Neutrons propelled into other universes!

[tuftears]

Apparently you may be able to zap neutrons into another universe... This is relevant to Avatars because, as our characters have discovered, the story hinges on virtual realities being somehow windows into other universes... Thus the appearance of creatures from those other universes, or the disappearance of people from this universe into those worlds. The above is less promising than the headline sounds, unfortunately, since you basically have a very, very low chance for any individual neutron to get propelled into another universe, and even if you got one over the wire, well, it's a neutron, what can you do with it? But still... What if you really did have the chance to step into an alternate universe? Wouldn't you be curious enough to peek?

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

How do you trap a neutron for a year, when the halflife of a free neutron is a little over 10 minutes?!

[ben-mouse.livejournal.com]

I think we do peek into alternative universes. atoms are bound to a quantum reality, and brains are ultimately made of of atoms! I have to wonder if our dreams aren't echos of other universes, carried to us by spooky action.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

Before anyone gets too excited...

This paper isn't saying that neutrons tunnel into other universes.

It's saying that _if_ certain speculative assumptions about the universe are correct, neutrons _might_ tunnel between universes, but that observations _rule out_ more than a certain very low rate of tunnelling, which constrains what speculative assumptions you can and cannot make while remaining consistent with those observations.

This sort of paper is written all the time; it's one of the mainstays of theoretical to physics. Imagine something wierd or nifty, and figure out the versions that can and can't be _disproved_ based on existing observations. For bonus points, point out how future experiments could disprove (or prove!) an even wider range of hypotheses.

The fact that it's published on Arxiv is a great big hint that nobody's even looking for this at present. Arxiv is a preprint server: a place where scientists, reputable and non-reputable, circulate drafts that might or might not someday be in good enough shape to publish.

So, a nifty idea, and less far out that many of the others I've seen ("braneworld cosmology" has actually been discussed in serious publications, speculative or not), but the article is _not_ saying that any such tunnelling has been actually _observed_.