..."

              ... <---- Anti-Particles <---- "CREATION" (Big Bang) ----> Particles ----> ...

              (time axis, 0 in the middle)

              Feynman said that the anti-particles are just particles going backwards in time, as shown above.

              It all balances out.

              It explains why we see no legacy anti-particles, just a few recently created one.

              It doesn't explain UKIP.

              1. lorisarvendu

                Re: It all went the other way...

                @JeffyPoooh

                So the energy of the Big Bang was provided by the anti-matter universe's Big Crunch. In fact our Universe's Big Bang is simply the Uni-Re-Verse's Big Crunch played backwards. All energy (and therefore matter) is conserved.

                One thing I don't understand about anti-matter though is that it appears to interact with photons in the same way as ordinary matter. It either reflects it or absorbs it. I can't see how light reflecting off a particle of anti-matter could be "Time-Arrow-Agnostic" though, and kind of wouldn't look the same if you reversed the time direction.

                For example if the "colour" of the anti-matter changed the wavelength of the reflected photon as seen by us, to the reversed universe the same interaction would appear physically wrong. Also in the case of anti-matter absorbing a photon, the reversed universe would appear to see their matter spontaneously emitting photons for no apparent reason.

                If someone can explain how I've got this wrong, I'd be grateful.

                1. Kepler
                  Alien

                  Re: It all went the other way...

                  I'll have to think about your questions about the interaction between matter or antimatter and photons, lorisarvendu. But in the meantime, . . .

                  You still seem to be trying to restate two Big Bangs (or a single Big Bang that sends matter and antimatter out in every direction within 3 spatial dimensions, and in 2 temporal directions) into one Big Bang (mostly for matter) and one Big Crunch (mostly for antimatter). That's not right. Even the hypothesized second, predominantly antimatter universe expands away from the spatial/temporal point of common origin. It does not contract toward this sole point of intersection.

                  I am not sure why you keep viewing, or trying to view, matters that way — effectively nullifying the reversal of time in the second universe by your words; semantically undoing the fact that "forward" in that universe runs opposite to "forward" in ours by insisting that the second universe runs backward rather than (its own) forward. Time runs forward in each universe, but that universe's forward is the opposite of our universe's.

                  I thought that JeffyPoooh gave a good and clear explanation of this above, in reply to your previous post and questions, but it doesn't seem to have done the trick yet. And I attempted my own explanation of exactly the same point below, both in my post about the similar theory (to that in the article) of Professor Sokrates Pantelides of Vanderbilt ("Not the first time this notion has been put forward"), and in my reply to zipthegob ("Re: Complementary Worlds").

                  (See also the brief synopsis below by Martin Budden ("Anti-matter, anti-time?"), which is complementary to JeffyPoooh's and mine.)

                  I don't know what else to say except that you keep visualizing our universe reversing itself and running backwards, instead of visualizing a parallel or related universe that runs forward (by its lights!), but whose "forward" happens to be oriented in the opposite direction from ours along the same, single, shared temporal axis.

                  Just go back to a standard number line — as JeffyPoooh tried to get you to do above — and keep on using that as your mental picture. Don't picture either one of these universes running backwards. Neither is moving toward the temporal origin ("0") and contracting in size; each is moving away from it, and expanding.

                  (As an additional, separate matter, even if there were enough matter or antimatter (plus dark matter?) in either or both of these universes to cause it — due to the operation of gravity — to eventually stop expanding and start contracting, into an eventual "Big Crunch", that would not mean that time would suddenly stop advancing and start running backward in the given universe. The phase of spatial contraction would occur during the further, additional advance of time beyond the point at which maximum size had been reached; the age of that universe upon its return to zero size would not be zero, as though there somehow had been a countdown nullifying its original aging, but rather would be exactly twice whatever that universe's age had been at the point of maximum size. Those who think and suggest otherwise are being silly and just not thinking clearly. And the mistake underlying this not-uncommon view is similar to the difficulty that lorisarvendu has been having.)

                  1. lorisarvendu

                    Re: It all went the other way...

                    Hi Kepler!

                    Thanks for your attempt at explaining to me. I'm just throwing ideas out to be hones, because it's fun to discuss. As with all science we create theories based on observable evidence and then test those theories against new observations. I'm old enough to remember the theories before dark matter, dark energy, and string theory were even thought of, and when such objects as white holes were in vogue.

                    The point I'm trying to understand is that if two universes co-exist in some form of proximity, the arrow of time is reversed in one of them, and both appear to have originated in an explosive event approximately 13 billlion years ago, then wouldn't that event be percieved by any inhabitants of the other universe as occuring in their future? From their perspective, wouldn't the event consist of a contraction of time and space, eventually resulting in collapse to a singularity?

                    "I don't know what else to say except that you keep visualizing our universe reversing itself and running backwards"

                    No, that's not what I visualize all the time at all. That was just an idle conjecture that could be consistent with two universes running in parallel but opposite. After all, if we could somehow view that universe (fancifully speaking) we would see it's history running backwards, as they could view ours. We would have no way of knowing (unless we had reached a "halfway point") whether their universe was actually a mirror image of our own. In which case we would know our own future by viewing theirs. I guess that quantum effects (which would take place in both universes) would preclude this from happening, but if it did then the idea of our universe simply being theirs "bouncing back" would be a pretty moot point, as the observable effects would be the same in both cases.

                    1. Kepler
                      Happy

                      Re: It all went the other way...

                      "Hi Kepler!"

                      Hi to you, too, lorisarvendu!

                      As I explained just now in my reply to your second recent reply, below* — the one that (implicitly) was more to JeffyPoooh than to me (though obviously to both of us to some degree) — I don't have time to respond on substance right now. But I wanted to take a minute to clarify something I said before.

                      In my parenthetical final paragraph above (in the comment I posted some 14 hours ago — whoop! make that 15!), although I described a particular notion as silly and not clearly thought-out, and asserted that that other notion is similar (or perhaps even related?) to the conceptualizing difficulty I thought you were having here, I most definitely was not calling what you had said previously silly.

                      But the structure of the paragraph and the sequence of sentences readily lent themselves to a reader's mistakenly thinking that I had called you or your previous words silly. (Perhaps I should try to avoid constructs that require such careful parsing?)

                      So I was greatly relieved to find that you obviously did not take me to be saying what I was not. There's one potential unintended insult avoided!

                      .

                      * These spatial references ("above", "below") are made even more complicated by The Register's current comment nesting mechanics, with only one level of nesting at present. As a consequence of the present setup, even though the comment I am replying to now — the one on whose "Reply" button I clicked — lies immediately above your second recent reply, to which I just replied a few minutes ago, the reply I am posting now will probably end up being placed immediately below the reply I posted a few minutes ago, and thus below both of your most recent replies!

                      Which, in a way, seems rather fitting and symbolically appropriate in light of the confusion we are having trying to picture the operation of time running in a different "direction".

                      In any event, that "second recent reply" of yours that lies below the comment I am replying to now (your first recent reply comment) will probably end up lying above this reply I am composing now, even though it appears to be "below" in every meaningful sense as I am writing.

                      P.S. (now that I finally clicked "Submit" and saw where my reply got put, but still have 10 minutes left to tinker) Yup, exactly as I predicted!

              2. lorisarvendu

                Re: It all went the other way...

                ""In the Beginning There Was Nothing, which exploded..."

                ... <---- Anti-Particles <---- "CREATION" (Big Bang) ----> Particles ----> ...

                (time axis, 0 in the middle)"

                Ah, I see what you mean. However the arrows in my original post were indicating arrow of time. If you will indulge me in a thought experiment, and allow me to assume for a second that we can "look over the fence" at the universe of anti-particles and see what state it is in...what would we see?

                13 billion years on from Creation, we can see how our universe has evolved to its present state, but what about a universe that we have already assumed is running backwards (from our perspective)?

                Does this mean that all processes in that universe are counter to ours, (time runs backwards, water runs uphill, stars absorb photons, using their energy to split Helium atoms into Hydrogen)?

                Before Kepler shouts at me, yes I can fully understand how our Cosmological model shows an instant of creation that produces two universes of matter and anti-matter expanding outwards. But what I can't visualise is what this point of creation we call the Big Bang look like to that universe.

                It can't look like an explosion outwards, since if time is reversed it will appear as an implosion inwards. Presumably physical laws in an anti-matter universe will still be logically consistent with our own, in which case an expanding universe surely must appear as a contracting one if time is reversed.

                1. Kepler
                  Pint

                  Re: It all went the other way...

                  "Before Kepler shouts at me, . . . ."

                  That alone rated an up-vote!

                  I don't have time to reply to your most recent posts right now; it may even take a day or two. Plus I usually try to think before I speak anyway!

                  (But unfortunately, not always. And thus the sad state I presently find my life in.)

  2. Chicken Marengo
    Unhappy

    NOO!!!

    I do not want to be part of a universe where I'm chained to my desk at the end of the week with only Monday to look forward (backward?) to.

    1. tirk
      Coat

      Re: NOO!!!

      You think that's bad? Just wait until you have to go to the toilet!

      (Red Dwarf hat-tip).

      1. 45RPM Silver badge

        Re: NOO!!!

        @tirk

        …or regain your virginity.

  3. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Coat

    So is 24 the ultimate answer in that universe?

    I'll get me coat

    1. Khaptain Silver badge

      Or alternatively it might actually be that that life, the universe and everything is actuallly the question to 24..

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      24 the ultimate answer

      This one is easy.

      Leibniz argued that binary was the fundamental number system of the universe. 42 is 101010 in binary. Reversing this gives 010101 which is 2110.

      010101 is also 101010 right shifted one place. This may be a clue to the location of this backward universe; someone has already suggested it is related to UKIP, and that's just the Conservative Party right shifted.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 24 the ultimate answer

        You need to take a full byte, so 42 is 00101010 and reversing gives 01010100 which is 84

        Otherwise when reversed using your method 10101 is still 10101, unless you want to stick arbitrary zeroes on the front of your starting number.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: 24 the ultimate answer

          @Chris W

          The PDP-8 is God's Own Computer, and it has a six-digit byte. The ultimate answer therefore has to fit into one byte of a PDP-8, hence 101010.

          It isn't inertial heiroglyphics.

          1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
            Happy

            Re: 24 the ultimate answer

            Agreed: 6 bits is perfect, as 6 is the first perfect number

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: 24 the ultimate answer

            @Arnaut the less - I'd love to accept you're argument but you lot don't believe in god. Now if the PDP-8 was the spaghetti monster's machine...

            1. M Gale

              Re: 24 the ultimate answer

              Huh.

              And there's me thinking that God's computer was, and is, a custom-built IBM mainframe.

              1. bob, mon!
                Alien

                Re: 24 the ultimate answer

                > And there's me thinking that God's computer was, and is, a custom-built IBM mainframe.

                A Turing machine is God's computer. And here's us, going back and forth on the tape, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: 24 the ultimate answer- A Turing machine is God's computer.

                  But which implementation?

                  I'm sorry, but there cannot be anything divine in something that can be implemented in Javascript. Diabolical perhaps.

              2. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: 24 the ultimate answer - Tom Holt

                YMMV, but I don't find Tom Holt very funny.

                Like the Manchester Baby computer, the instruction set of the PDP-8 tells you by inspection how it works, i.e. the fundamental instructions are designed around core storage. Given that Heaven, according to the best accounts, is full of EM radiation, a rad hard CPU is indicated.

            2. This post has been deleted by its author

            3. Kepler
              Coat

              Re: the Flying Spaghetti Monster's machine

              "Now if the PDP-8 was the spaghetti monster's machine..."

              Chris W, was Edsger Dijkstra an early opponent of Pastafarianism?

              And is it merely a coincidence that the initials FSM stand both for "Flying Spaghetti Monster" and "finite-state machine"?

              (Cf. bob, mon!'s prescient observation that God's computer is a Turing machine. For isn't what separates us from Him the fact that our memory and number of possible states are finite, while His are infinite?)

          3. Kepler
            Gimp

            Re: God's Own Computer

            I like your reasoning, Arnaut the less, but surely God's Own Computer is the PDP-10, not the PDP-8. "36 bits forever!", and all that.

            1. Kepler
              Pint

              Re: God's Own Computer

              (Perhaps we can at least agree that God does not use a PDP-11, and that He's still not all that keen even on the VAX?

              Though I'm sure He views the demise of the Alpha as the work of haSatan, orchestrated from Satan Clara.)

    3. GitMeMyShootinIrons

      24? The ultimate answer? Kiefer Sutherland will be pleased.

  4. Rich 2 Silver badge

    Time

    Why does physics view time as going "forward" anyway?

    From a day-to-day perspective then fine - it's convenient to view it as such.

    But from a physics perspective, why isn't it viewed as ...I dunno ...going "sideways" or even not actually "going" anywhere; just changing?

    1. Mike Bell

      Re: Time

      Actually, the last time I read one of Mr. Barbour's books, he suggested that there was no such thing as time at all. It's all an illusion and nothing moves at all, least of all time. The cat that jumps isn't the cat that lands, etc.

      It's hard enough even saying what time actually is. My own favourite: time is that which stops everything from happening at once.

      1. GrumpyOldMan

        Re: Time

        Explains politics then. The Promises the parties make are not the policies they implement.

      2. James Cullingham

        Re: Time

        Of course time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so. We all know this - it's in our DNA

        1. magickmark
          Pint

          Re: Time

          "in our DNA" I see what you did there! :D

          Drink lots of beer, Cheers.

          Noel, Noel!!!

        2. D@v3

          Re: It'll all end in tears...

          ..probably already has

    2. Simon Harris
      Coat

      Re: Time

      "Why does physics view time as going "forward" anyway?"

      Because physics likes management speak?

    3. Julz

      Re: Time

      As the Universe is expanding there is just more space/time every instant. No direction so time going sidewise would be fine.

  5. IanKRolfe

    Disappointed

    At the use of the word "Cosmologist" rather than the correct "Boffin" or "space-nerd".

    Keep an eye on standards, Reg.

  6. Matthew 17

    If time was going backwards....

    How would you know?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If time was going backwards....

      >How would you know?

      Ask a woman, I imagine child birth would be a lot more painful.

  7. Shrimpling

    Nodnol

    Does this mean I can visit Nodnol and see the The Sensational Reverse Brothers?

  8. Pugwash69

    They played this out in a Red Dwarf episode and it wasn't pretty!

  9. David Pollard

    Perhaps this explains ...

    ... why we seem to be stuck in the present.

    1. earl grey
      Happy

      Re: Perhaps this explains ...

      That's a real gift for you.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is the kind of thinking that leads to accidentally getting in touch with the outer gods.

    Just saying.

  11. Chris Miller
    Thumb Up

    !daehbus eciN

    Just sayin'

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: !daehbus eciN

      Would have been better as:

      ƨbɒɘʜduƨ ʇo ɘƨɿɘvinu ɘǫnɒɿƚƨ ɘʜƚ ƨi ƚi yldɒviɘɔnoƆ

  12. Elmer Phud
    Boffin

    But, on the other leg . . .

    " In Jingo, Vimes accidentally picks up a pocket organizer that should have gone down another leg of the Trousers of Time, and so can hear the organizer reporting on the deaths that would have occurred had his decision gone otherwise."

    It's gonna be all quantum again, isn't it?

  13. Alan Johnson

    Deep question with more than one mystery

    There is more to explain than just the strangely high degree of ordering for small values of time which leads to the arrow of time in macroscopic physics.

    Why is space and time minkowskian so the time dimension is singled out as having a different sign in the space time metric. Why? Why not all the same or two timelike dimesions?

    Why do we not have simple time reversal symmmetry but have to tie it all together with other symmetries as CPT. We have (or at least we think we have) space reversal symmetry. This is independant from the observed assymetry in entropy.

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Deep question with more than one mystery

      The CPT and similar symmetries in quantummechanics are so neat, and then entropy comes along and immediately everything gets messy

    2. Alan Johnson

      Re: Deep question with more than one mystery

      Obviously we do not have space reversla symmetry if we have CPT but the mystery is still there why CPT?

    3. tony2heads

      Re: Deep question with more than one mystery

      Richard Feynman considered antimatter as matter moving backwards in time.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality

      This idea could explain the relative lack of antimatter in this universe.

    4. Canecutter
      Alien

      Re: Deep question with more than one mystery

      Alan Johnson:

      "Why is space and time Minkowskian so the time dimension is singled out as having a different sign in the space time metric. Why? Why not all the same or two timelike dimensions?"

      An interesting question that can lead you down quite a long and interesting intellectual path. I can't tell you the why. I can only tell you the what. Here's what I found along the path so far.

      Denote by X the spacetime position of a sytem relative to an observer;

      Denote by P the quantity called the energy momentum of that same system relative to that same observer.

      Set your frame such that x[0] is time, and p[0] is energy; the other 3 elements of each 4-vector correspond to your x-, y-, and z- axes, etc., respectively.

      The first thing you notice is that for any given observer, X and P are Fourier duals of each other.

      Next you notice that there is no reason (in mathematics anyway) why there should not be more than the 4 dimensions of space-time like we have. The most observable effect if we had more than 3 space dimensions would be that the inverse-square law no longer holds if there were more than 3 space dimensions. The upshot of that is that there could be no stable circular or elliptical orbits in such a universe, and structures like galaxies, solar systems, and even atoms would spontaneously collapse. The mathematical idea is that inverse power laws work as 1/r^(D-1). We clearly don't live in a universe where D_space is other than 3.

      If, instead, we lived in a universe where there was more than one dimension of time, we would also necessarily live in a universe where energy was no longer a scalar quantity. Instead, energy would be a vector quantity. Again that does not fit what we observe about our universe.

      So how come our model of spacetime is Minkowskian? That has to do with the postulate that the laws of nature are the same for all observers, regardless of their relative positions, or their relative motions, together with the recognition of the fact that no exchange of information between separated observers can take place instantaneously. That leads us to the postulate of a fixed, finite speed, that is the same for all observers with which information may be exchanged between any two separated events. That leads us then to recognize that the interval of separation between two separated events is the same for all observers, which leads us to the idea that space and time are indeed aspects of the same mathematical object. Thus we may measure space and time with the same units. To allow for the fact that we experience space and time differently, we can multiply \delta t by some conversion factor, that we may call c.

      So how do we arrive at different signs for the time-like part and the space-like parts of the space-time vector? We do that by recalling what we observe should we send out a flash of light (or any other message, actually). We observe that the furthest the flash could have reached after any given interval (\delta r) is given by (Pythagoras' Theorem) (\delta r)^2 =(c \delta t)^2. So if we bring both terms to the same side of the equals sign, and denote the resulting quantity by (\delta s)^2, we find (\delta s)^2 = (\delta t)^2 - (\delta r)^2, where (\delta r)^2 = x^2 + y^2 + z^2.

      There's more along the path, but that's about as far as I got.

  14. Scott Broukell
    Meh

    Is Standing Still the Third way

    If, as has been postulated, there are two streams of gravitational time, each traveling in opposite directions, would it not therefore be reasonable to suggest that where they meet, or collide, is the moment of present, the now. Which then might infer that the present is stationary, unmoving, as the two streams cancel each other out at the time-event horizon, or present moment. Might we be able to only observe, or at least sense, the past, as the results of that collision moving backwards (from our standpoint), as if we were moving forwards, but only because we are only able to look backwards and document what has just happened. Walking backwards for Xmas as it were. If we are not able to look in the other direction might that explain why we cannot observe, or accurately predict, the future. By contrast, an observer in the opposing stream of time would be looking backwards (from our standpoint), at a past that is, simultaneously, the future of his/her opposing observer.

    But we can predict the future, because prediction is not the same as recording or documenting a happening. I can say that in approximately six days time a machine will be turned on that will appear to chaotically juggle 49 spheres, each with a different numeral written on them, in space-time and then randomly select only six spheres as lucky, winning, numbers in a lottery. But I cannot, however, and to my continued immense frustration, accurately predict which six numbers are going to be drawn in six days time - at that moment of 'now' when two streams of opposing time collide in such a way as to determine the outcome of that lottery. When a seemingly chaotic system reveals a static, ordered, outcome and one which can only be observed looking back upon it. But, in all probability, for a few lottery participants at least, that moment of 'now' will change their futures, or at least the probable predictability of their futures, as determined by the amount of cash they each have available.

    So we get the sense of traveling 'forward' in time, but are, in fact, stationary, only able to observe moments 'past', which implies a 'forward' momentum and gives us the impression of travel. A bit like that peculiar sense one gets when sitting on a train known to be at rest, at a platform of the station, when suddenly the train on the next track starts moving and for a brief moment the laws of space-time seem to have been broken and one starts, at the very least, to worry about the implications that Waterloo station and indeed the rest of London, the UK and the entire known universe, are all heading towards the West Country in time for tea.

    I need a little lie down now, but I am happy to contemplate upon the probability that my opposite, babbling, commentard of the future El Reg, coming towards me at this very moment, can say something to the effect of: “T, that I doing, the get, shirt”.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is Standing Still the Third way

      "to worry about the implications that Waterloo station and indeed the rest of London, the UK and the entire known universe, are all heading towards the West Country in time for tea."

      I sometimes have this feeling on the A303 as I approach the Avebury junction, on a Friday or Sunday afternoon. I am glad that the explanation is so complicated.

  15. D@v3

    Keep up El Reg

    I'm sure I have already seen this next week

    1. Rich 11

      Re: Keep up El Reg

      If you've already seen this next week then you can also be assured that your current hangover is going to fade into a period of oblivion, followed by a session of merry jubilation. Sadly, though, you'll soon have no memory of the pleasure you gained from catching that STD.

  16. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    Unfortunately I can't get the abstract. However there are several possibilities in my mind to 'backwards time'.

    1) the arrow of time is literally reversed, this would imply that the entire life of the universe is pre-ordained to allow the opposites to happen. It would also result in the spontaeous creation of life from the charred remains of death ...

    2) actions in one time domain are exactly the opposite of the other - ala Red Dwarf scenario. At the very least this would be painful and result in bad hair days ...

    3) the arrow of time is relative. In other words the actions taking place in each universe/dimension may be identical but the action on a larger scale is not. Take as an example two sensory-deprived people pulling on opposite ends of a rope, each pulls with apparently identical parameters but to an observer they are pulling in exactly opposite directions ... This is the doppleganger scenario ...

  17. heyrick Silver badge

    So you end your life...

    ...by crawling inside your mother and dissolving inside her body? That's comic and horrific in equal measure.

    1. lorisarvendu

      Re: So you end your life...

      No more horrific that being buried in the ground and dissolving into the surrounding soil. After all, you're not conscious in either case.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Outdated notion?

    I thought the life the universe and everything was:

    - Taurus ring

    - The hole was the singularity

    - Times arrow is reversed when the universe collapses (can't get my head around that one, a reversed collapse is expansion right?)

    - the Taurus ring is 12 dimensional

    - all eventualities are played out within these 12 dimensions

    .

    Happy to be corrected. As the title suggests, I'm a bit out of date.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So, in this hypothetical "paired" universe

    gravity repels?

  20. Alistair
    Coat

    Time as an orbital function?

    Sorry -- no math or logic there - just that strange thought that if we look straight out, we see time moving in the opposite direction, even if we're in the same loop.

    Something broke in the gravity field around here and flipped my brain sideways.

  21. zipthegob

    Complementary Worlds.

    It seems sort of obvious that there would be a temporal/energetic COUNTERVERSE, or should we say that the Universe is actually the BIVERSE!

    Natural physical laws are typically conservative and symmetrical.

    A familiar example is the creation of virtual particle pairs, such as electron/positron couples arising spontaneously from vacuum, existing for very short periods - and where the components are described as travelling in opposite directions in time - so that the origin and end are, in a sense, indistinguishable, except from our perception of the entropic arrow of time.

    The great mystery of creation is how "something was created from 'nothing'".

    One of the oddities of so-called matter/anti-matter is that mutual annihilation converts the combined masses into gamma radiation. You might expect such encounters to produce - nothing!

    There is a rather odd theory of cosmic genesis that holds that the matter in our universe is left-over, after mutual annihilation, from a minor imbalance between matter/anti-matter at the 'Origin' (so much for economy).

    It seems rather elegant - to be able to describe creation, and existence for some duration, in terms of temporal and energetic symmetry. That creation is matched by reconciliation. That existence is 'borrowed'.

    'Our' Big-Bang was the end-of-time for our complementary Counter-Verse.

    'Our' end-of-time enjoins the creation of that other Universe.

    Albert Einstein said that ... "The Universe is finite, but unbounded" - wonder can never be bound.

    I wonder what ?knihT sredaeR geR ...

    John McAllister - zipthegob@gmail.com

    1. Kepler
      Go

      Re: Complementary Worlds.

      "'Our' Big-Bang was the end-of-time for our complementary Counter-Verse."

      Actually, it was the beginning for both universes and the end of neither. And it was the same Big Bang for both universes — a shared origin. The two universes simply separate from each other (temporally if not spatially*) and run in opposite temporal directions from that point on. Just like a number line with positive and negative directions and portions, intersecting at zero.

      Each universe would perceive itself to be moving "forward", and would deem the other to be moving "backward" only relative to its own (the first one's) direction of temporal motion. Presumably in the other one (the one that isn't ours), positrons are what orbit most atomic nuclei, and what we call "electrons" are deemed to be "antimatter".

      (The article makes no mention of the other universe being composed mainly of antimatter, but that supposition is both (1) consistent with the remarks several have made above about antimatter moving backward in time as per Feynman and Stueckelberg, and (2) a feature of the earlier two-universe hypothesis of Sokrates Pantelides that I post about below. I strongly suspect that mirror-image predominant composition is a feature of this new model from Barbour, Koslowsky and Mercati as well, and that it simply wasn't mentioned in the article.)

      .

      * The two universes would not need to be separated spatially in order to avoid interacting with each other. Even if they occupy the same space, they never interact with each other because they never occupy the same time — except at the instant of creation. Whether the duration of that instant is literally zero or the Planck time, and whether it makes a difference which of these answers is the case, I do not know.

  22. Martin Budden Silver badge

    Anti-matter, anti-time?

    I've always thought that there may be another* universe which is (pretty much) all anti-matter, explaining why ours is (pretty much) all matter, providing the balance we crave. If so it seems to make sense that the anti-matter universe has anti-time: time which flows in the other direction to ours.

    *Where is it? Well, it could be half of the same universe as ours: imagine a single universe with two hemispheres, one hemisphere made of matter and the other made of anti-matter, all created by the same Big Bang. We are in the matter half, and far enough from the border that we can't see the anti-matter half (it is beyond our observable universe).

    1. Kepler
      Thumb Up

      Re: Anti-matter, anti-time?

      For what it's worth, Martin Budden, I say much the same thing both in my response just above ("Re: Complementary Worlds") and in my post just below ("Not the first time this notion has been put forward"). Except I put the matter a bit differently. I call this to your attention only because I believe your words and those I used are complementary descriptions of the same basic notion.

      (A notion I do not necessarily endorse, but that I — like you — attempt to describe. And that I have found intriguing since Professor Pantelides first described it to me, some 11 or 12 years ago.)

    2. lorisarvendu

      Re: Anti-matter, anti-time?

      "Where is it?"

      An anti-matter universe must obviously consist of "a universe that comprises anti-matter". That's a given. However the energy that exists in that universe (and in a sense the empty space itself) isn't anti-matter. Surely it's the same energy and space as we see all around us, as it is having opposite charge and spin that actually defines what "anti-matter" is.

      So in a universe consisting of particles and physical processes that are running backwards in time to our own "ordinary" matter, where does all the matter eventually end up? One of the proposed scenarios for our own universe is that all the matter will eventually end up in supermassive black holes (which appear to exist at the centre of most galaxies). Presumably if this happens in our far future, then our universe will consist of very little other than a few scraps of matter and a whole lot of areas of incredibly large gravitational energy and mass.

      If we were sharing our space with a universe that constisted mainly of anti-matter moving backwards in time, and that universe was sufficiently evolved, wouldn't it also have very little anti-matter, and several large areas of hidden mass and energy? Which kind of sounds to me what we are currently observing ourselves now.

      Consequently in the far future our universe may well consist of little more than the massive black holes that have swallowed up all our matter...while the time-reversed anti-matter is now abundant, having been released from it's own black hole graves?

      Are the black holes of the anti-matter universe the answer to the hidden dark matter of our own?

      I'm sure Hollywood could make something of this...

  23. poopypants

    Came here to be confused by science

    Instead I was confused by a political discussion relevant to a country in which I do not reside.

    Near enough, I guess.

  24. Kepler
    Boffin

    Not the first time this notion has been put forward

    Sokrates Pantelides of Vanderbilt University put forward a similar notion some 12 years ago (details below); others may have done so even earlier.

    .

    Like so many others, Pantelides finds the Standard Model unsatisfying. He proposed an alternative model in which many fundamental values would be derived rather than merely specified through observation. One incidental consequence of his alternative model is that there are two universes starting from a common beginning but moving in opposite directions in time — one (ours) composed primarily of ordinary matter, and one in which antimatter predominates.

    I believe the paper in which he put forward his alternative model is this one:

    S.T. Pantelides, “A New Theory of Electromagnetic, Weak and Strong Interactions”, Int’l J. Mod. Phys. E 11, No. 3, pp. 177-210 (2002).

    I cannot get access to the full paper on line (without paying), nor do I have my copy of it with me. However, I'm pretty sure this was the paper, and that what I described above is what was referred to in the abstract where it says "The new theory leads to a new interpretation of 'negative energies' with cosmological implications."

    Abstract, with links to the full paper:

    http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0218301302000806

    See also:

    http://www.phy.syr.edu/research/relativity/rel-sem-02Fall.html

    http://www.phy.syr.edu/calendar/Pantelides.pdf

  25. Barry Mahon

    Wrong Universe

    I have fallen in to an other Universe, haven't I?

    What is UKIP? don't bother to explain.

    Why is the reference to a paywalled article, never heard of Open Access??

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wrong Universe

      I know you say you don't want an explanation, but in fact there is considerable relevance.

      UKIP is a British right-wing political party that seeks to undo all recent legislation of a vaguely progressive nature, from the smoking ban in pubs [US: bars] and restaurants, through the implementation in law of the UN declaration on human rights, equal marriage, equality of women, and integrated education. As such, they are trying to reverse Time's arrow. Hence the references to them in a discussion of an alternate universe in which time is going backwards. Heck, even Jeremy Clarkson disowns their central policy of leaving the EU.

      The Tea Party is not an equivalent, because it includes anarchic nihilism as well as a regressive agenda that, strangely, does not include repealing the State benefits of most of its members.

    2. zipthegob
      Happy

      Re: Wrong Universe

      Honestly ...

      Don't you know what UKIP stands for?

      United Kingdom Institute of (amateur) Physicists.

      Keep sweet...

      1. Bunbury

        Re: Wrong Universe

        Nothing quite like politics to get those vote buttons going. What we need is Perrin's uncle Jimmy Anderson and his secret army, who are against "Wreckers of law and order. Communists, Maoists, Trotskyists, neo-Trotskyists, crypto-Trotskyists, union leaders, Communist union leaders, atheists, agnostics, long-haired weirdos, short-haired weirdos, vandals, hooligans, football supporters, namby-pamby probation officers, rapists, papists, papist rapists, foreign surgeons - headshrinkers, who ought to be locked up, Wedgwood Benn, keg bitter, punk rock, glue-sniffers, "Play For Today", Clive Jenkins, Roy Jenkins, Up Jenkins, up everybody's"

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