Clearing The Air On 'NASA's Antarctic Parallel Universe'

Much like the frozen wasteland of Antarctica, stories sometimes snowball. 

Through tabloid and social media - or a wishy-washy collection of both - stories sometimes get misconstrued, convoluted or become plain old misinformation.

If you've heard the claim that "... NASA found a parallel universe in Antarctica", you should be a bit sceptical.

Firstly, how do you fit a parallel universe in Antarctica?

What a NASA team of researchers found was a strange occurrence where particles were behaving differently and could be linked to the big bang. The big bang is subject to many different theories about parallel and even multi universes.

So, strange particles from the big bang + multiverse theories tied to the big bang = parallel universe?

Not so much.

Anyway, a lot of speculation and filling the blanks were used and our recent article on the matter kind of did/kind of didn't address this. 

A speculative paper published called 'CPT symmetric universe' included the strange ANITA data, but it was not intended to be a manual for the existence of alternate universes.

Peter Gorham, the experimental particle physicist from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and subject of the false claim has stepped forward saying:

"It seems that for this tabloid science story, some speculative theoretical physics, which might have had distant roots in plausibility, was amplified for sensational reasons,

In this case, one or more journalists have evidently moved ahead with an article that was not verified, and for reasons which are not clear, have ascribed research and papers to use which we never wrote, and theories, such as those involving parallel universes, which neither we nor our collaborators hypothesised about or discussed in any publication before these results were attributed to our experiment,

This is one of the reasons that scientific advances proceed by a more measured process, through peer review and verification by other investigators."

Now, did ARSE jump on the caboose of this?

Maybe a little. I mean, check this image out below and tell us it isn't awesome.

However, there was/is evidence suggesting it, but it's also a mystery and should be treated as such. Jumping to the most interesting solution at the expense of the most rational is par for the course in 2020. Dr Gorham did say there was the possibility of a parallel universe in his research, but he dropped a caveat that was purposefully omitted by many media outlets. 

His response as follows:

"We have encountered a small number of anomalies in our data, and once we have exhausted all of the possible explanations within the standard model of physics, only then is it time to consider other ideas that push those boundaries - we are not there yet, certainly not at the point where parallel universes are necessary!"

And that's basically all he had to say on the matter. 

What's really going on, and what we drew up in our article that dropped last week, is that the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) project - a big balloon that picks up the cosmic rays that pound earth - has picked up a few occasions where high-energy neutrinos 'bouncing' off Earth. 

That's pretty crazy because neutrinos are like 'invisible' low energy particles that pass through everything and barely interact with it. Think of Ghost from Ant-Man 2 (if you don't know the film you should watch just to get this reference).

When these guys get supercharged at ultra-high energies they will be much more interactive. Like, really, really charged. 

Why's that so special?

By supercharged, we mean charged by something so significant as the big bang. And the fact they're moving backwards away from Earth was translated (by most media outlets) as a sign of time-reversal and a broken line of physics. 

In plain English, cosmic wave neutrinos are meant to come from space, not Earth and that's what ANITA detected. Does it mean there's a parallel universe to ours?

Maaaaaaaaybe. 

But the type of maybe that's 1 in 1000. 
If it actually was a Marvel film the answer would be yes. 

It's weird that the neutrinos have bounced and physicists have been working to solve the mystery of the results within our current understanding of physics, or if they are adhering to something else entirely.

It's not, says Gorham.

There are a number of theories that suggest that there is an alternate universe to ours. This time the gap was bridged between the particles and the parallel universe theory too hastily. If we partook in some of this snowballing, we at ARSE apologise.

If you accept our apology and want to continue pushing Australia into the deep unknown, get your ARSE in gear with our ARSE gear. 

We'll even chuck in FREE SHIPPING Australia wide for any orders over $50.
We highly recommend the hoodie!

#Space_Aus