New pear-shaped nucleus could ruin time travel forever

A new form of atomic nuclei has been confirmed, and its very existence may change what we thought were the fundamental aspects of physics—and could put a nail in the coffin of time travel, according to a new paper in Physical Review Letters.

Unlike all other known forms of atomic nuclei, this one is pear-shaped—meaning it’s not symmetrical. To understand what this means and why it’s important, we need to go back a few billion years, to the Big Bang.

Currently, the general thought is that the Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter—a symmetry which probably would have just resulted in them cancelling each other out. In our current times, though, matter won out, meaning all of us have the pleasure of existing.

This of course begs the question: Where the heck is all the antimatter?

Which is where our new pear-shaped form comes in. Up until now, the forms of the nuclei of atoms have been symmetrical in shape, which happens to pair nicely with a theory known as CP-Symmetry. CP-Symmetry involves a symmetry of charge and coordinates in space in the universe.

“In particle physics, if you have a particle spinning clockwise and decaying upwards, its antiparticle should spin counterclockwise and decay upwards 100 percent of the time if CP is conserved,” Ethan Siegel from It Starts With a Bang explained to Forbes. “If not, CP is violated.”

Pear-shaped nucleus shakes up our view of physics and time travel

Up until now, the thought has been that CP was law and balance existed—a notion carried through in the shape of nuclei. Symmetry ruled the universe throughout. Well, it did until 2013 anyway, when the first pear-shaped nucleus in the isotope Radium-224 was discovered by physicists at CERN.

“[T]he protons enrich in the bump of the pear and create a specific charge distribution in the nucleus,” Marcus Scheck from the University of the West of Scotland told BBC News. “This violates the theory of mirror symmetry and relates to the violation shown in the distribution of matter and antimatter in our Universe.”

Now, Scheck and his team were able to directly observe this distortion, thus confirming CERN’s previous findings. This time, it was seen in the nucleus of the isotope Barium-144—and the distortion was even more pronounced than predicted, which leads Scheck to believe that this little pear indicates time travel is a no-go.

“We’ve found these nuclei literally point towards a direction in space. This relates to a direction in time, proving there’s a well-defined direction in time and we will always travel from past to present,” said Scheck.

Of course, whether that holds true or not is a topic for the future.

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Image credit: CERN

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