Caltech cosmologist Ranga-Ram Chary claims that he may have found evidence for the existence of a parallel universe. Many online articles report this.1,2,3 His claim, published in the Astrophysical Journal, suggests some sort of “cosmic bruising” — one universe bumping up against another universe — could explain an anomaly he found in the map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The anomaly is in regards to a mysterious blob of light found in the CMB radiation, which allegedly is leftover radiation from the big bang.
USA Today reports:
Chary, a researcher at the European Space Agency’s Planck Space Telescope data center at CalTech, said the glow could be due to matter from a neighboring universe “leaking” into ours, according to New Scientist magazine.
“Our universe may simply be a region within an eternally inflating super-region,” scientist Chary wrote in a recent study in the Astrophysical Journal.
Quite obviously the claim is highly speculative. Others are skeptical of the claim. Besides that you must understand the problem in cosmology of proving anything like this. You would have to disprove all other possible causes to “prove” your thesis. To this news Princeton University’s David Spergel commented1,3 that the dust particles from the cosmic microwave background could hold the key to the mysterious blob of light identified by Chary.
“The dust properties are more complicated than we have been assuming, and I think that this is a more plausible explanation.”
But it is much more problematic than that.
- The CMB radiation may not be from the most distant sources, hence is not relic radiation from the alleged big bang. See ‘Light from the big bang’ casts no shadows.
- Look at the problems associated with the last claimed proof of inflation from BICEP2, the South Pole telescope, where it was found that the detection of B-mode polarization in the CMB radiation most likely is attributable to dust in the Galaxy, hence not from cosmological sources, let alone the alleged inflationary epoch. The claimed proof of the alleged inflationary epoch was wrong.
- Finally, one must understand that today’s ‘mainstream’ cosmology is not science but a pagan philosophy. Because it is philosophy and not science it cannot be proven by empirical methods one way or another. “While many renowned scientists acknowledge the possibility of multiple and parallel universes, many other equally accomplished astrophysicists and cosmologists consider the debate a waste of time — more science fiction or philosophy than science. They argue the nature of empirical science makes it impossible to prove or disprove multiverse theories.”1 (my emphasis added)
But Chary knew his ideas would face strong skepticism. He attempted to account for other possibilities. But how could you know that you have exhausted all possibilities? Chary wrote,
“Unusual claims like evidence for alternate universes require a very high burden of proof.”1
Indeed! Such a high burden of proof is required that you would have to be a transcendent Creator to know for sure. Such is the problem of cosmology.
References
- B. Hays, Have scientists found evidence of a parallel universe?, SpaceDaily.com November 4, 2015
- M. Hanks, ‘Mysterious Glow’ May Indicate Evidence of Parallel Universes, Mysterious Universe, November 5, 2015.
- G. Bradley, Cosmologist Rang-Ray Chary claims for [sic] evidence of parallel universe, NYC Today, November 8, 2015.
Bible Science Forum 
5 responses to “Have scientists found evidence of a parallel universe?”
Intellect is hard to find and I find your claims plausible but incomplete like everything else in physics. I will continue reading your work. I’ve been reading Hawking’s research and have found myself disappointed. I strongly believe there is a Divine power that influences outcomes in experiments just as a scientist influences an experiment by the mere fact that he/she is involved.
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The CMB data and their interpretation within the context of the standard model has become the cornerstone of modern cosmology. The lack of shadows you refer to is a serious challenge to this model, but there are other evidences which, on the face of it, are convincing. From my layman’s understanding, the following are strong arguments in favour of a primordial, fire-ball beginning to the Universe:
1. Extreme uniformity of the CBM. In the words of one document I read: “The temperature is uniform to better than one part in a thousand! This uniformity is one compelling reason to interpret the radiation as remnant heat from the Big Bang; it would be very difficult to image a local source of radiation that was this uniform. In fact, many scientists have tried to devise alternative explanations for the source of this radiation but none have succeeded.”
2. The blackbody spectrum of the CMB. Quoting from the same source: “According to the Big Bang theory, the frequency spectrum of the CMB should have this blackbody form. This was indeed measured with tremendous accuracy by the FIRAS experiment on NASA’s COBE satellite. … There is no alternative theory yet proposed that predicts this energy spectrum. The accurate measurement of its shape [is] another important test of the Big Bang theory.”
3. The CMB power spectrum. The excellent fit of the observational data to the theory is impressive notwithstanding that the theory requires the assumptions of dark matter and inflation.
Creationist models need to not only explain the light-travel time problem and the apparent great age of the Universe, but also these kinds of phenomena.
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Cosmology is not science and as such you cannot prove any one model to be true. You may be able to rule out models but where a ‘degeneracy of explanations’ exists you always will have a problem.
There is no doubt that the CMB radiation is approximated extremely by a blackbody spectrum. I agree with you on that point but it is, in of itself, not definitive because it could also be consistent with a different origin. I have suggested it is the redshifted radiation from the initial creation of Day 1 of Creation week. At that time God said: “Let there be light” but there were no stars created until Day 4. My model there involves an expanding universe, which I am now inclined to believe is not the case. Russ Humphreys has developed a new model wherein the universe is static and redshift of galaxies in derived from the tension (not extension) of space. His model explains the CMB radiation via the Unruh effect.
It is disingenuous to say no other theory predicts this blackbody spectrum. No new model can ever do that because it is known already to have such a spectrum. As already intimated, the proposed mechanism, adiabatic expansion of the universe, could be wrong. The source may not even be cosmological, so to say it is a successful prediction of the big bang theory, may also be wrong.
You quite rightly point out that the power spectrum of the CMB anisotropies needs dark matter and a universe expanding under an acceleration driven by dark energy. Without these fudge factors any claim of successful prediction is mute.
Yes, creationist do need to explain what we observe in the universe, but we don’t observe dark matter, dark energy, dark radiation, dark flows, dark photons, cosmic inflation and other made up stuff.
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Thanks for your detailed response. However, I respectfully disagree with some of your comments:
1. I think that cosmology is science, it’s just not empirical science. We cannot conduct repeatable experiments on the Universe (thankfully!) , but God has provided us with information about the Universe and the ability to analyse that information and draw conclusions from it. That process is science because it is a process of gaining knowledge.
Also, your argument is a double-edged sword. If you are suggesting that we should dismiss naturalistic theories of the Creation because they are not empirical science, then we should also dismiss creationist theories for the same reason. In effect, this is to cast cosmology into a kind of intellectual dark age which, in my opinion, does not glorify God.
2. DM, DE, etc., are not “fudge factors”, they are reasonable and rational scientific hypotheses. Calling them fudge factors implies a degree of dishonesty and deliberate deception which I think is disingenuous.
3. You imply that DM, DE, etc., should be dismissed because we can’t observe them directly. But we do observe effects which support the hypotheses. We can’t directly observe the wind either, but we know it exists by the effects it produces.
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I agree cosmology is not empirical science. It is not subject to what we call operational science criteria; it is really historical science or more correctly philosophy. See OPERATIONAL AND HISTORICAL SCIENCE: WHAT ARE THEY? and COSMIC MYTHOLOGY: EXPOSING THE BIG BANG AS PHILOSOPHY NOT SCIENCE. Historical science is still a process of gaining knowledge but it is very weak and certain aspects must be accepted on faith as a given, a presupposition; they cannot be experimentally or observationally determined.
I am suggesting we build our biblical cosmogonies on the Bible’s account of creation. The facts of the Bible are taken as axioms, presuppositions, and we move forward from there. That is a very different approach to modern cosmology. It has a presuppositional starting assumption of there being no Creator. Besides the secular world will never accept a cosmology that is biblically based. The scientific naturalist has no need for a creator. He lifts up the creation, in the form of the laws of physics, as the source of everything in the Universe. Paul Davies wrote,
(Is the Universe a free lunch?)
As for the status of dark entities being called “fudge factors,” I disagree with you, but I do not claim scientists are deliberately being dishonest. They are being dishonest by excluding the Creator, but they are operating within their worldview, which is to exclude the Creator. Thus they have no alternative but to believe in stuff that cannot be detected by any form of electromagnetic radiation.
Your comparison with observing wind does not follow. For a proper analogy to apply it would have to be a substance that cannot be detected by any form of radiation. Air can be detected by various methods, which include optical spectroscopy. The putative dark entities cannot be detected by any means whatsoever except their alleged effect on gravity. If such a situation developed in a local lab experiment the underlying hypothesis would be rejected. Why isn’t LCDM cosmology rejected? Because that is the ‘best they have’. There is no God in their worldview; thus they have no alternative.
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