At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which houses some of the most powerful supercomputers in the US, physicist Leah Broussard will conduct what she calls a direct test to challenge the gaps in standard physics models, according to NBC News.
In simple terms, in the upcoming experiment, experts will use a beam of neutrons to bombard particles located behind an impenetrable wall. If these particles appear on the other side of the wall, researchers believe it could be evidence of symmetric matter, which is believed to exist in our tangible world but has never been observed. In other words, the US team of experts aims to conduct experiments to determine whether matter can “leak into” the co-existing universe.
NBC News reports that the hypothesis of the existence of a symmetric universe began to be seriously considered and tested in the 1990s when scientists witnessed an unexplained phenomenon related to the radioactive decay process from neutron to proton. Researchers discovered that neutrons created by the particle beam lasted an average of 14 minutes and 48 seconds before decaying into protons, while neutrons collected in vials only remained for less than 10 seconds. According to current standard physics models, all neutrons should have a similar decay cycle, and such a significant difference should not occur.
To explain this discrepancy, scientists from the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in Russia, led by Anatoli Serebrov, proposed a hypothesis that neutrons produced by the beam could pass through the “mirror world” and distort the research results. A similar experiment was also conducted in Sweden, where they used a neutron magnetic field, a method believed to accelerate the process of matter transformation, to observe whether these particles would disappear. Swedish experts have completed the experiment, and the data will be continuously analyzed in the coming months.
The existence of a symmetric universe is also believed to help unravel the mysteries of what is known as dark matter. According to some scientists, dark matter accounts for up to 85% of the mass of the universe, although it has never been observed by humans. Researchers believe that if the hypothesis of a symmetric universe is proven, it could be the hiding place for dark matter. Symmetric matter, which is believed to function similarly to dark matter, could potentially connect galaxies or affect the velocities of stars and planets within a galaxy.