LanceDixon noticed a striking similarity between two formulas that he planned to include in his slides.

There are formulas that give the probabilities of possible outcomes. The probability of two gluons colliding and producing four gluons was represented by one of the scattering amplitudes.

"I was getting a little confused because they looked kind of similar, and then I realized that the numbers were basically the same."

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He shared his observations with others. The group didn't know why the two scattering amplitudes should be different. The greater the precision, the more terms they had to compare. By the end of the call, the physicists were pretty sure they were dealing with a hidden connection between two different phenomena that couldn't be explained by our current understanding of physics.

The antipodal duality has been confirmed for high-precision calculations. There are clues that a similar duality could be found in the real world. Researchers hope that by investigating the strange finding, they will be able to make new connections.

There is still no explanation of why it should be true, but this is a wonderful discovery because it is completely unexpected.

The DNA of Particle Scattering

The antipodal duality was discovered by using a code that was more efficient than traditional methods. If you want to figure out the probability of two high-energy gluons scattering to produce four lower-energy gluons, you need to consider all the possible pathways. You know the beginning and the end of the story, but you also need to know about the particles that can pop in and out of existence. You have to add up the probabilities of each middle event at a time.

There is no explanation as to why this should be true.

The person is from Brown University.

Four researchers, including Volovich, found a way to circumvent the calculations. They realized that reorganizing everything into a new structure would eliminate many of the complicated expressions. The basic elements of the new structure are called "letters." The six letters make up words that are combined to form terms.

The scheme is similar to the genetic code, in which four chemical building blocks combine to form the genes. The rules about which words are allowed are similar to the genetic code. Some of the rules seem to be arbitrary. Hidden patterns are the only way to find some of the rules.

Particle physicists have been able to calculate scattering amplitudes at higher levels of precision thanks to the inscrutable rules. The restructuring allowed for the discovery of the hidden connection between the two scatterings.

Antipode Map

There is a map at the center of the duality. An antipode map takes a point on a sphere and flips the coordinates to send you to another point on the other side. It's the equivalent of digging a hole in a country.

The antipode map is a bit more abstract. The order of the letters is changed. After a simple change of variables, this antipode map can be used to apply to all the terms in the scattering amplitude for two gluons becoming four.

Physicists may be scratching the surface of a theoretical structure in which surprising connections are present.

The duality is similar to reading a genetic sequence backwards and realizing that it is different from the original sequence.

Matt von Hippel was not involved in the research but he said that the map was useless. There is a completely inexplicable dichotomy using it.

Not Quite Our World

Two big questions are being asked. There is a question about why the duality exists. Will there be a connection in the real world?

The 17 elementary particles that make up our world abide by a set of equations. The massless particles that glue together atomic nuclei can interact with each other to double their own number. To create one gluon and one Higgs particle, the gluons must first transform into a quark and an antiquark and then into a Higgs.

One of the scattering processes has a different sector of the Standard Model than the other.

The simplified model of particle physics that the group of people were studying surprised them. More precise calculations of scattering amplitudes can be made with their toy model. A scattering process involving these gluons and one that requires an external interaction with particles is linked by the duality.

He thinks he has a clue about where the two things come from.

Volovich and her colleagues came up with rules that dictate which combinations of words are allowed. The two-gluon-to-gluon-plus- Higgs amplitude seems to be restricted by some of the rules. If you map those rules over to the other side of the duality, they will become a set of well-established rules that guarantee causality.

There is a reason to think that something similar could hold in the Standard Model. He said it was weak. Secondhand information is what it is.

There are many dualities between physical phenomena. Thousands of research papers have been written since the discovery of the AdS-CFT correspondence. This is only possible for a warped world with a different geometry than the universe. For many physicists, the fact that multiple dualities almost hold in our world suggests that they could be scratching the surface of an all-encompassing theoretical structure. They're all part of the story.