Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Did NASA discover a parallel Universe?

Episode Date: July 7, 2020

The amazing ANITA experiment and the bizarre neutrinos they discovered Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. Hey, Daniel, do you read science articles in the popular press? You know, I can't help myself because I love hearing about new science discoveries, but I always read them with a big grain of salt. You don't trust them? Well, you know, sometimes I read an article

where I actually know the science really well, and often I strongly disagree with how it's presented. And by often you mean always? No, there are some great science journalists out there. Yeah, but I guess from in general, you don't have a lot of confidence in science journalists? I mean, sometimes you read these popular science articles that are just totally bonkers.

Like the headline, scientists discover the universe is filled with invisible dark matter. Okay, that one's actually pretty good. Or physics discovers a new force tearing the universe apart. All right. It sounds like clickbait, but also true. Oh, man. Then how do I tell the difference? I guess you have to email us and we'll break it down for you on the podcast.

Slick bait. I'm Jorge. I'm a question. cartoonist and the creator of Ph.D. Comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I'll admit to gritting my teeth while reading popular science articles. Out of excitement. You just read it and you're so excited. You clench your jaw. No, not always out of excitement. Sometimes I see a headline and I think, oh my gosh, how could they even write that? What if it's something you don't know are not familiar with? Well, then, you know, I have to extrapolate and I say, well, if I know that it's bonkers half the time, then there's a good chance that this is a bonkers article. And so I had to write to a friend of mine who's an expert in that area and say, how bonkers is this? I see, it's bonkers until proven otherwise, huh?

That's my general philosophy. And that's our general podcast. Welcome to Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of IHeart Radio. In which we explore the bonkers nature of the universe. Some of it true, some of it clickbait. And we break it down for you. We want you to understand the truth about our crazy, amazing, wonderful, beautiful universe without resorting to silly science journalism.

Well, I guess it's tricky because, you know, sometimes the universe is kind of bonkers, right? So I guess the question is more about, you know, telling the difference between things that are maybe overblown and what scientists actually discovered. Yeah. And as a layperson, how can you tell the difference? Because there really are things that science has discovered that are hard to understand, that are hard to take seriously. I mean, the universe is billions of years old and began with a huge explosion. I mean, it's ridiculous. There are pockets of space out there that light cannot even escape and can eat any kind of matter. I mean, it sounds absurd and made up, but some of it is true. Yeah, sometimes we pay people to sit around and drink coffee

and smash particles together. That's bonkers as well. Now you're being ridiculous. Come on. I heard it happens in Geneva. That's not a job. Come on. I guess it's like podcasting. It's a myth. No, I feel very fortunate to be able to smash particles together to try to reveal the secrets of the universe. And we take our responsibility very seriously on this podcast to explain the science to you in a way that actually makes sense and doesn't overhype the already amazing discoveries of science. Yeah, so today on the program, we'll be discussing a recent article in the popular press that has some apparently pretty bonkers results from none other than NASA. That's right. And this is an article that went all around the internet And readers from all over the world asked us

What is this real? I made a lot of noise on Twitter And on the rest of the internets. And so we thought it'd be useful to break it down for you To tell you what actually happened Why it really is fascinating scientifically But why the clickbait headlines May have gone a step too far.

What does a lot of noise in Twitter sound like? Is it like click click click click click click click Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp Chirpchirp unlike unlike like like retweet There's not a hate button, is there on Twitter? I think there's enough hate on Twitter already. I don't think you need the extra buttons there. But yes, today we'll be talking about an article that came out in several outlets,

for example, in New Scientist magazine, there was a headline. We may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time. Boom. Wow, that's a lot of words in one sentence that make you think, what? Yeah. Yeah, I know while a parallel universe could exist. What? It goes backwards in time.

Backwards. What? We spotted it? Oh my gosh. There's so much there, right? It's incredible. Yeah. And the Daily Star, the newspaper, says a parallel universe right next to ours

where all the rules of physics seem to be operating in reverse. And now it's next to us, apparently. Right next to hours. It could be like in your pocket or, you know, sitting at that next table in the cafe or something. It's adjacent. and it's nearby, it's imminent. Right, right beyond your reach. Yeah.

And I don't know what happened on the Internet that day, but this just really took off. It got zillions of likes. It was retweeted by everybody. And then newspaper after newspaper reported this claim. And so it spread everywhere. And a lot of people heard about it. Yeah.

And so a lot of readers asked us to break this down. And so today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question. Did NASA discover? a parallel universe. Maybe in a parallel universe they did. Maybe a parallel universe discovered us. Maybe. Yeah, there you go. Maybe we're the evil twins, Daniel. How's your goatee growing out? I guess it's sort of like the alien question. Like, would you rather a parallel universe discover us, which means they're probably better at science than we are, or that we discover them? What do you think? You're the one trying to discover these parallel universes. Well, I'd love they discovered us because we're not capable of discovering them.

On the other hand, the people getting discovered don't usually fare very well in these scenarios. So I'd love to be discovered by an intelligent, benevolent parallel universe. That's right. You'd rather be the conquistodor physicist than the conquiscated physicist. Is that how you say it? Conquistado. No, I do not want to be officially aligned with conquistadors on this program. No, thank you.

Well, so a lot of people wrote to us asking us to break this down and talk about it and see what's real. and not real about it. So before we dug into it, I went out into the internet and asked random people if they had heard about this article and what they thought about it. So before you listen to these answers, think about it for a second. Have you heard of NASA discovering a parallel universe? Here's what people had to say.

I have been stuck inside due to the coronavirus, so I have been reading that much news. So honestly, I don't know the answer to that one. I have not heard if they did, that would be amazing. I'm going to say no, because I think this would be all over the news if it happened. And I also don't think we have any way to probe another universe. I have no idea what that's a reference to. I have no idea.

I sort of doubt it. I have not heard that. What? How would you discover a parallel universe? No, I don't think so. I really don't think they did. But I hope that they did, because I would really love it. From my understanding of multiverse theories, there's nothing preventing there from being other universes.

It might even be probable. However, we don't have a way currently to do an experiment to prove it. All right. It seems like not a lot of people are on Twitter, maybe. A lot of these people were not on Twitter or the internet. Or maybe our listeners just read better sources of science news than the new scientist and the Daily Star. Yeah, aren't those like the tabloids of science writing? Ooh.

You know, we talked about the new scientists in the past. They have an article promoting the EM drive, the impossible drive, which also in that case hyped up the claims of some scientists associated with NASA. And I think probably created a lot of. lot of misunderstanding. So we've been a little hard of them in the past. They have some great articles. We've even been to their show. Remember, we did NS Live in the UK a couple of years ago. They do a lot of great work promoting science. But sometimes, you know, they need to rain it in a little bit. Well, so there's this experiment that is organized and run by NASA that apparently did discover some interesting things or at least saw some promising things that

are related to neutrinos. That's right. There really is a super fascinating discovery by experiment on the South Pole that we cannot currently explain. And so that's a wonderful opportunity in physics to learn something new and make some big discovery. And so it's totally worth digging into and understanding how it works, what they saw, and what it really could mean for physics, whether or not you believe in parallel universes. All right. So let's break it down, Daniel. So this is a real experiment that's happening in the South Pole in Antarctica, and it's called Anita, or at least the acronym for it, is Anita.

Yeah, it's called Anita. And the awesome thing is that it's not actually happening in the South Pole. It's happening above the South Pole. It's a balloon experiment. What? You can't be above the South Pole. You can only be below the South Pole, Daniel. Okay.

Right, right. That's your Northern Hemisphere bias speaking right there. Yeah, I'm an uprightest. Yeah, but what does it stand for? Anita, A-N-I-T-A. I'm going to guess. Amazing neutrino interferometer. transporting anions.

That's not terrible, actually. It stands for Antarctic, Impulsive, Transient Antennae. Oh, no. Did they really cheat on the acronym? The N is actually part of Antarctic? Yeah, they sort of did. I would have gone for Aida, too. That's a pretty good name.

That sounds like an opera. Yeah. Well, this is sort of a science opera here going on here, because they did discover something, because they were looking for neutrinos. Yeah, and it's an amazing experiment because it hovers above the South Pole. It's not something they built

in a facility at the South Pole. It flies on a balloon, like 40 kilometers above the South Pole. Like, imagine you're a graduate student, you develop this complicated, expensive, delicate piece of electronics, and then you attach it to a balloon and just send it up into the sky.

Wow. Well, again, I should correct you, it's floating below the South Pole. Thank you for keeping me. me honest. I really appreciate the fact checking. Keep them straight here. And also, science on a balloon. I mean, how fun is that? It's pretty cool. Yeah, but you know, if you're a graduate student and you spend years building this thing and then it just crashes, like, you're out of luck. So it's pretty risky. But it's an awesome experiment. And this is an experiment that's trying to understand one of the big mysteries of astroparticle physics, which is basically like, who is

shooting crazy high energy particles at us from space. Right. We've covered this before. Or in our podcast, the Earth is getting pelted by cosmic, super high energy cosmic rays. And we don't know where they're coming from. They're too high energy to be coming from the sun. That's right. They're definitely not coming from the sun. We don't see any point source in the sky. We can look around to see where they're coming from.

And we don't see them coming from just one spot. And they're ridiculously high energy. Nothing we know of in the universe is capable of making particles of this high energy. And yet we see them. So it's already a great opportunity to learn something new. And the interesting thing is like where are they coming from. And these particles can be protons, they can be iron nucleic, they can be all sorts of crazy things. But one really cool idea is to look for really high energy neutrinos.

Neutrinos are these really weird little wispy particles that have no electric charge and hardly interact. And they're really good for doing this kind of physics because it means they point right back to what made them. They don't bend at all in magnetic fields. And so neutrinos are part of the cosmic rays that are hitting it. It's not just like protons and quarks and stuff being sent. Whatever is making these is also sending neutrinos? Well, that's the question is, are we seeing also super high energy neutrinos? If so, that might give us another clue to tell us, like, what could be out there creating these things?

Is there an alien particle physics factory pumping out high energy particles? Are they only making protons? Trying to give us a sunburn or something? What would be their motivation? Well, who knows? I do understand the aliens. I certainly don't. But every time you look at the sky, you want to look at it in lots of different spectra.

You want to see what are the x-ray, what is the visible light, what is the infrared. So this is in the same category says, let's look at the cosmic ray sky using neutrinos. Because they don't bend and it's like another way to look at it. But I guess we're also getting showered by neutrinos from the sun. Like the sun produces a lot of neutrinos and we're getting hit by a ton of them. Here we're looking for them coming from a different direction or something. That's right. The sun pumps out huge numbers of neutrinos.

Like you're hit with 100 billion neutrinos per square centimeter per second all the time. So it's an incredible number. But those come from the sun and we can tell the direction of these particles. So we're looking like out into space to see if they're coming from anywhere else. And the ones from the sun are not nearly as high energy as the one that we're looking for. We're looking for super duper high energy neutrinos, not just the ones coming from the sun. Oh, I see. So the idea is that if something is making high energy particles and shoot,

shooting them at us. They're maybe probably also shooting neutrinos along the way. And if so, they would have the same sort of high energy and also maybe would preserve the direction. That's right. And that's the question. Whatever is this mysterious source of cosmic rays, is it also making super high energy neutrinos? Let's look. And you never know, right? Wow. That's a big question. It is a big question. Yeah. I mean, it seems like a small question for which you would need a lot of equipment to measure. And, you know, there's a history of discovery there.

Like, when people first looked at the sky in the x-ray, they found all sorts of things that were really bright in x-rays, but dark, invisible light. Like, the first black hole was spotted that way. We should do a whole podcast episode on that. So you might see in the sky in neutrinos really bright sources that don't line up with anything else. And that could be a clue.

So, like, oh, there's a new thing in the universe. So it's always exciting to look out in the universe using a new set of eyeballs. All right. So then they set up this experiment in Antearnation. Antarctica that uses a balloon and it uses the ice from Antarctica, right? That's why you need the balloon to sort of look at all the ice. That's right, because neutrinos are really hard to spot, right? They fly through a lot of material and don't interact.

And so essentially we use the whole earth and the ice in Antarctica as our detector. And one thing that's really important to understand is you may have heard of neutrinos flying through like a light gear of lead and not interacting. That's true for neutrinos from the sun and assert energy. But as neutrinos get to higher and higher energy, they tend to interact more. And we can dig into why that is a little bit later. But what these things are looking for is neutrinos flying through the earth. So upwards, through the earth, I guess downwards, right, since we're on the North Pole.

Yeah, I am so upside down here. But they're coming from the sun through the earth and they're popping out of Antarctica. They're not coming from the sun. They're coming from somewhere else deep in space. They go through the earth and they go through the ice and Antarctica. And when they go through the ice, which is like one or two kilometers thick, they make a chirp in radio frequency, electromagnetic waves. Because they hit something and then they split up. That's right.

They hit something. They interact with the nucleus. And then it causes this cascade of electrons and positrons, which make this little brief, essentially chirp in the radio frequency spectrum. And the reason that ice is important is that ice is transparent. Like if you make this chirp in the ice, it will propagate through the ice. and then you can see it above the ice. If it makes this chirp like in deep rock, then it just gets absorbed.

So you need a big slab of something which will make it chirp and also propagate those chirps. So you thought Antarctica. There's a lot of ice there. Better use it before it goes away. Yeah, exactly. Like where else can you get

a one mile thick sheet of ice? It's pretty incredible. And so then they look for these chirps. But, you know, if you just put a detector on the surface and look down, you can only see a tiny little bit of ice. So the higher you are, the more ice you can visualize. So that's why they put this thing on a balloon

and fly at like 40 kilometers above the ice looking for these signals coming out of the ice from neutrinos that are flying through the earth and coming out through the ice. Wow. Okay, so then really what's on the balloon is just kind of a camera. So it's just taking pictures of the ice looking for these neutrino collisions.

That's right. And it's a special kind of camera. You know, there really are radio frequency antennas. And that's why the experiment is called transient antenna, transient because it's not up there all the time. And they're looking also transient because the signals are transient. And because they're using an antenna as a form of a camera. You know, they have a bunch of these antennas

so they can essentially take a picture of the ice in this radio frequency spectrum. Cool. All right. Well, let's get a little bit into what the experiment is actually looking for and how it's looking for it and whether or not they discovered a parallel universe. But first, let's take a quick break. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was.

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So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. All right, Daniel, we're talking about whether NASA had discovered a parallel universe. Headlines recently seem to say out loud. And so this has to do with the experiment called Anita, that's a balloon floating above the Antarctic, taking pictures of the ice looking for neutrinos. Not just neutrinos, high energy neutrinos. That's right.

And they've been running this thing for almost a couple of decades now. Like they build it, they launch it. It flies up there for like 30 to 40 days, essentially until it runs out of helium, and then it comes back down. Really? It's been going for several decades? Yeah, well, they have like, you know, they need to rebuild it every time. So they had a run in 2006 and then another run in 2009 and they did one in 2014. Oh, what do you mean?

The balloon doesn't last? No, you can't have a balloon up there forever. Eventually the helium leaks out and the thing comes back down to Earth. But eventually the balloon comes down and it runs for a long time. It runs on solar power. It hangs up there for like 30, 40 days collecting data. All right. They're up there.

They're taking pictures of the ice and they're looking for high energy neutrino collisions. So I guess let's maybe dig a little bit into the. the science. And so why are neutrinos more likely to hit things if they're going faster? It seems like it should be the opposite. Yeah. So what they're looking for are really high energy neutrinos, right? And they saw something really weird is that they saw neutrinos that are super duper high energy. And these are fascinating because, as you say, they're actually more likely to stop and bang into something than slower neutrinos. And the reason is special relativity. Like, Remember that when you move quickly, things in your view tend to look shorter.

Like if you're running past your house at nearly the speed of light, there's length contraction. Your house seems to get shorter. What? Wait, so to the neutrino, the universe sort of contracts. Everything feels smaller. Yes. Or like closer. That's right.

Because for a very fast moving neutrino, the universe is rushing by at a fast speed. So the universe contracts and effectively gets denser. So it's like the neutrino sees more of the universe or more of the material it's passing through at any given moment, which means it has like more chances to interact with something. What? Oh, man, that makes no sense, Daniel. To us, the neutrino is just moving fast.

Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not actually going through more stuff. That's right. But we're talking about the range of its potential interaction. Remember, going through stuff and banging into it, really we're not talking about like physically stuff connecting and hitting. We're talking about things interacting. It's all about the power of your forces.

Are you being influenced by the gravity of the sun? Yes. Are you being influenced by the gravity of Alpha Centauri? Probably not. A little bit. But if you were moving really, really fast, then you would be influenced by things even further away because they'd be effectively contracted to be closer to you.

What? If I was moving towards the sun, I would feel its gravity more? Yes, absolutely, because space would be contracted between you and the sun. What? All right. I don't recommend.

I kind of have to take your word for it, Daniel. It seems kind of bonkers. But it's going really fast. It's seeing more of the universe. The universe seems denser. And so it's interacting more. It's more likely to interact. That's right.

And so a slow-moving neutrino, like one that comes from the sun, will pass through the Earth and have almost no chance of interacting. But a faster-moving neutrino, like a really, really high-energy neutrino, is very unlikely to make it all the way through the Earth. So if a neutrino comes to the Earth, and hits the North Pole, then start traveling through. And very, very high energies, it's unlikely to make it all the way through. It's going to bang into something in the core of the Earth and get absorbed and stop.

Oh, I see. Most of them will probably get absorbed by the Earth, but some of them will make it through and hit the ice in Antarctica. That's right. And so what this experiment was designed to look for is actually not neutrinos going all the way through the Earth, but just sort of skimming it a little bit. They knew that they couldn't see neutrinos at very high energy that go all the way through the Earth because they shouldn't make it through the Earth.

So they're expecting to sort of skim the horizon and see neutrinos that just sort of like dip into the earth a little bit and then come up through the ice. That was their goal. Oh, that just kind of hit the edge of the earth at the North Pole. Yeah, precisely, at the South Pole. And that makes the ice even thicker, right? Because if you hit the sheet of ice sideways, it's a lot thicker. Yeah, you've got a longer view of the ice. So that's what they were expecting to see.

That's what they were hoping to see. That's what they were designed to see. And weirdly, they don't see any of those. Like, they've been running for a long time. They've never seen a single high-energy neutrino passing near the horizon there, like just coming up through the Earth in the way they would expect to see them if there were these very high-energy neutrinos flying through space. Wait, so I'm trying to picture it. The neutrino's coming kind of at an angle. It's skimming the Earth.

It hits the ice. It makes an interaction and it spray some other stuff in all directions. It makes an interaction and it sprays radio frequency light, essentially. It sprays a little burst of radio frequency. see noise out through the ice, which is then picked up in the air by the Anita antenna. Like it creates photons? Yeah, radio waves are photons. That's right.

And then it explodes? Like they come off in all directions? No, because the neutrino is moving really fast, it's actually collimated. So it's a very narrow tube. And so you can tell the direction of the neutrino by seeing where this arrived and exactly when. And Anita has like lots of different antennas. And so by the different arrival times on different parts of.

Anita, they can tell the direction that this pulse of radio waves from the neutrino came from. Okay. So then that's how you would see them, but they didn't see them for years and years and years. Yeah, that's right. They look at the horizon. They look for these neutrinos skimming the horizon, and they see nothing, not a zilch in all of their runs. Wow. But they did see something really weird that they didn't expect to see.

Okay. Recently, or was this way back in its early runs? So in 2006, and then again in 2014. So now twice in the total runs of this experiment, they saw neutrinos or what looks like neutrinos coming straight up through the earth. So something that shouldn't happen because neutrinos shouldn't make it all the way through the earth,

but they see these pulses that look like a very, very fast-moving neutrino, ridiculously high-energy neutrino, but coming straight up out of the ice. Wow. So it's sort of coming from the earth or through the earth? Well, we don't know, right? If it's a neutrino, it's hard to understand how could be coming through the Earth, right?

Like, because neutrinos at that high energy, and we're talking about energies much, much higher than like the particles at the Large Hadron Collider. Right. We're talking about 70 or 100,000 times more energy. So these are really, really high energy particles, but they shouldn't make it through the Earth. So maybe they're created inside the Earth

or maybe there's something else, some other weird kind of particle that turns into neutrinos and we can dig into all of that. But I guess maybe couldn't it just be a neutrino that got lucky, you know? Like, couldn't it just be one that did somehow make it through the earth? Yeah, it could certainly be. Like, one explanation is there's some source of very high energy neutrinos and it's shooting

it right in that direction and you have a lot of them. And so even if the chances are low, maybe one of them leaked through or two of them leaked through and then hit the ice, right? And then hit the ice. And so we have other detectors out the South Pole that do similar things, like there's one called Ice Cube, which actually No. Seriously. Like the rapper? Did he

sign off on this? I have not been in touch with these people, but Ice Cube, I think is a general phrase. And they drilled into the ice and they dropped cameras into the ice. They've like instrumented the ice itself to look for particles coming through the ice.

So they have sort of similar capabilities and they didn't see these things. So you would expect if there was like a really high energy source of neutrinos pointed at the earth that happened to be going all the way through that this other experiment ice cube would have seen them but it doesn't really i mean i mean two over like 20 years it seems like these are pretty rare so it could still it could maybe still be that it's just super rare and the other ones haven't seen it it could still be i mean cosmic ray physics is all

about small numbers like these things are very rare and very weird but that's what makes them fascinating and if you'd only ever seen one you'd be pretty skeptical but seeing two may that tells you there's something real there, you know? It's like seeing two bigfoot or big feet, I guess, you know, lets you believe it a lot more easily than just seeing one. All right. It's like two people, it's like seeing Bigfoot twice, like taking two photographs of her over like 20 years. Yeah, except, you know, you were out there looking for something else. You were trying to take pictures of chimpanzees and you saw Bigfoot twice. So you're like, what? What's going on here? This isn't even what we're looking for. Could be something. All right. Well, that's what they found. They found these

two, so it's just two neutrinos that they found. It's just these two chirps from the ice that they think are neutrinos. They look like neutrinos and they're coming up straight up from the ice. And that's the data. That's what they've seen. And they can't explain it using current physics. Captured by a balloon. Captured by a balloon.

That seems like the most a bonkers part of it. It's sort of Victorian, right? I imagine like, you know, steam pumping and, you know, mechanical knobs and valves and stuff. Yeah, some woman with a big hat and a guy with a big mustache up there. Taking the treat of measurements. I hope they packed a picnic. Yeah. All right, well, let's get into whether or not they actually discovered a parallel universe

and what makes them think that they did. But first, let's take on another quick break. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA.

Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, got you. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors.

And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford. And in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Afea and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right, that this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled.

You talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapino, to the show, and we had a blast. We talked. We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations,

co-hosting a podcast with her fiancée Sue Bird, watching former teammates retire and more. Never a dull moment with Pino. Take a listen. What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete? The final. The final. And the locker room.

I really, really, like, you just, you can't replicate, you can't get back. Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk. We've got more incredible guests like the legendary Candice Parker and college superstar A.Z. Fudd. I mean, seriously, y'all. The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two.

And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. All right, Daniel, we're talking about the Anita experiment, which found two, over 20 years, they found two neutrinos. And so help me make the connection here. How did these two neutrinos tell me there's a whole parallel universe out there?

All right. Well, it's a very long walk from two neutrinos to there's a parallel universe right next to you. All right. Yeah, I know. How much time do we have? Ten minutes. All right, go. It's complicated.

But the short version of it is. is if there's a parallel universe, then there might be some heavy kind of neutrino gathered, collected in the center of the earth, which is decaying and producing these neutrinos and shooting them out from the center of the earth. What? That's the short version. Wait, what's at the center? Neutrinos are hanging out in the center of the earth? Yeah, the idea is we have neutrinos, and there's lots of mysteries about neutrinos. Like, we don't know if neutrinos have their own antiparticle, if there are other really heavy.

neutrinos we've never seen before, and we had a whole episode about that kind of mystery. And they're connected to other really deep mysteries in physics, like, why do we have matter and not antimatter? Why is time flow forward and not backwards? You know, every time in physics we see something which isn't balanced, which isn't symmetric, we ask why. You know, the way... We blame the neutrinos, it seems like... Well, it's just so easy, you know? They're just so easy to blame them. They're so neutral. They don't care. They're being sneaky about something. Now, those neutrinos are hiding something I can smell it. Never trust someone without an opinion.

Isn't that what I just said? I don't know. But, you know, it's like wondering, why are humans more right-handed than left-handed? There's something going on. There's a clue to brain physiology or something. So we wonder, why is there more matter? Why is time flow forwards? And one simple way to sort of get rid of that question is to say, well, maybe it's not actually an asymmetry.

Maybe there's another universe where time flows backwards. and it's filled with antipartagnos. What? Like somehow we started together, but then we got split off? Yeah, at the Big Bang, two universes were created. One made of matter where time flows forwards, and one made of anti-matter, where time flows backwards. Why, but then, hmm, but, and we're right on top of each other or right next to each other? No, neither.

I mean, that doesn't really make any sense. It's like, you know, time is flowing backwards. It's a different part of space. I mean, it's parallel in a sense that it's like not here. It's not there. It's not right now. next to you. It's not anywhere in our space. It's like, where is yesterday? I don't know, it's not to my left or to my right. You know, it's backwards in time. It's behind me.

It's behind me. Just like the South Pole is below it. Yeah, but if time is flowing backwards, then it'd be ahead of you, right? So this is like the South Pole universe. It started at the Big Bang going the other way and is dominated by antimatter. Oh, okay. So the theory is then that these two neutrinos came from this other universe? No, so the, the idea is, If there's this parallel universe, that means that there's a symmetry to the universe, that matter has antimatter. And that suggests that there are other kinds of neutrinos in our universe, that the neutrino has some really heavy partner.

Because to make the other universe work, you need these heavy neutrinos in our universe. That's what the equations would suggest. Like if you invert the equations, then you get a heavy neutrino. That's right, because there has to be some other neutrino for that universe to have. And so it has to be possible in our universe, just like our universe is mostly matter, not anti-matter. The other one is mostly antimatter, but we can still have antimatter in our universe. And so their version of neutrinos could also exist in our universe. Oh, I see.

And those neutrinos would be super duper heavy. They'd be like really, really massive. Unlike our neutrinos. How massive are we talking about? Well, you know, we talked about this on that episode. Like these neutrinos could be ridiculously massive, like thousands or millions of times. heavier than anything we've seen or even more, you know, up to like, you could have a single particle that has like the mass of a whole city. These things could be, what? Could be really,

really heavy. Wow, just in its resting mass. Just in its resting mass. Yeah. Because remember, a particle's mass is not like how much stuff is there in it. It's just some weird interaction with the Higgs field. And so in a sense, it could be anything. We have no clue why particles have this mass or that mass or the other mass. It's all a mystery. So you can set them to be anything. There's very few rules. I see. So this parallel universe that you're imagining is just kind of the same, but it has a different preference, right? Yeah. When

the universe started, it's not like the universe decided I'm going to have matter instead of antimatter. It did both. It's like, we'll do matter and we'll do anti-matter. We'll cover both of our bases. We'll have two universes. Yeah, we are in the... Why buy one when you can buy two? For the same physics.

That's right. You know, if you're going to go universe shopping, go to Costco and buy in bulk, right? Yeah. Yeah. You save shipping. Well, we just said that in parallel, Daniel. So if there's a parallel universe, then it suggests the existence of these really heavy neutrinos. And they could be the dark matter. Oh, no. Like they could be, yeah, there's a lot of steps here.

They could be the dark matter. And if so, then they're really heavy. They interact gravitationally. They can be collecting at the center of the earth. What? Like they're hanging out at the center of the earth. They're coming along with us as we go around the sun. Yeah, because.

that's what things do gravitationally is they clump together and the earth is a big gravitational blob and these neutrinos don't feel the earth in any way they just sort of pass through it. The only thing they feel is it's gravity. And so the sun and also the earth and all the other planets might have collected these very heavy dark matter neutrinos at the center. Wait, you just called it in the same name there, dark matter neutrinos, meaning neutrinos that maybe explain dark matter. Yes, because we know that there's a lot of missing stuff in the universe. We know there's a lot of mass out there we cannot see. We don't know what it is. We're looking for it. We think maybe it's this, maybe it's that. Maybe it's primordial black holes. One idea is maybe it's

some weird new kind of very heavy neutrino we've never seen. Man, these neutrinos are pretty suspicious. There's a lot of ifs here, right? If there's a parallel universe. They are explaining matter and antimatter time and also dark matter. Are they also involved in dark energy? They kill JFK. That's what I think. And the dinosaurs, apparently. Dinosaurs. Anyway, these things hanging out at the center of the earth, they have a lot of energy, have a lot of mass just sort of stored up inside them. They're like very tightly coiled springs. So what happens when they decay? Like some particles, they eventually decay, very heavy particles often decay.

They can decay into normal neutrinos. But normal neutrinos have very low mass. And so they would have to decay into very high energy, very fast-moving neutrinos. So the mass of these mysterious dark matter neutrinos gets turned into the energy, the kinetic, energy, the motion of these very light normal neutrinos. Okay, I guess maybe first of all these neutrinos

why don't they decay more? I thought the universe didn't like big massive things hanging out. Yeah, that's a great question. The universe doesn't like big massive things hanging out, but big massive things hanging out can only turn into lighter things if they have a way to do it, if there's some interaction,

some process. They use a photon. They use a W or Z. So you can keep something that's very heavy, You can keep it stable if you turn off all of its ways of decaying. So we don't know anything about these things. They could have like a very hard time decaying into these neutrinos. Right. But also we don't know.

Like it could be that it happens all the time. There just aren't that many of them in the center of the earth. Maybe there's only 40 of them and they decay once a year. And can the universe be making these or can these only be made in the Big Bang? The universe probably wouldn't be making these anymore. They would be primordial. They would have been made in the early universe and then still existing. So that means that if it is dark matter, then that means that dark matter would be disappearing.

Yes, dark matter would be disappearing, but very slowly, right? Like, we know dark matter if it exists is cosmologically stable. Like it was made very early on in the universe and not much of it or if any has disappeared. And so these neutrinos, if they do decay, it can't happen very often. So actually, if we saw two of them in the last 20 years, that suggests there must be a lot of them if they exist in the center of the earth. I see. All right. So then that's how you connect the dots, is that we saw these two neutrino pings and we're like, where did they come from?

They couldn't have come from anywhere that we know of. So maybe they said they came from the center of the earth and they were made by these two heavy neutrinos that are hanging out there. That's right. And if those two heavy neutrinos do exist, there are a clue that maybe the universe has this symmetry after all, that maybe there is another universe out there that started the Big Bang going the other way. But, you know, that's also a reach. Yeah, I'm having trouble with that one because it just means that these heavy neutrinos exist. It's like saying because we can see antimatter, that means there's another universe. But that's not really the case, is it?

That's right. You cannot conclude that there's a parallel universe, even if you proved that there are super heavy neutrinos at the center of the Earth decaying into normal neutrinos. Because there are other explanations that are not as bonkers and crazy is a parallel universe. Ah, I see. So that the parallel universe is just one maybe possible explanation for why our, Our universe has the light neutrinos and not the heavy neutrinos. But we do have the heavy neutrinos. So I guess I'm confused.

Well, we have the light neutrinos. We don't know if we have the heavy neutrinos in our universe. Like, that's one idea. It could be. And one reason to explain it is like maybe there's a parallel universe and that requires us to have heavy neutrinos. But there are other theories that have heavy neutrinos in them also. I mean, what happened is Anita saw these weird neutrinos.

A bunch of very well-meaning theorists who've been working on this idea of a parallel universe said, hey, wait a second. I like that. That could be explained by our theory. Here's a fun, crazy theory that could explain it that we've been working on for 10 years and it involves a cool parallel universe. They wrote this paper.

Then science journalism was like, NASA discovered a parallel universe! And these, you know. They screamed like that, like very excited kids. Yeah, exactly. There was a lot of journalistic jumping up and down. All right. Well, it seems like a reach.

It seems like you're extrapolating two signals to the whole. existence over this new particle to the whole existence of a parallel universe. That's right. Every step there is a reach, right? Just because you see these two new particles doesn't mean that there's anything new. It could be experimental error. It could just be luck.

Or it could be some heavy new particle in the center of the earth, which could be maybe a neutrino, which could maybe potentially give credence to this crazy, fun, silly theory about a parallel universe. But I guess maybe why does it have to come from the center of the earth? Is that the only explanation? Well, because we only see them coming up from the earth. We don't see them skimming the earth. We don't see them coming in any other direction. We only see them coming straight up from underground.

Because that's the only place where we have the camera, isn't it? No, the camera can see these things coming even straight down or sideways or coming up from the ice and just skimming it, like just along the horizon. They don't see anything in those directions. They see only these very high energy neutrinos coming straight up from the ice. the earth. All right. Well, what else could they be?

One thing is they could be experimental error. I mean, the two out in 20 years does seem sort of like a blip. Yeah, it does seem like a blip. And so you have to ask like, well, how well do we know these things? Sometimes there's something rare, but when you spot it, you're pretty sure. Like, if you discover a unicorn. Yeah, they're hard to find, but when you get one in your lab, you can pretty well tell it in a uniform.

He seemed to speak from experience. That's my dream, you know, to one day discover a unicorn. And so what do we actually know about these things? Well, really the measurements we have come from these antennas. And they're pretty good, but they can get spoofed. Like one scenario is these things didn't come from the center of the earth. They came from straight down. Like maybe a high-energy neutrino came straight down and hit the ice and the signals

sort of reflected in the ice and then came back up and then was captured by the balloon. So it looked like it came out of the ice. But actually the original particle was coming. straight down. Oh, so that can happen. They can bounce. That totally happens. They can bounce, but this experiment can usually tell because there's a polarity to this signal. The signals effectively spin in a certain way because of the Earth's magnetic field. And if they hit the ice and bounce, that polarity flips. It's like when light bounces off of water, it changes this polarity. I see. And so they can see this. And so they see this actually all the time.

They see cosmic rays coming from space that bounce off the ice up to the experiment. and they remove them. But for these two weird Nuchinos, they don't see that. So it doesn't look like they bounced. Right. But, you know, how well do we really understand the details of Antarctic ice? Could there be something weird going on occasionally? It gets double reflected or something, right?

There's always a possibility. I think they came from a parallel universe, Daniel, with a different polarity. I'll call new scientist magazine. Okay. A parallel universe where everybody likes bananas and D.C. makes better movies than Marvel. impossible. That just breaks the laws of physics. All right. Well, it sounds like pretty tantalizing, I guess. But it's sort of built upon two measurements.

And it's kind of extrapolating a lot from two measurements to new particles to the whole different universe. It's like a lot of ifs there and a lot of like maybes built on top of each other. And a lot of people doing very careful work. Like the experimentalists have been building this thing and running it for 20 years. and their papers are totally solid. They very carefully understood the source of these things. And in their papers, you know, they say exactly how well they know things and how well they don't know things.

And then the theorists also pretty well behaved. They were just like suggesting an idea. They're not claiming the discovery of the parallel universe. They just say, here's a possible fun explanation. And then, you know, it trickled out in the mainstream press and they're hitting the parallel universe button a little too hard. All right. But I guess what's interesting is that it might be possible, right?

This could be how we discovered a parallel universe. It's definitely something interesting. At the most boring end of the spectrum, we've learned something interesting about Antarctic ice. You know, more interesting is like, hey, maybe there is some weird new kind of particle. Or maybe there is some new source of really high-energy neutrinos out there we've never seen before. Or maybe it's something crazy and bonkers, right? We can't rule out the parallel universe scenario. It is one explanation for these particles.

I see. And so this parallel universe is one word. time flows backwards too? It's not just like a copy of hours. It's also running backwards. Yeah, time flows backwards and anti-matter dominates. Oh, wow. And that provides a nice symmetry, you know, it's like it answers the question of why does

time flow forwards? Why do we have matter or not antimatter? It doesn't tell you why did the universe split, but it tells you at least it covered both of its bases. It doesn't have like a preference for forward flowing time or for matter over antimatter. And that just feels somehow more natural. Yeah. Maybe Twitter in that universe is like full of.

of positivity and well-meaning people. Yeah, then, maybe I'd prefer that universe. Yeah, let's move to that one. I think there's a portal at the center of the earth. Oh, there you go. Just got to get past those heavy neutrinos and step through. That's right. Effectively, they are bouncers to the parallel universe.

Or maybe we can take a balloon or like an anti-balloon. We take an anti-balloon to the center of the earth and then you step through. Well, would you call a balloon that floats below the South Pole and anti-balloon anyway, because it's going down. Oh, you're right. You're right. You just turn it on me. All right.

So I guess the very big is interesting results, solid science, interesting results, but maybe the science journalism there got a little too excited. Little too excited. I love the enthusiasm of science journalism, but please, let's keep it realistic. All right. Well, they did say in the headline, we may have spotted a parallel universe. They did add the mate. Daniel. Yeah. May. It may covers everything, right? Yeah. I might have an unicorn right here

next to me. I may be totally lying to you. All right. Hopefully that covered the questions that our readers had about these headlines and maybe got you to think a little bit about what could be out there or not out there. And if you see something in the science headlines that you don't understand and you'd like to hear about, please send it to us to questions at danielanhorpe.com. We'll break it down for you. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me.

Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at tetherpaperpeaseling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, right? On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us, I was joined by Valicia Butterfield, media founder, political strategist, and tech powerhouse for a powerful conversation on storytelling, impact, and the intersections of culture and leadership. I am a free black woman.

From the Obama White House to Google to the Grammys, Valicia's journey is a masterclass in shifting culture and using your voice to spark change. Listen to Culture Raises Us on the I-Heart Race app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The U.S. Open is here, and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain. I'm breaking down the players, the predictions, the pressure, and, of course, the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open.

The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very wonderfully experiential sporting event. To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an Iheart women's sports production in partnership with deep blue sports and entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. This is an IHeart podcast.