# Antimatter speculation
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 14, 2025, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570 "2025-03-14T18:22:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570/21 "2025-03-15T18:49:10Z")
> [@gnoitall](#):
>
> That’s what I meant, since I usually explicitly caveat pretty much everything I say with “AFAIK”. But if it’s a common topic in SF, I’m sure you’ll enlighten us with just more applicable example.
One example is Jack WIlliamson’s Seetee stories. Seetee is phonetic for C-T which stands for **C** ontra **T** errene matter, that being an old alternate term for antimatter.
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### Author:  [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2025, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570/22 "2025-03-15T19:13:23Z")
> [@gnoitall](#):
>
> if it’s a common topic in SF, I’m sure you’ll enlighten us with just more applicable example.
I remember an old episode of _Super Friends_ in which our heroes were sent hurtling in a space ship towards the anti-matter part of the universe, oh no! That episode also included an answer to the OP’s question:
> [@eschereal](#):
>
> IOW, as far as I can tell, a galaxy of antimatter would look exactly the same with the tools we currently have. Would there be some way to discern what we are looking at?
So that episode didn’t just postulate an anti-matter region of the universe. There were also counterparts to the characters and the spaceship they were in, who not coincidentally have been sent hurtling toward the matter region of the universe. So the answer is clear: Just head that way toward that part of the universe you suspect is actually antimatter, and watch for your antimatter counterparts who have been doing the same exact thing as you coming the opposite way. But of course, you need to stop before you meet, otherwise, kablooey!
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2025, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570/23 "2025-03-15T21:18:07Z")
I was going to mention those stories as an early example. [Some information here](https://gnomepress.com/15-seetee-ship/).
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2025, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570/24 "2025-03-15T21:39:34Z")
> [@eburacum45](#):
>
> One of my favourite SF plots involving antimatter can be found in Greg Bear’s novel Anvil of Stars. One of the protagonists (and their ship) become converted into antimatter, and they gradually become sick, because ‘antimatter chemistry is slightly different to normal chemistry’. This is (I believe) a reference to CPT violation in antimatter, which suggests there is a real difference between the ways that matter and antimatter behave.
Well, there is an asymmetry between matter and antimatter, but it only shows up at all in the weak interaction, and even then only at around the one part per thousand level. Even for a chemical system with as much finesse as a living organism, it’s hard to imagine that having any detectable chemical effect. It’d be more plausible for someone to get sick from the wrong ratio of chlorine isotopes, or something.
> [@Pasta](#):
>
> I encourage you to dig up the original paper. You may very well literally LOL just upon glancing at the plots.
To be honest, I never paid much attention to the topic, beyond noting “there isn’t a consensus”. I’m not, myself, a particle physicist; I was only interested in the question because it impacted on a question of black hole evaporation, which I was interested in, and it was nearly as easy to just publish both sets of numbers as one of them.
But you’ll note that I phrased my statement strictly in terms of what was claimed, not what the experiments actually showed. And since I’ve been out of the field entirely for a decade now, I wasn’t aware that that result had been completely debunked.
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### Author:  [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2025, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570/25 "2025-03-15T22:06:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> It’d be more plausible for someone to get sick from the wrong ratio of chlorine isotopes, or something.
Considering this individual was inside a ship made of antimatter, and constantly irradiated by the annihilation of meteoric dust on their hull, the most likely cause of sickness would be gamma rays.
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### Author:  [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2025, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570/26 "2025-03-15T22:37:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> But you’ll note that I phrased my statement strictly in terms of what was claimed
Yeah, I just wanted to correct the statements that there were multiple experiments and that they “claim[ed] to come down extremely confidently on the Majorana side.” There were 0.5 experiment’s worth of claim (since half the team didn’t sign on to the claim of a signal), and the claim was never stated beyond just being possible evidence. Whoever was in your audience that day long ago and insisted on something stronger was misinformed. (Separately, there are some that feel the theoretical advantages of Majorana neutrinos is enough to settle the case. Unfortunately that’s not how empirical science works. Maybe your audience member was cut from this cloth.)
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> and it was nearly as easy to just publish both sets of numbers as one of them.
Yeah, setting N\_{\nu} to N\_{\nu}+3 doesn’t seem too onerous!
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2025, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570/27 "2025-03-15T22:45:01Z")
I specifically remember the audience member claiming that it was a 6-sigma result, which if true, would be extremely confident. But I have no idea what led him to that level of confidence, whether he was one of the original experimenters himself, or just very convinced by them.
> [@Pasta](#):
>
> (Separately, there are some that feel the theoretical advantages of Majorana neutrinos is enough to settle the case. Unfortunately that’s not how empirical science works. Maybe your audience member was cut from this cloth.)
Personally, my feeling is that lepton number is awfully strongly conserved, for something that doesn’t even exist, and so I find Dirac theoretically preferable. But yeah, “theoretically preferable” doesn’t cut it.
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### Author:  [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2025, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570/28 "2025-03-15T23:02:32Z")
The [Encyclopedia of Science Fiction](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/antimatter) says
> Antimatter galaxies, or even an entire antimatter universe created in the Big Bang at the same time as our matter universe, have been postulated by physicists, with the enthusiastic support of the sf community. A E van Vogt was one of the first to use this idea, which has since become a cliché of pulp sf. James Blish’s _A Clash of Cymbals_ ( **1959** ) climaxes with ultimate holocaust as an anti-universe impinges upon our own. The concept is dealt with more sophisticatedly in Ian Watson’s _The Jonah Kit_ ( **1975** ).
So that’s two more, plus the unnamed van Vogt story. That one might be _The Storm_, which I haven’t read, but seems to be about the intrusion of antimatter stars into our universe. [A preview](https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Science-Fiction-Classic-ebook/dp/B004LRPK9O) shows that like Williamson, he also uses the term “seetee” to refer to antimatter. Since the encyclopedia calls it a “cliché”, there must be a number of others.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2025, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570/29 "2025-03-15T23:20:23Z")
In the novel _Brother to Demons, Brother to Gods_ it’s mentioned that a challenge to inter-universal travel is that half of all universes are antimatter, and you _really_ don’t want to screw up and arrive in a universe of the wrong polarity.
The Negative Zone in Marvel comics is an antimatter universe, thus the name.
Star Trek’s _The Alternative Factor_ featured an antimatter universe, with about as much scientific accuracy as you’d expect.
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### Author:  [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)
#### Post date: [March 15, 2025, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570/30 "2025-03-15T23:42:39Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Personally, my feeling is that lepton number is awfully strongly conserved, for something that doesn’t even exist, and so I find Dirac theoretically preferable.
This is a tangent probably better suited for a separate thread, but in any case: You are getting effective lepton number conservation “for free” just by having small neutrino masses and a maximally parity-violating weak interaction, so you don’t also need neutrinos to be Dirac in nature.
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### Author:  [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2025, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antimatter-speculation/1015570/31 "2025-03-16T01:14:10Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> Star Trek’s _The Alternative Factor_ featured an antimatter universe, with about as much scientific accuracy as you’d expect.
Maybe 5 episodes of the original _Star Trek_ are more unwatchable than that one. Not that _any_ fiction is actually applicable to the original question, being ficticious.
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