Our Universe is just a "mirror image" of another parallel world. According to the supporters of this hypothesis, both universes have one point of reference, that is, they arose as a result of the Big Bang. The news that NASA has finally managed to discover a parallel universe has excited the public.
Over the past months, the scientific community has been actively discussing the news that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA has finally managed to find a parallel universe, where time is going backwards. The news excited social media users, who split into two camps. Some unconditionally believe NASA, while others reject the very idea of the existence of a parallel universe, believing that scientists take wishful thinking.
It should be noted that rumors of the discovery of a parallel universe were greatly exaggerated as they were based on the latest results from NASA's Pulsed Transition Antenna (ANITA), which uses the entire surface of Antarctica as a laboratory! The research process is as follows: high-energy cosmic particles - neutrinos - interact with the ice sheet of the continent, causing the amplitude spectrum of a sequence of radio pulses that can be captured by antennas. Incidentally, the antennas are placed on huge balloons capable of rising to a height of 37 kilometers above the surface of the icy continent.
A neutrino is a subatomic particle. It is so small that we do not notice how a trillion neutrino particles pass through our fingers every second. We do not see this flux, because neutrinos have practically no effect on ordinary matter. On average, only one neutrino interacts with our body in our entire life. Neutrinos are particles without charge that have practically no mass, so capturing them is more like capturing ghosts. Thus, scientists have always had to use clever tricks, in particular ANITA antennas, to capture these high-energy cosmic particles.
In 2018, ANITA's Antarctic Pulse Transition Antenna began receiving abnormal radio signals, which caused a stir in the scientific community. It is likely that this was due to particles that passed first through the surface of the southern continent, and then into ANITA. The aforementioned radio signals were not reflected from the Antarctic ice sheet, which opened the door for all kinds of hypotheses and discussions. According to one version, this is due to the nature of the Antarctic ice sheet. However, some researchers have stated that this may be evidence for something else that lies beyond our imagination.
This is how the main hypothesis, put forward by the researchers, appeared, according to which our Universe is possibly just a “mirror image” of another parallel world. According to the supporters of this hypothesis, both universes have one point of reference, that is, they arose as a result of the Big Bang.
To understand everything, let's first look at the modern cosmological model "Lambda-CDM", according to which our universe appeared after the Big Bang. We know that our Universe is rapidly expanding, so if we imagine that the Universe is a movie that is being shown now, then if we want to rewind it, the viewer will go back 13.8 billion years ago and see the starting point from which the story began. our universe.
Unfortunately, we don't know much about this point. Moreover, we cannot find out anything about what happened during the Big Bang or during the first 400 years of the universe. Scientists suggest that the universe was so dark that it did not let any light through, and then the first cosmic atoms were formed and the first photons of light appeared. They made such conclusions based on fairly convincing evidence.
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Researchers who support the current cosmological model ask themselves, "Why don't we rewind the movie back to the Big Bang?" Of course, this is not just an idea that suddenly popped up in the minds of physicists, since they have long been accustomed to using mathematical equations to solve all the problems they face.
One of these problems is that the cosmological model "Lambda-CDM" in some cases violates the fundamental physical law "charge, parity and time" (CPT - Symmetry). To understand the basic principle, one must look at a smooth ball. When we look at it from any point, that is, from the right, left, top or bottom, its shape remains unchanged. As for, for example, a cube, we cannot simultaneously see all of its faces, since the projections are superimposed on each other.
It should be noted here that the cube "breaks rotational symmetry" and the ball is rotationally symmetric. There are also several types of symmetry in particle physics, but of course they are very different from each other. So, for example, a ball can only get closer. Most physicists believe that the principle of "charge, parity and time" should not be violated. Nevertheless, the new hypothesis says that in order to maintain symmetry, we must imagine that opposite our Universe, there is another parallel world.
This hypothesis does not reject the Big Bang theory, but rather proves it, since scientists take it as the starting point for the emergence of the Anti-Universe. In other words, after the Big Bang, a parallel universe arose, where the space-time continuum is similar to ours, but with the only difference - everything happens the other way around.
For example, time in a parallel Universe does not move like we do, but backwards. In addition, everything there looks upside down, as if we were looking in a mirror. But note that everything looks like this only in our perception. If there are inhabitants in a parallel universe, then for them everything looks normal, not upside down. However, if they look at our Universe, they will see it as if they were looking in a mirror. In other words, both Universes will meet at the moment of the Big Bang, and each of them will decide that everything happened in the distant past!
Here a logical question arises: what is the connection between the ANITA experiment and the parallel Universe? The answer is as follows: the new cosmological model of a parallel Universe presupposes the appearance of a new type of neutrino particles, which were previously unknown to the physics of elementary particles. It is likely that these particles were discovered by scientists during the ANITA experiment.
It should be noted that the problem is not that the results of the ANITA experiment are associated with a parallel universe, but rather that they confirm the existence of this parallel universe. Nevertheless, at best, this is just an assumption, despite the fact that we have detected neutrino particles. It is likely that our find may refer to other things.
The hypothesis of the existence of a parallel universe has existed for a long time. A few years ago, a research group at Oxford University put forward a similar hypothesis in a study published in the scientific journal Physics Letters B. The aforementioned study states that the Big Bang was not the beginning of time: at that moment, the orientation of space simply changed.
The new hypothesis does not reject the Big Bang theory, but rather interprets some of the established postulates in a different way. Scientists from Oxford University do not introduce any new concepts, do not change Einstein's general theory of relativity, which explains the evolution of the universe, but simply work on a solution to a problem called the "Horizon Problem".
Everyone knows that in the distant past, the expansion rate of the Universe was greater than the speed of light. This means that there are elementary particles that appeared immediately after the Big Bang, but did not have the opportunity to meet each other. To get a better understanding, imagine that you have a cup of hot water and a cup of cold water, but you immediately set them apart. Cold water will remain in one cup, and hot water in the other. But if we leave them for a while or chat, then in each cup the water will be about the same temperature.
This is where the Horizon Problem comes in. The particles that quickly separated from each other at the moment of the origin of the Universe should differ in their characteristics, but their influence is not manifested in our Universe, because it is homogeneous. This raises the main question: why different regions of the Universe, which have never been in contact with each other, have identical properties?
Today there are two options for an answer. The first says that there was some event in the first moments of the life of the Universe, which caused this inexplicable interaction. Space itself may have been different from what we know today, and the speed of light was likely significantly greater. As for the second option, it says that, apparently, the Big Bang was not at all the beginning of time. Somehow, the particles managed to mix with each other even before the Big Bang.
All of the above hypotheses did not arise out of nowhere. They are designed to solve the problems faced by modern cosmological models. Take, for example, a research paper that sparked extensive debate in the scientific community in 2017 due to the fact that it talked about the possibility of collision of our universe with a parallel one at an early stage of evolution. This hypothesis was based on the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, which current models cannot explain. Moreover, it echoes the theory of "Bubble Universes", which arose after the emergence of the theory of Chaotic inflation (Eternal Inflation).
Unfortunately, all hypotheses about a parallel universe face a fundamental problem - it is impossible to prove its existence empirically. To the question "Are there parallel universes?" difficult to answer given the current state of science. It is likely that we will never be able to answer this question, but who knows? Maybe we can do it someday. Thus, all that remains for us now is to keep working on creating more accurate mechanisms and more acceptable models in order to prove all hypotheses one day.
Until such a moment has come, we cannot consider these hypotheses as an established fact. We are still in the land of the imagination, but our dreams are something worth pondering. Perhaps one day we will answer our most troubling questions: what is dark energy? What is dark matter? What happened at the time of the Big Bang? What is time? What is life? Who are we?