Antiworld

Also found in: Dictionary.

Antiworld

a hypothetical cosmic object (a type of star or galaxy) that consists of antimatter. The hypothesis of the existence of antimatter and antiworlds was stated in 1933 by P. Dirac but has not been confirmed or disproved by observations. The electromagnetic radiation from stars and antistars is identical, so that it is impossible to distinguish between them by optical or radioastronomical methods. Other methods, such as those of neutrino astronomy, theoretically make these observations possible, since stars radiate mainly the neutrino and antistars, the antineutrino, but the existing apparatus (in the 1960’s) is not sufficiently sensitive. The problem of antiworlds became complicated after the discovery of violations of the law of conservation of parity (1957, 1964); it is not completely clear whether antiworlds should be represented, as before, as objects made of antimatter existing in ordinary space-time or whether they should be considered as existing in some “reversed” space-time.

REFERENCE

Alfvén, H. Miry i antimiry. Moscow, 1968. (Translated from Swedish.)

G. I. NAAN

Mentioned in ?

References in periodicals archive ?

Cave of Antimatter, created at Galerie Drouin in Paris after an extremely long correspondence with Debord, covered the walls, floor, and ceiling of the gallery with similar "industrial painting." According to the artist, the result was an environment separate from the world and part of an "antiworld."

Pinot Gallizio. (Reviews)

Is it any surprise that immigrants encountering the antiworld of postmodern "culture" often fall back on more certain and substantial identities based on the strongest ties human beings share--blood and religious faith?

The Brothers Tsarnaev: assimilating terrorists

I mention these unsavory news items with a good deal of reluctance, but not without purpose: James Kalb's advertence to a moral "antiworld" in the lead essay of this issue of Modern Age may at first seem somewhat extreme.

The irrationality of progressive rationalism

(11) Gogol' also portrayed the provinces as feminine but showed them as a demonic antiworld in which women ruled.

Bringing the provinces into focus: subnational spaces in the recent historiography of Russia

The world and society of the puszta inhabitants, in which Hans is halfway integrated, is a type of antiworld - and it simultaneously complements the world from which Hans comes.

The proximity of the strange

The way to escape an antiworld is by making the real world the standard.

Out of the antiworld

His two first volumes of poetry, Parabola and Mosaics, were soon followed by other often imaginatively and sometimes modernistically titled works, among them "Triangular Pear" ("Treugol'naya grusha"), Antiworlds (Antimiry, 1964), Heart of Achilles (Akhillesovo serdtse, 1966), Shadow of Sound (Ten' zvuka, 1970), Let the Bird Out!

Andrei Voznesenskii. Stikhotvoreniia, poemy, proza

Airaudi's contribution "Hard to Be a God: The Political Antiworlds of Voznesesnky, Sokolov, and the Brothers Strugatsky" contends that the use of fantasy as a disguise has been a widespread habit among Russian writers and that the antiworlds created by these authors go beyond a mere response to conventional primary worlds since in fact they have provided much room for healthy dissent.

Visions of the Fantastic (Selected Essays from the Fifteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts)

In this context of a literature that presents "worlds under erasure" (McHale, Postmodernist 99ff.), it seems particularly inappropriate to depict worlds and "antiworlds" as literary facts within a positivistically oriented theory.