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Space Science

Scientists Are Using Subatomic Particles To Search For a Mirror Universe (nbcnews.com) 212

Posted by BeauHD from the lost-in-plain-sight dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: At Oak Ridge National Laboratory in eastern Tennessee, physicist Leah Broussard is trying to open a portal to a parallel universe. She calls it an "oscillation" that would lead her to "mirror matter," but the idea is fundamentally the same. In a series of experiments she plans to run at Oak Ridge this summer, Broussard will send a beam of subatomic particles down a 50-foot tunnel, past a ring-shaped magnet and into an impenetrable wall. If the setup is just right -- and if the universe cooperates -- some of those particles will transform into mirror-image versions of themselves, allowing them to tunnel right through the wall. And if that happens, Broussard will have uncovered the first evidence of a mirror world right alongside our own.

The mirror world, assuming it exists, would have its own laws of mirror-physics and its own mirror-history. You wouldn't find a mirror version of yourself there (and no evil Spock with a goatee -- sorry "Star Trek" fans). But current theory allows that you might find mirror atoms and mirror rocks, maybe even mirror planets and stars. Collectively, they could form an entire shadow world, just as real as our own but almost completely cut off from us. Broussard says her initial search for the mirror world won't be especially difficult. But if she unequivocally detects even a single mirror particle, it would prove that the visible universe is only half of what is out there -- and that the known laws of physics are only half of a much broader set of rules.
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Scientists Are Using Subatomic Particles To Search For a Mirror Universe More

Scientists Are Using Subatomic Particles To Search For a Mirror Universe

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  • where I am young, slim, rich, handsome, and not a virgin?

    • You might be slim but still you. Sorry.

    • I can't wait to see what I look like with a goatee.

    • where I am young, slim, rich, handsome, and not a virgin?

      And cannot interact with normal women? I am sure there is.

  • What if the mirror you was performing the same experiment? Would you detect 'her' particles and be able to differentiate them?

    • It would be as if you attempted to clap with one hand, and there was another hand clapping back.

      Not sure how to make that into a car analogy.

      • One could imagine parity reversal, so that in this other universe they drive (in the alternate America, say) on the left-hand side of the road.

        It was a dark and stormy night. You're driving along a two lane road, when suddenly you see headlights in your lane coming towards you. Your doppelganger has decided to gang up on you (and you on him).

        • Wait, wasn't that a classic Twilight Zone episode?

          • Great minds travel in the same ruts. At least old minds. (I'm assuming you must be about my age--roughly that of Methuselah--if you remember the classic Twilight Zone.)

            After I posted, I went looking for a Twilight Zone episode I thought I remembered; or maybe it was One Step Beyond. Not exactly this one (I found one with doppelgangers), but one in which a former movie star saw in a mirror people she had acted with. They were the same age as they had been in the movie, but she was now aged. I couldn't f

            • I'm probably younger than most of the people in that rut, but I grew up poor in the 80s and my family had a modified cable box that gave us all the channels for the price of basic cable. (Best Christmas present ever, that box!)

              So my childhood was mostly just TV reruns, and one box of generic lego. I'd hang out at the public library for computer access.

              Then I grew up and spent 15 years reminding people that I don't have a TV. So those old reruns are most of what I know as television. Now I watch Korean TV on

  • No good can come from this (Score:5, Funny)

    by mpercy ( 1085347 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @09:15AM (#58866620)

    Video game and movie theorists tell us that all such portals open into hell dimensions.

    • Clearly it's the upside down.

      • To be safe, we better have both a grizzled space marine and some plucky '80s kids on standby. Not a goateed scientist with a crowbar though, trouble seems to follow those types around...

    • Or maybe it's that mirror dimension that Dr. Strange used so that he could have an all out fight in NYC without anyone noticing.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Nite_Hawk ( 1304 )

      That's all relative. Maybe we are the hell dimension. :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Once you go there, well. Quantum Verse, Normal Verse, Multi verse, Macro Verse, Chaos Verse.
        Chaos verse, everything, everywhere, everywhen or more accurately, the expressed quantum potential of all possible outcomes. From that expressed quantum potential, through an act of life the quatum ability to alter future quantum potential to altered outcomes, forms a normative bubble, a continued effort to alter future normative, normal space, outcomes through the continued perception of future expressed quantum po

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      On the other hand, it's easy to tell which subatomic particles are from the mirror universe, because they have beards.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      Depends on the video game, in mario 64, parallel universes are just an 16bit integer overflow of the collision map you can reach by sending mario into insane speeds by abusing the backward long jump or the ramp to the water physics.

    • In Stargate that was only about half the time, though.

    • One being's hell dimension is another one's vacation paradise. Don't judge.

  • Didn't we see this "tunnel" in the movies?

  • One side of the tunnel is blue, and the other side is orange, I assume.

    And there's cake.

  • Theory of Mirror Matter (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jbmartin6 ( 1232050 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @09:34AM (#58866710)
    I had not heard of this Theory of Mirror Matter [wikipedia.org]. tldr; explains some unusual observations and mirror matter is a candidate for the mysterious missing mass of the universe.
    • The problem with this is that mirror matter only is hypothesized to interact weakly with normal matter, its own exchange bosons should interact normally (or far more substantially). The problem with this is the way in which dark matter dosent clump or experience "friction" like the bullet cluster example where it simply passes through itself. Further it wouldn't explain the large symmetrical bulge of it around galaxies but instead it would clump up more like regular matter. So while it's a wimp and that'

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Personally, I favor a theory that postulates about 9 alternative universes, enough to account for almost all the dark matter. They would each seem normal to themselves. And there would be a leakage of gravitation between the universes, explaining part of why gravity is such a weak force. This would cause most of the large masses in the parallel universes to tend to cluster near each other, but since there'd be essentially no inter-universal friction, they'd keep oscillating rather than slow down.

        I'd elab

        • You don't have to be an expert to see that wouldn't fit observation. The dark matter lacks the clumping of normal matter. Hence weakly interacting, both with itself and normal matter. It is mathematically equivelant to wimps, if you want to talk math.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            Sorry, but that's not clear at all. If you have 9 clumps of non-interacting matter oscillating around their common center of gravity, and the clumps of mass are not tightly bound (i.e., they are extended in space), then it's not clear that you wouldn't see something that looked fuzzily distributed. It would, however, predict that there was no strongly consistent relationship between observable matter and the "dark matter", but only a weak relationship. I.e., observations much more probabilistic than det

            • You are forgetting that in each of these states the majority of the material would be gas and clump up. The bullet cluster is a great example of how your example dosent hold on large scales.
              • Also we were talking the mirror matter hypothesis, of which there is a single other state. Not 9.
            • here [arxiv.org] is a good paper to read if you want to see why people think wimps are weakly interacting with themselves. There is empirical proof to 8 sigma; though it is nice to have many many examples, it's also hard to explain this away with only handwavi g.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by HiThere ( 15173 )

                Yes, but that wouldn't disagree with my proposal at all...or if it would, the reason why is not at all clear to me.

                • Two reasons. First, if it's just symmetry, there is one other possible state, not 9. Second, the other mirror matter would be nearly indistinguishable from normal matter in terms of how it interacts with itself, just like antimatter. It interacts with itself just like regular matter.

                  The bullet cluster is a good illustration of how this "dark matter" is cold after a collision I.e. Weakly interacting. They use this as the premise for thier models and attempt to explain the results through modeling.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by HiThere ( 15173 )

                    Yes, but the place I start disagreeing is with the first supposition. If there's any evidence that it's "just symmetry", then I don't know what it is. I'll agree that the "just symmetry" model has been well developed, but the evidence seems sketchy enough that while there's good evidence that something is there, the evidence of what's there is just about absent. We can tell "it sort of acts like matter" and "we can't see it", and "it tends to cluster where mass that we can see clusters", and this is an e

                    • Ok I see, I was talking about this article and the OP which linked to the Wikipedia entry for mirror symmetry hypothesis, not for all dark matter hypothesis. Hypothesis like the mirror matter that don't have it interacting with itself weakly are falling quickly out of favor because of the actual observations we can now see, and instances like the bullet cluster keep being observed so we now know it's not some one off outlier but rather a typical occurrence in these situations.

                      We can tell "it sort of acts like matter" and "we can't see it", and "it tends to cluster where mass that we can see clusters", and this is an example of why "tend" is the correct word to use.

                      Correct except the see it part

      • Mirror neutrinos, maybe.

  • Curse you, Buckaroo! (Score:4, Funny)

    by MikeMo ( 521697 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @09:49AM (#58866810)
    Haven’t we seen this somewhere before? All we need is a guy on a trolley with a helmet...

  • without a jet car and oscillation overthruster. Beware the red Lectoids. They'll follow you home.

  • Do you want demogorgons? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kiaser Zohsay ( 20134 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @10:35AM (#58867034)

    ... because this is how you get demogorgons.

  • It's almost magical how these types of stories just happen to break in synch with some thematically-related media property's promotion cycle.

    Also: Watch for Stranger Things Season 3, on Netflix starting tomorrow!

  • He was rigorously ethical, but believed himself powerless to save his own universe. Kirk tried to convince him otherwise at the end.

    Spock can never be evil.

    Also, Flexo was actually the *good* Bender.

  • physicist Leah Broussard is trying to open a portal to a parallel universe

    this never ends well.
  • Imagine stumbling on a mirror Slashdot in reverse, where this side's ACs and trolls are wise, reasoned and soft-spoken

    #dream_on

  • IANAS, but there is the unresolved issue of dark energy and dark matter in order for physics models to explain how galaxies maintain their shape and not fling apart. We're also only just beginning to study gravity waves. What if gravity that distorts our space-time also has an effect on parallel universes? What if these distortions are what led to star formation in the same place and at the same time, which could lead to nearly identical but separate universes? What if this experiment could lead the way int

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      What if these distortions are what led to star formation in the same place and at the same time, which could lead to nearly identical but separate universes?

      We already know that dark matter is only weakly interacting with itself ruling that out. It does not clump the way normal matter does but instead passed through itself.

  • What if every black hole in the universe is just the leftover results of life forms poking into things like this?

  • Stop this bullshit

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