Earlier this month, two researchers from the University of Maryland released their findings in a study in the journal Physical Review Research. A possibility that could suggest an alternate reality actually exists.
In a university press release, researchers Victor Galitski and Alireza Parhizkar used bi-layer graphene to examine the somewhat imaginative idea that our reality is simply one-half of a pair of interacting worlds.
Their mathematical model could offer a fresh view on fundamental aspects of reality, such as why our universe expands the way it does and how it links to quantum physics’ smallest lengths.
According to the university’s media arm, they realized that experiments on the electrical properties of stacked sheets of graphene produced results that looked like little universes and that the underlying causes could apply to other areas of physics.
In stacks of graphene, electricity changes behavior when two sheets interact, so the two hypothesize that unique physics could similarly emerge from interacting layers elsewhere—perhaps across the entire universe.
Galitski, one of the pair of scientists who led the work, and a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), said:
“We think this is an exciting and ambitious idea. In a sense, it’s almost suspicious that it works so well by naturally ‘predicting’ fundamental features of our universe such as inflation and the Higgs particle as we described in a follow up preprint.”
The exceptional electrical properties of stacked graphene, as well as its possible connection to our reality as a twin, are due to the special physics produced by moiré patterns. Moiré patterns form when two repeating patterns, such as hexagons of atoms in graphene sheets or grids of window screens, overlap, and one of the layers is twisted, offset, or stretched.
The patterns that emerge can repeat over lengths that are vast compared to the underlying patterns. In graphene stacks, the new patterns change the physics that plays out in the sheets, notably the electrons’ behaviors. In the special case called “magic-angle graphene,” the moiré pattern repeats over a length that is about 52 times longer than the pattern length of the individual sheets, and the energy level that governs the behaviors of the electrons drops precipitously, allowing new behaviors, including superconductivity.
This is a fundamental constant in our universe. So, in principle, scientists only need to look at the cosmos, measure a few details, such as the speed at which galaxies move away from one other, plug everything into equations, and calculate what the constant must be.
Because our universe has both relativistic and quantum phenomena, this simple design runs into trouble. Even at cosmological sizes, the effect of quantum fluctuations over the immense vacuum of space should influence behavior. However, when scientists try to merge Einstein’s relativistic view of the cosmos with quantum vacuum theories, they run into difficulties.
One of these issues is that anytime researchers try to estimate the cosmological constant using observations, the result is substantially lower than what they would predict based on other aspects of the theory. More crucially, instead of homing in on a stable value, the value fluctuates dramatically depending on how much data they include in the approximation. The cosmological constant problem, sometimes known as the “vacuum catastrophe,” is a persistent problem.
This concept came to Galitski when they were working on apparently unrelated research financed by the John Templeton Foundation and focused on exploring hydrodynamic processes in graphene and other materials to imitate astrophysical phenome.
Additional results from the new model are intriguing to the researchers. They discovered that part of the model looked like crucial fields in reality as they put the math together. The more precise model still suggests that two worlds may explain a modest cosmological constant, as well as information on how such a bi-world might imprint a distinct mark on cosmic background radiation—light that lingers from the universe’s beginnings.
It’s not uncommon for physicists to question the way our universe works. Even the best-established theory can be called into question and should be if we hope to better understand the world we live in — as well as potential ones we haven’t been to yet.
“We haven’t explored all the effects — that’s a hard thing to do,” co-author Alireza Parhizkar said in the university release.
Sources: Dailywire, Thesun, Jqi.umd.edu
