Only the foolhardy tend to propose ideas to generate near-limitless energy. Yet that’s what one Russian physicist has done, and rather than dismissing his proposal out of hand, some experts have welcomed it as “thought-provoking”.
That doesn’t mean the idea is likely to bear fruit any day soon. “I’m afraid we will need to obtain a quantity of a hypothetical material known as mirror matter,” says Zurab Silagadze of Novosibirsk State University, who dreamed up the scheme.
Some theories of fundamental particles imply that every particle must have a mirror partner – that an electron is twinned with a mirror…
