(Image source from: forbes.com)

If you have been reading the news and keeping up with the latest sci-fi and technological news, you have likely come across the new development that NASA has likely made.

The possible discovery of a parallel universe where time travels backwards made a huge rave on the social media platforms.

Big news outlets starting quoting stories from each other suggesting claims on NASA discovering a possibility of the parallel universe, especially one where the time moves backwards.

But, the truth is that the news are all way overblown and not the objective of what the research actually suggests. The scientists have now found some of the evidence of fundamental particles that could likely defy the current understanding of physics.

There is no evidence to the possibility of a parallel universe as several news outlets have suggested.

According to Ibrahim Safa, who is the lead author of the study stated that it is important for the public to ensure that they don’t get their dose of the scientific findings from news outlets.

The flurry of articles on the internet suggesting the discovery of a parallel universe came around  following the publication of a study with a title “We may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time.”

The article includes quite a lot of thought provoking insights and materials  from the study conducted in Antarctica on the cosmic rays which are arriving from the outside of Earth’s atmosphere. The what if chats around this is what cued the topic of a parallel universe when the actual study doesn’t even delve into the possibility of it.

The reports in the news have been a cumulative combination of three different studies, with twisted perceptions with no factual evidence.

The original research paper that discusses the ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) which is a balloon based experiment that found the existence of upward-pointing cosmic ray-like-events..

The second one was another research paper  that was published in response to the ANITA results. This talked about the CPT symmetric universe and the explanations behind the same. This is exactly where the news outlets inserted the concept of parallel universe and publicised it.

The third and the last study conducted in the IceCube Neutrino Observatory further considers other alternative explanations to the results of the ANITA observations.

However, at this point, the only real explanation is the Standard Model of the neutrinos which are the fundamental particles doesn’t explain the detection of the 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,” Safa concluded.

In short, the correct translation to the findings that the researcher suggest is the fact that they are still not aware where these signals came from. The same was perpetuated by the news outlets as a fact that these high energy neutrinos came from a parallel universe, which is not the case at all.

By Somapika Dutta