No, NASA didn’t find evidence of a parallel universe where time runs backwards

Let’s play a game with bad, good, and bad news.

Bad news first: 2020. Everything in the truest sense of the word. Every second. Every waking moment of 2020. It’s dark, I know. Brush fire, pandemic, Murder hornets. When will it end?

But the good news: Apparently, scientists have discovered a parallel universe, just like our own. However, it is somewhat different than ours. In this mirror world, time runs backwards. It’s like in a Benjamin Button universe. That means they’re returning to 2019, the good old days, right?

Well, now more bad news: I am here to spoil the parallel universe party. Scientists don’t have indeed discovered a parallel universe, but you could superior You have, based on multiple reports from across the web.

In the last few days a number of Publications have suggested that scientists have found “evidence” of a parallel universe in which time is running backwards. These stunning articles assume that an experiment in Antarctica has discovered particles that violate the laws of physics. All reports come from the same source of information: A Pay-Walled report from New Scientist on April 8 titled “We may have discovered a parallel universe that goes back in time.”

The focus of the report is the results of the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA), an experiment carried out by NASA researchers. It is a series of radio antennas attached to a helium balloon that flies at 37,000 meters over the Antarctic ice sheet, almost four times the height of a commercial flight. At such a height, the antennas can “listen” to the cosmos and recognize high-energy particles, so-called neutrinos, that constantly bombard the planet.

Currently running:
Look at that:

Black hole seen for the first time in real life

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These particles are not a threat to us and pass through most solid objects without anyone noticing – it is estimated that 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second! They rarely interact with matter. However, when they hit an atom, they create a shower of secondary particles that we can recognize, which allows us to examine where they come from in the universe. ANITA recognizes neutrinos that penetrate from space and collide with matter in the Antarctic ice sheet.

Over the years, ANITA has discovered a handful of “abnormal” events. Instead of the high-energy neutrinos streaming in from space, they seem to have entered the Earth’s interior from a strange angle before hitting the detector. This knowledge tilt are explained by our current understanding of physics – that much is true.

“The unusual ANITA events have been known and discussed since 2016,” said Ron Ekers, honorary member of CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. “After four years there was no satisfactory explanation for the abnormal events ANITA saw. This is very frustrating, especially for those involved.”

Although the New Scientist report was filed on April 8 – and the ANITA results are almost two years old – the theory has only recently caught fire. Ever more urgent headlines have driven the spread on social media. “NASA discovers evidence of a bizarre parallel universe in which physics and time work in reverse,” says one. Another says, “Scientists may have just found evidence of a parallel universe.”

Because the New Scientist piece is behind a wage wall, many of the subsequent reports on the parallel universe are deleted from the first few paragraphs and do not explain the full details behind the find, in which one of the scientists admits that there are one or more loose lots Ends “for parallel universe theory. At the South Pole there is another neutrino observatory, the IceCube followed up the ANITA observations and suggests that the standard physics model cannot explain these strange events.

“In such a situation, you start to explore even more extreme possibilities,” says Ekers.

There’s a really interesting science story here, but it’s not the one you’re selling. The ANITA experiment itself is stunning. It looks for “ghostly” particles that pass through most matter. It has definitely discovered something unusual and unexpected. There are many competing theories that are not explored in the quick news hits, such as: The idea that the Antarctic ice itself could lead to these abnormal events.

But we don’t know so much about neutrinos that astrophysicists and scientists are still trying to decipher it. “We are absolutely safe that there is new physics out there, “says Clancy James, radio astronomer at Curtin University in Australia.

Jumping directly to “parallel universes” is a bit of an exaggeration, and there are less extreme theories that could explain what ANITA discovered. In addition, reports that expose this theory without a thorough examination complicate the relationship between the public and science Already on shaky ground thanks to misinformation campaigns on climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.

When you see such stories, it is good to remember “the Sagan standard”, a saying by the famous astronomer Carl Sagan. It says “extraordinary claims require exceptional evidence.”

We currently have a great theory, but we lack the exceptional evidence to support it.

What we have, says Ekers, is “a somewhat cheeky explanation … born of the frustration of not having anything else that worked.” He says this is “good out-of-the-box thinking” and a “fascinating” idea, but it shouldn’t be taken very seriously.

So I’m sorry. We have found no evidence of a parallel universe. Fortunately, if there is One, then this article over there doesn’t spoil the theory at all! It supports it! So please direct all of your emails to the Jackson Ryan parallel universe.

No, I will not ask questions.