Anti-Matter

An electron's the anti, in fact,
Of a positron (to be exact) —
As if time has been flipped.
But symmetry has slipped,
To allow life, it seems to be hacked!

One way of viewing anti-matter is that it is normal matter traveling backwards though time (flipped, or tipped over, in symmetrical terms). The two would be then indistinguishable from each other. As the American physicist Michio Kaku says "...if we push an electron with an electric field, it moves, say, to the left. If the electron was going backward in time, it would move to the right. However, an electron moving to the right would appear to us as an electron with positive, not negative, charge. Therefore an electron moving backward in time is indistinguishable from antimatter moving forward in time." (Beyond Einstein; The Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe)

This looks very symmetrical then. However if the world was perfectly symmetrical, then anti-matter would cancel matter and there would be no matter, no life. So symmetry must be violated to allow life to exist it seems, it is as if life has hacked the code of the universe to give room for its own existence.

It brings to mind a quote from Lewis Carroll Alice's Adventure in Wonderland:"… 'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!' 'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'it always makes one a little giddy at first.'"