I have just been stimulated into writing and submitting a new manuscript on immunology (with quite astounding help from MS Copilot). One of the background themes I have picked up on in the past was how the various components of the immune system (innate, adaptive, humoral) show a duality that is faintly reminiscent of the matter/anti-matter duality that is expounded in the Standard Model (notably for leptons and quarks). In the immune system, this duality is also faintly reiterated by its various immune cells; classically, immunologists were generally bamboozled by the overwhelming impression that the adaptive immune system was an aggressive/destructive system, "designed to seek out and kill foreigners – especially micro-organisms". However, the real duality is that all immune cells have dichotamous programs that can be either destructive or constructive – the latter are regularly "rolled out" in the repair phase of inflammation.

Of course, this is only a very loose – though useful – analogy. There is no constructive vs destructive equivalence in the Standard Model.

Hang on though! And, this is where one of those delightful orgasms of insight can flash across a cerebrum. Could we make a case for this?

Well, I have discussed some of this earlier. Antimatter in Feynman diagrams is seen in as particles that may be "travelling" backwards in time. So, could we reconsider matter and anti-matter this way? Well matter particles are indisputably a collection of construction "bricks". So, is here a circumstance when we see a mass of anti-matter thrown at us as if from a destructive process? Well, if most anti-matter leptons "reside" in an antiverse, who's time relative to us is moving backwards, then we might just be able to observe some of their effects but perhaps, not be able to properly see the the particles as they are moving into our past. Some of these properties are looking a bit like neutrinos. The positrons we see born in collision events are generated in the forward time of the universe – so we see them – or, at least, their paths – while they are transitorily still visible on the universe side (before a release to pure energy – photons) and haven’t disappeared far into our past. It would be a fascinating revelation if we could see a positron track starting at it's disappearance then "travelling" towards it's point of elctron-positron creation then see the electrion track take over in a continuing forward time sequence. The reaction is perhaps too fast to see this. So what does backwards in time imply? Let's think of an event here and now at the tip of your nose. You might think that the tip of your nose is not moving but it is. It's just staying still relative the the rest of your body. Add together galactic movement in the expanding universe, movement in the local galaxy cluster, movement in the spiral arm of the milky way, movement around the sun, movement on the face of the Earth, movement as you walk down the street and you have, not only a pretty complex path, but a very large number of kilometres every second. It is not light's 300,000 km a second but a sizeable fraction of it. So a particle travelling backwards in time is theoretically back at least where we were 10 seconds ago and, logic suggests, another 10 seconds on top of that – 20 in all. So it's a long way away in a fraction of a second. It is probably difficult to see but we may observe some if its effects.

So where do we get our biggest showers of neutrinos from? From mighty stellar explosions and from the sun locally. That looks mightily like being produced in a destruction event to me. But, hold on! What if you could transpose yourself to be a member of the anti-verse (where time is going the other way). There, you might see that anti-matter (neutrinos here) are acting as if time is going forward and our matter is running backwards in time: a mirrored inversion. So anti-matter is constructive there and our matte is I a destructive phase. So, like a "Zip Ball" toy, our reality might just be "constructed" out of a time forward time backward interplay that is, perhaps, simply a set series of places.

HHmmm!! Perhaps there is something to explore in all this. But probably not. Quantum physics defies logical analysis (or are we just not seeing something?)< /p>

I have noted theme repetition a lot. It may initially seem that there is no obvious connection but the themes do often hand out useful clues.

Why quantum? Why fractals?

This is a conundrum – is this a fundamental, cannot go any deeper for an explanation state, or is there some potentially understandable logical process to it? Much of the current thinking claims quantum physics is too strange and mystical to understand ("get on and calculate"). But, it is rigorously mathematical; and that, to me, implies logical. We may just be currently blind to a way forward – stuck on an assumption.