Stranger Things, Particle Physics, and Anti-Matter

“The Netflix original series Stranger Things is set in 1983 Indiana, where a young boy vanishes into thin air. As friends, family and local police search for answers, they are drawn into an extraordinary mystery involving top-secret government experiments, terrifying supernatural forces and one very strange little girl.” — NETFLIX

A Change of Age

“The word atom is from the Greek atomos, which means “indivisible.” At one time, atoms were thought to be the indivisible constituents of matter; that is, they were regarded as elementary particles.” — Modern Physics By Raymond A. Serway, Clement J. Moses, Curt A. Moyer

It was not until the discovery of sub atomic particles, that the world came to know there are particles smaller than atoms. These are the particles that make up the atom (protons, neutrons, and electrons). There are many other particles, and they interact, move and bind together based on the forces in the standard model.

The discovery of sub atomic particles and the forces between them radically shifted our view of the universe.

Russell Ackoff once said that we are in the early stages of a change of age. From the machine age to the systems age... It began to be acknowledged that while analysis produces knowledge, it is synthesis that produces understanding. With that being said, we can gain more understanding in how ideas developed at a certain point in time, those that have widespread acceptance have uncanny resemblance to previously understood ways of looking at the world.

Such as Bohr’s model of the structure of an atom resembling the solar system, with electrons rotating around the nucleus like planets in the solar system revolving around the sun.

Particle Physics and The Upside Down

Watch below video or read the italicized portion (preferably watch the video, a picture is worth a thousand words).

Paul Dirac came up with a new equation to describe how particles like electrons behave when they travel close to the speed of light. He found that his equation always had two solutions. He recognized one solution described an electron but the other was a mystery. Which he first thought was a mathematical artifact. After 3 years of reviewing this, he gathered the courage to say that this was describing something different, anti matter.

The first solution described an electron, while the second described an anti electron. That anti electron had the same spin and mass as the electron, but has an opposite electric charge.

Dirac’s equation says this is true for ALL particles.

In 1932, Carl Anderson took a picture of a particle racing through a bubble chamber. His measurements showed that it had the same mass as an electron, but a positive charge.

This raises a huge question, why is there any matter left, if matter and antimatter are identical except for having a different electrical charge.

So how does this relate to stranger things. . .

“Physicists have been puzzling about this for half a century. Some have wondered whether the anti matter got separated from matter and might still be out there. Existing as anti planets, anti stars, anti galaxies, maybe even, anti universes.” — What is anti matter?

Research still being conducted on the distinction between a universe and a dimension, I understand this may be a key flaw in my reasoning, and welcome any comments by anyone who is aware of the difference.