Mystery Neutrinos, Antarctica and Parallel dimensions

by Dr Manjir Samanta-Laughton | Jun 3, 2020 | Punk Science, Shakespeare

Have scientists found evidence of a parallel dimension in Antarctica? Recently a story went viral that scientists had found evidence of a parallel dimension in which time travels backwards.

So this is what we are looking at today on Punk Science TV: Mystery Neutrinos, Antarctica and Parallel dimensions

Code-named ANITA

NASA has an instrument – a high -altitude helium balloon fitted with Radio antennas. It’s a called ANITA and it’s designed to pick up the signature of the interaction of cosmic rays from space with the Earth.

And by 2016 two incidents of high energy cosmic rays were found but they were coming up from the Earth not down from space.

ANITA Helium balloon and instruments before deployment. Image: NASA Wiki commons

The Mystery Neutrinos

I am not a physicist but this is what I understand – there are many different types of particles including ones called neutrinos. There are some which interact very weakly. But the ones detected by ANITA in Antarctica are high energy neutrinos that actually have a wider cross-section so do bump into things.

This is why people are puzzled by what happened because for these particles to be detected by ANITA as coming out of the Earth, they would have to come down from space then back up from the Earth again.

And the physicists think that for these particles that would be impossible as they could not have made their way through the Earth through all that rock. That’s why this is such a big deal as it defies what we know about physics.

A radical solution

Neil Turok of The Perimeter Institute was reported by New Scientist as putting forward a radical solution. The particles coming up from the Earth are actually from a parallel dimension where time runs backwards. So in this model, the particles are really coming from space but we are seeing them coming up from the Earth as it is all running backwards.

That report in the media went viral.

What’s really happening?

But is there another explanation? I noticed that these types of particles have been detected before but that time they were traced to be coming from a black hole in the centre of a galaxy one that also sometimes gives off jets at the speed of light and gamma rays.

Image of Blazar – the source of high-energy neutrinos in space. Wiki commons

Hmm! So The Black Hole Principle says that every single aspect of the universe behaves in the same way only at different scales – from supermassive black holes to stars and even the Earth. So the centre of our planet should be capable of producing particles in a similar way to a galactic black hole.

The Black Hole Principle

I even made a previous video about this some years ago. So according to the Black Hole Principle we expect cosmic rays to come from the Earth as at the centre of the Earth is a mini black hole dynamo doing much the same things as larger ones just smaller.

Problem solved!

Hope you enjoyed this episode of Punk Science TV. For more decoding of the universe follow and subscribe. ‘Till next time, thanks for watching.

A Shakespeare by any other Face

by Dr Manjir Samanta-Laughton | Nov 9, 2017 | Shakespeare, The Magdalene Prophecies

A Shakespeare by any other face would be even more lucrative it would seem.

You couldn’t make it up…except they seem to be doing just that. William Shakespeare is obviously the most famous playwright and poet in history. But we have very little in the way of biographical details of the man from Stratford upon Avon to whom the greatest literary works of all time have been attributed.

There are no letters that we know of – this alone is quite interesting as you would have thought, at least, that he wrote to his family in Stratford whilst he worked in London. He left none of his books in his will when he died and we have no portraits of him when he was alive, despite him being present at court and a successful playwright. The famous balding image we have of William Shakespeare is from the first folio that was created after his death.

So it is no wonder that when a portrait emerged that could have been a portrait of Shakespeare that was created during his lifetime, people from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust were interested. After a few years of examination, they announced to the world in 2009 that it was indeed genuine.

Yet there was immediate opposition from academics and critics. The portrait was said to be of courtier and poet, Sir Thomas Overbury and other portraits of him exist.

These seem to have been mostly ignored by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust which has prominently used the controversial image as their favourite Shakespeare pinup. It is easy to see why this is a much preferable image for the author of Romeo and Juliet as the man in this image is more handsome than the image in the first folio.

Some are even reporting that any critique of the Trust’s behaviour on this matter is being met with the threat of litigation. At the end of the day, it is all about money; a handsome, young, full-colour Shakespeare looking a bit like Joseph Fiennes, who played Will Shakespeare in the film ‘Shakespeare in Love’, is going to bring in more money for the Stratford tourist machine than an older, plump balding one. This article from The Guardian newspaper website suggests that the new portrait was worth around £15 million to the Trust in terms of tourism.

This may turn out to be one of these cases where the untruth becomes so widespread that it simply becomes the truth. What are your thoughts? Are you shocked that The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is presenting a controversial portrait as Shakespeare? Do you dismiss it as just yet another lie that we are told on a daily basis by people in power? Or do you think the portrait is genuine and this is the true likeness of William Shakespeare? Please leave your comments below.

The Guardian. Is this a Shakespeare portrait I see before me? Well, no. William Leahy

The Times Literary Supplement Blog. But if not Shakespeare, then who? Peter Stothard

The Telegraph. William Shakespeare portrait could be 16th-century courtier. Sarah Knapton

Images: Public Domain, Canva