Lacking a good historical novel, I decided to read some articles about recent advances in the area of physics. It turned out that science fact is once again stranger to me than science fiction.
James Clerk Maxwell was a brilliant scientist. When Maxwell’s equations are solved for light, there are two distinct solutions. One solution is called the retarded solution and the other is referred to as the advance solution. The retarded solution, that represents a wave of light, is an accepted and an acceptable solution. It defines how light travels from one point to another. The advanced solution was largely ignored by scientists for many years. The advanced wave solution in essence is a wave ( or photon ) of light that is traveling backward in time ! The advanced wave solution comes from the future and travels back to the past.
Scientist Richard Feynman was intrigued by the idea of going backwards in time. Using Paul Dirac’s equations that defined electron motion, Feynman reversed the direction of time in the equation and discovered that the equation was still valid if he also reversed the electron’s charge. ( Editor’s Note: An electron has a charge of negative one. ) It turns out that an electron going backward in time is the same as an antielectron going forward in time !! ( Editor’s note: An antielectron is the anti-particle of the electron. ) An anti-particle is sometimes referred to as antimatter.
If an electron and an antielectron collide, they will annihilate each other and a gamma ray of energy will be released. It now appears that if an electron is moving forward in its time dimension, and then suddenly decides to reverse its time dimension and go backward in time, it can do so if it gives off a burst of energy. So in essence antimatter is just regular matter reversing its time direction.
R. Van Conoley ( Editor’s Note: We need another Isaac Asimov to make complex science understandable to a larger audience. )