Lifeboat Foundation

The concept is known as a “parallel universe,” and is a facet of the astronomical theory of the multiverse. There actually is quite a bit of evidence out there for a multiverse. First, it is useful to understand how our universe is believed to have come to be.

Around 13.7 billion years ago, simply speaking, everything we know of in the cosmos was an infinitesimal singularity. Then, according to the Big Bang theory, some unknown trigger caused it to expand and inflate in three-dimensional space. As the immense energy of this initial expansion cooled, light began to shine through. Eventually, the small particles began to form into the larger pieces of matter we know today, such as galaxies, stars and planets.

One big question with this theory is: are we the only universe out there. With our current technology, we are limited to observations within this universe because the universe is curved and we are inside the fishbowl, unable to see the outside of it (if there is an outside.)

Ninety-five percent of the universe is still considered unexplored. Scientists at CERN, the world’s largest particle physics research center, located in Geneva, are working on solving these mysteries. In May 2012, researchers there discovered the so-called Higgs Boson, whose prediction won Peter Higgs and François Englert the Nobel prize in physics. One of the things CERN scientists are researching at the moment is dark matter: Although it may well have five times the mass of visible matter in the universe, this extent can only be indirectly proved. With a bit of luck, CERN will also succeed in generating dark matter.

A unique sensor chip can contribute to proving the existence of dark matter: It is eight inches or 15 cm x 10 cm and was developed jointly by Infineon Technologies Austria and the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of High Energy Physics (HEPHY). Tens of thousands of these silicon components could be used at CERN in the near future. They are not only more economical to produce than previous sensors, which measured up to six inches. The components also stand up better to constant radiation and thus age slower than the previous generation. Planned experiments will scarcely be possible without resistant sensors.

The experiments at CERN are analyzing the structure of matter and the interplay among elementary particles: Protons are accelerated almost to the speed of light and then made to collide, giving rise to new particles whose properties can be reconstructed with various detectors. “In particle physics and cosmology, there are many questions that are still open and to which mankind still has no answer,” says Dr. Manfred Krammer, head of the Experimental Physics Department at CERN. “To make new advances in these areas, we need a new generation of particle sensors. Cooperation with high-tech companies like Infineon allows us to develop the technologies we need for that.”

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Dr Konstantinos Dimopoulos, a physicist at the University of Lancaster, believes that at the centre of some galaxies – where densely packed gas and dust burns incredibly brightly around a supermassive black hole – powerful magnetic fields which fire out from the jets of the black holes could affect the properties of dark matter.

As the burning galactic nucleus churns, Dr Dimopoulos claim that one type of dark matter in particular, made of theoretical particles called axions, would be affected.

Continue reading “Supermassive black holes and dark matter create space ‘tunnels’, Lancaster university says” »

With that goal in mind, a few years back, Wiseman began to ponder what would happen if multiple worlds not only existed, but could influence each other. Within these worlds even objects on the smallest scales obey the plain old rules that Isaac Newton devised to explain force and motion. A classical law is also used to describe the forces that the parallel worlds exert on each other. “Ours is a new picture of reality at the atomic scale,” Hall says, adding that they believe it to be “both elegant in principle, and useful for calculations in practice.”

Nice

Some 42 years ago, renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking proposed that not everything that comes in contact with a black hole succumbs to its unfathomable nothingness.

Tiny particles of light (photons) are sometimes ejected back out, robbing the black hole of an infinitesimal amount of energy, and this gradual loss of mass over time means every black hole eventually evaporates out of existence.

Continue reading “Physicists might soon be able to prove one of Stephen Hawking’s theories on black holes” »

Two separate groups of researchers, from Israel and Michigan State University, have discovered evidence to back up Professor Hawking’s claims from 1974.

Welcome to our imaginary existential nightmare…

Stephen Hawking recently discussed black holes and the often contradictory properties associated with them during a lecture at Harvard. The Harvard Gazette said recently that Hawking specifically explained that, if information is really lost in black holes, then we will have been misunderstanding not only black holes, but the science of determinism, for the last 200 years.

Hawking said that particles that fall into a black hole “can’t just emerge when the black hole disappears.” Instead, “the particles that come out of a black hole seem to be completely random and bear no relation to what fell in. It appears that the information about what fell in is lost, apart from the total amount of mass and the amount of rotation.”

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Science at OKC

Hunting light dark matter with gamma rays.

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Could Detect Extra Dimensions.

A recent paper published in Physics Letters B has raised the prospect that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could mark a discovery that would put its earlier achievements with the #HiggsBoson in the shade. The authors of the recent published paper propose it could spot mini black holes. Such a discovery would be a matter of massive importance on its own, but might be a sign of even more significant things. Few notions from theoretical physics capture the public imagination as much as the “many-worlds theory,” which suggests an infinite number of universes that vary from our own in ways large and small. The notion has delivered great fodder for science fiction novelists and comedians. Nevertheless, according to Professor Mir Faizal from the University of Waterloo, “Normally, when people think of the multiverse, they think of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, where every possibility is actualized,” he told Phys.org. “This cannot be tested and so it is philosophy and not science.” Nonetheless, Faizal reflects the test for a different type of parallel universes nearly within our reach. Faizal says “What we mean is real universes in extra dimensions. As gravity can flow out of our universe into the extra dimensions, such a model can be tested by the detection of mini black holes at the LHC.”

#ParticlePhysics #Extradimensions #LHC #CERN #TheoreticalPhysics #BlackHoles

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