Did NASA Really Discover a Parallel Universe?

The internet has done it again. Today it abounds with stories from tabloids like the New York Post, Express and the Daily Star—mostly quoting each other—that major on claims that NASA scientists have evidence that could prove the existence of a parallel universe.

It’s all way overblown and misrepresents what the research in question is about. Scientists actually found evidence (signals) of fundamental particles that may defy our current understanding of physics. It might even just be an issue with how particles interact with ice.

To be clear, there is zero evidence of what the Daily Star says is “a parallel universe, right next to ours, where all the rules of physics seem to be operating in reverse.” This all comes from the many opinions of researchers from UW-Madison and some inside information coming from NASA HQ.

What is the Public Response?

Ibrahim Safa of UW–Madison, who was a lead author on a research paper about the experiment in question in Antarctica, believes that the public has been swayed by the opinions of the authority, such as “articles from the New York Times.”

The many, many articles now online appear to be rooted in a six-week old story published by the New Scientist in which the admittedly alarming headline—We may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time—is backed-up by a well-written and thought-provoking article about some puzzling results from studies conducted in Antarctica of cosmic rays (high energy charged particles) arriving from outside Earth’s atmosphere. Along with some far-out “what if” musings about the hard-to-explain origins of these particles. Cue the parallel universe chat.

Arguable Relations

It’s all related to three scientific papers:

• The original research paper from the ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA)—a balloon-based experiment—that found “upward-pointing cosmic ray-like-events.”
• A research paper published in response that posits that ANITA results could provide evidence for a “CPT symmetric universe,” where time would run backwards from the Big Bang and where antimatter would dominate.“In this scenario the universe before the Big Bang and the universe after the Big Bang is reinterpreted as a universe/anti-universe pair that is created from nothing.”
• A research paper published in The Astrophysical Journal from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory that suggests that we need to consider alternative explanations to explain the ANITA data.

However, the only real conclusion is that the Standard Model concerning neutrinos—fundamental particles—doesn’t explain the detection of a rare kind of event by ANITA.

“ANITA’s events are definitely interesting, but we’re a long ways away from even claiming there’s any new physics, let alone an entire universe,” said Safa.

ANITA and its Impact

ANITA is a stratospheric balloon-based experiment in Antarctica that has a radio antennae pointed back at Earth to detect radio waves emitted by very (and very rare) high-energy neutrinos if they strike an atom in the ice. A radio telescope, ANITA is the first NASA observatory for neutrinos of any kind. Hence the NASA connection.

In 2016, ANITA detected some signals best described as “anomalous”; evidence of a high-energy particle—extremely high-energy neutrinos—coming up from the Earth’s surface, but no source. That “seemed impossible,” according to the New Scientist article, which went on to state that:

“Explaining this signal requires the existence of a topsy-turvy universe created in the same big bang as our own and existing in parallel with it. [Time runs backward there].”

That’s the CPT symmetric universe.

The press release states that experts need to take into account the weight of exotic physics in the determination of the parallel universe hypothesis.

Scientists at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory then tried to search for the source of those signals of intense neutrinos.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory & Its Connection to the Universe

Situated near the South Pole, it’s made-up of 5,160 optical detectors buried in the ice that are there to detect neutrinos passing through, and reacting with, hydrogen or oxygen atoms in the ice.

“This process makes IceCube a remarkable tool to follow up the ANITA observations, because for each anomalous event that ANITA detects, IceCube should have detected many, many more—which, in these cases, we didn’t,” said Anastasia Barbano of the University of Geneva in Switzerland. “That means that we can rule out the idea that these events came from some intense point source, because the odds of ANITA seeing an event and IceCube not seeing anything are so slim.”

What did the Parallel Universe academic paper conclude?

The results from the check on ANITA detections using IceCube published in the paper concludes with phrases like “inconsistent with a cosmogenic interpretation” and “new physics,” and is summarized thus:

“An astrophysical explanation of these anomalous events under standard model assumptions is severely constrained regardless of source spectrum.”

Correct translation: we don’t yet know where these signals came from.

Incorrect translation: these high-energy neutrinos came from a parallel universe.

Here’s what Alex Pizzuto of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, one of the leads on this paper, said in the wake of the “parallel universe” story going viral:

Safa then went on to tweet:

Cue the HiCal 2 radio frequency pulser, which will help the scientists characterize the properties of the Antarctic ice surface to better interpret their results.

So it could all be about ice, not parallel universes.