In a complex society simplicity is a saving grace. "its fun to be simple, its fun to be free"
When faced with big questions even science has a tendancy to become overly complex.

This is where Turok, who formerly taught at Princeton and Cambridge and now directs the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, enters the discussion with an intriguing new theory. Physicists have known for decades that antimatter particles are mathematically identical to their particle pairs if they were going backward in time. The wave function for a positron, for instance, is identical to what we would expect to observe in an electron if the arrow of time were reversed. Is this just a fun (and sometimes helpful) mathematical trick, or does it tell us something significant about our universe?

For Turok, the answer is clear. In his own words:

“So we’ve developed a mathematical model, in which, as the universe in which we reside was pulled into existence, an anti-universe was also pulled into existence. It precisely parallels the creation of an electron-positron pair.”

Properly put, whether we find ourselves in the universe or in the anti-universe is simply semantics. But this is where things get exciting. Turok proposes that the same dark energy that pulled our universe into being simultaneously pulled an anti-universe into being—but those universes headed in opposite directions in time. This anti-universe is not a second universe. Turok’s is not a multiverse theory. But it does not overlap with our own space-time because it moves (from our perspective) “backwards” in time.

The universe is the chicken and the egg this way. THE UNIVERSE CAUSES ITSELF. Finally, if we were to follow our own “time” direction, from the end to the beginning of the anti-universe, then it would appear to “cause” our own universe. Similarly, if we were to follow the time arrow of a hypothetical anti-human in the anti-universe, from the end of our universe to the beginning, then our universe could appear to cause the anti-universe. (See the image above in this article.) As Turok stated:

It’s very paradoxical but very simple. In this model, actually, the anti-matter universe goes backward to the big bang, and it causes the big bang. In the mirror image, our side, if we followed it backwards in time, would cause the other side. So, the universe causes itself.

There’s a lot I find fascinating, and even elegant and appealing, about Turok’s model. It does require the existence of a particle that has not yet been observed—a right-handed neutrino, which many people believe must exist—but otherwise it’s comprehensible under the Standard Model of particle physics. The Grand Unified Theories, supersymmetry, string theory, much of the theoretical work of decent decades, would become unnecessary. “What we already know,” as Turok said, “would be enough to explain everything in the universe.”

It will fall to other theorists to test the mathematics of Turok’s proposal, and to masters of experimentation like Michael Doser to devise creative ways to test its implications and predictions. We have countless questions we look forward to asking Turok in an interview to come.

For now, however, Turok’s theory is another fascinating attempt to solve one of the most basic, enduring, and consequential questions ever asked. Wherethefugawe?