Xenon 100 is an underground detector of dark matter in Italy. "Matter" particles may have "force" particle counterparts. By this logic, the "force" particle photon has a "matter version" counterpart called a photino.
Morgan Freeman explains, "Every neutrino seen so far has been left-handed!" Gravitational lensing (bending of light) around the Bullet Cluster are the best evidence as of 2014 for the existence of dark matter; the Musket Ball Cluster is older.
Mirror matter particles are complementary to ordinary matter. Robert Foot thinks mirror matter is dark matter. The anomaly in the shape of the cosmic microwave background has been called the "axis of evil".
Thanks for watching. Follow for more videos.
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#throughthewormhole
#season5
#episode9
#cosmology
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Morgan Freeman explains, "Every neutrino seen so far has been left-handed!" Gravitational lensing (bending of light) around the Bullet Cluster are the best evidence as of 2014 for the existence of dark matter; the Musket Ball Cluster is older.
Mirror matter particles are complementary to ordinary matter. Robert Foot thinks mirror matter is dark matter. The anomaly in the shape of the cosmic microwave background has been called the "axis of evil".
Thanks for watching. Follow for more videos.
#cosmosspacescience
#throughthewormhole
#season5
#episode9
#cosmology
#astronomy
#spacetime
#spacescience
#space
#nasa
#spacedocumentary
#morganfreeman
#universe
#shadowunivers
#paralleluniverse
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:01There's something hiding in the shadows.
00:05A type of matter we can't see or touch,
00:09but is all around us.
00:12Scientists agree it has shaped our universe,
00:17but they have no idea what it is
00:20or what form it takes.
00:23Could this mysterious matter have produced stars
00:30and planets of its own?
00:33And could this dark cosmos one day come crashing into ours?
00:38Is there a shadow universe?
00:42Space. Time. Life itself.
00:57The secrets of the cosmos lie through the wormhole.
01:12We live in a universe filled with light.
01:17At least, that's what it looks like when we gaze into the sky.
01:22But scientists are now sure
01:25there is far more matter in this universe than we can see.
01:31We know this dark matter must exist
01:35because we can detect the pull of its gravity.
01:39What's going on in this hidden world?
01:43Could it have formed its own dark stars,
01:47planets, and maybe even life forms?
01:51And could this shadow universe pose a threat
01:56to our world of light?
02:00On summer nights, my friends and I used to play with sparklers.
02:04Their flickering lights were so bright in the darkness
02:08everything around them seemed to disappear.
02:13It was easy to forget their every move
02:16was controlled by an invisible hand.
02:19An invisible hand also guides the movement of our universe.
02:24Astronomers are sure a vast cosmic ocean of unseeable matter
02:29is pulling stars off their expected courses.
02:32Discovering the true nature of this unknown matter
02:37has become the most pressing question in cosmology,
02:41perhaps in all of physics.
02:48Experimental physicist Raphael Lang from Purdue University
02:52is one of many scientists trying to capture and study dark matter.
02:57We really know all this dark matter exists.
03:00We have no clue what it's made out of.
03:02But we know it's there.
03:03And that's what I'm trying to do.
03:05I'm trying to find out what is it made out of.
03:07It's a huge challenge because we only feel the feeble pull
03:11of dark matter's gravity.
03:13Its particles pass right through the matter that we are made of.
03:17So it's a bit like trying to catch a fish with your hands.
03:23So you can try to catch fish with your hands.
03:26And, well, that's not going to work.
03:28The fish is just way too fast and too slippery.
03:31You're never going to catch a fish with your hands.
03:33So you need different tools.
03:35To catch dark matter, Raphael needs something
03:38that can interact with it directly.
03:40The one thing we do know is that dark matter has mass.
03:46The particles we know get their mass from the Higgs boson.
03:50If you can interact with the Higgs boson, then you have mass.
03:54Higgs boson particles create an invisible force field
03:58that fills the universe.
04:00We believe everything in our universe gets mass
04:04by interacting with this Higgs field.
04:07So isn't it natural to think that maybe the dark matter
04:10gets its mass also from the Higgs boson?
04:12If that's the case, that would be great.
04:14Because maybe then we can talk to the dark matter
04:16through the Higgs boson channel.
04:18If dark matter does get its mass from Higgs bosons,
04:22Raphael may be able to use them as tools
04:25to interact with dark matter.
04:27And it would also make his fishing trip a little easier.
04:32Maybe the Higgs boson can act as a tool,
04:35like a fishing rod, that helps us to catch the dark matter.
04:38So on one end, we are, and we talk to the Higgs boson,
04:41and the Higgs boson on the other end talks to the dark matter.
04:44But as any good fisherman knows,
04:46just because you have the right tools
04:48doesn't mean you're guaranteed to catch a fish.
04:51Raphael is working on an underground detector in Italy
04:54called Xenon 100.
04:57It uses a large fat filled with 100 kilos of ultra-pure
05:01and highly inert liquid Xenon.
05:05Liquid Xenon is very dense.
05:06So the atomic nuclei there are really densely packed,
05:09which is great because it gives the dark matter
05:11a lot of stuff to interact with.
05:13So let's take some dark matter
05:15and let's drop it in the liquid Xenon
05:16and let's see what happens.
05:17As it falls in, it will go through most of the liquid Xenon
05:21without interacting.
05:22But maybe we are lucky and one of the Xenon atoms,
05:25it kicks the nucleus.
05:27That Xenon nucleus races out of the tank at high speed,
05:32leaving a trail of light in its wake.
05:35We don't really observe the dark matter itself.
05:38What we do is we observe the nucleus flying through the Xenon.
05:42The team at the Xenon 100 detector
05:45has been running the experiment since 2008.
05:48So far, it has not seen any sign of dark matter.
05:52But Raphael believes an improved, bigger detector
05:56the Xenon 1-ton has a good chance
05:59of grasping this elusive particle.
06:01So Xenon 1-ton will be 100 times more powerful
06:06than anything that we have today.
06:07What that means is that we can do something
06:09that would take us a whole year
06:11to wait and catch those particles.
06:13We could do that in a couple of days.
06:15If Raphael is correct,
06:17we may soon have our first glimpse of dark matter.
06:20But there might be another way for us to find it.
06:25Not by catching dark matter, but by creating it.
06:37John Butterworth is a leading experimental physicist
06:40at the University College London
06:42and at the LHC in Geneva.
06:47This colossal machine famously created the Higgs boson in 2012.
06:53It has also created every other particle of matter
06:56that we know to exist.
06:58Together, they make up the standard model of particles.
07:02The standard model is our best understanding
07:04of what we call fundamental particles.
07:06And they're the stuff that everything else
07:08in the universe is made of.
07:09But when I said that everything in the universe
07:12is made up of these fundamental particles,
07:14the big exception is that matter probably isn't,
07:16as far as we can tell.
07:17Particle physicists like John, however,
07:20have one idea for what these dark matter particles might be.
07:24But it's an idea that requires you
07:27to spin reality on its head.
07:30I'm on the London Eye, and it's a good place
07:40to talk about angular momentum.
07:42Angular momentum is what you get
07:44when you multiply the speed of something that's going round
07:48with the distance to the axle that it's going round.
07:52Fundamental particles also have angular momentum,
07:56which physicists call spin.
07:59There are two types of particles.
08:01Matter particles, all the tangible stuff in the universe,
08:04and force particles, that carry pure energy.
08:08These two types spin at different rates.
08:11Imagine John is a particle,
08:14and he's spinning around the London Eye.
08:17If he's a force particle, he'll spin at one rate.
08:20If he's a matter particle, he'll have only half that spin.
08:24But some physicists think all the particles of force and matter
08:33may have hidden counterparts that spin differently.
08:37So given that all the force carriers have got spin one
08:42and all the matter particles have got spin half,
08:45it's quite a natural question to ask,
08:46what if I swap them over?
08:48What if I made all the force carriers have spin half?
08:51These differently spinning versions of force particles
08:54would, in fact, be matter.
08:57The photon would have a matter version called the Photino.
09:01The force particle John would have a matter particle called Johnino.
09:07So you would get a lot of these produced in the Big Bang.
09:11They would hang around in the universe, but they'd do nothing else.
09:14And that's essentially a description of that matter.
09:16That's what that matter does.
09:17John has been scouring the many Big Bangs created by the LHC,
09:22looking for matter versions of force particles like the Photino.
09:27But John is beginning to worry.
09:29Because so far, he's seen nothing.
09:33We've not found any direct evidence for these other half of the particles.
09:36Now there's still a chance, but there's a lot less chance,
09:38I would say, than there used to be.
09:44We can never hope to discover a shadow universe
09:46until we have dark matter in our hands.
09:49But this physicist thinks he's on the cusp of snagging it,
09:54thanks to its cosmic dance partner.
09:57To people who believe in the supernatural,
10:04ghosts are evidence of a larger world of spirits beyond our senses.
10:10A few decades ago, physicists discovered particles that seem like ghosts.
10:16They move right through solid matter.
10:19They call them neutrinos.
10:22Neutrinos could be the key to discovering a larger world of ghostly particles,
10:27making up a shadow universe.
10:33Brazilian-born physicist Andre de Gouveia has spent most of his career studying neutrinos.
10:40Neutrinos look a lot like the dark matter,
10:43in the sense that they interact very, very weakly.
10:46Now it turns out that over the years we learned enough about the neutrinos
10:50to know for sure that the neutrinos are not all of the dark matter.
10:54Because they're too light.
10:56Cosmologists have calculated how much dark mass there must be in the universe,
11:01and they are sure that neutrinos can only account for a very small percentage of it.
11:06But there's something strange about the neutrino, the way it spins.
11:13And Andre thinks that could mean it has a hidden cosmic dance partner.
11:28A partner that may account for the remaining mass of dark matter.
11:32All particles have an intrinsic property called spin.
11:35Now for the matter particles that we know about, the spin comes in two types.
11:39We refer to those two types as handedness.
11:42So some particles are referred to as left-handed, other particles are referred to as right-handed.
11:46So this is illustrated by the dancers in the back.
11:53Scientists believe the Big Bang filled the early universe with equal numbers of right- and left-handed particles.
12:00All of them danced separately and had no mass.
12:04But then, a split second later, the Higgs boson kicked into action.
12:10It partnered up left- and right-handed particles, and in doing so, gave the pair mass.
12:17Now when the Higgs boson comes along, the Higgs boson allows them to talk to each other, and it allows them to pair up.
12:24And once they start talking to one another, they behave as one particle with mass.
12:30This is how particles like electrons and quarks got mass.
12:34But neutrinos don't appear to be like those other particles.
12:38Every neutrino detected so far has been left-handed.
12:42They samba alone.
12:44How, then, does the neutrino get its mass?
12:49What we see behind us is a left-handed neutrino.
12:52Now what's interesting is that we've never seen a right-handed manifestation of the neutrino.
12:57But because we know that now the neutrinos do have a mass, it indicates for us that the neutrino must have a right-handed partner.
13:04Somewhere outside the reach of our detectors, there should be a right-handed neutrino that is pairing up with the left-handed neutrino to give it mass.
13:19Could this undiscovered particle be dark matter?
13:23They are, as far as we can tell right now, hypothetical particles.
13:27But it's possible that this right-handed neutrino is a dark matter.
13:31They're very, very weakly interacting.
13:33They're a lot less interacting than the regular neutrinos.
13:36And that's kind of what the dark matter is.
13:38It's some very, very weakly interacting thing that we haven't seen yet that was produced early on in the universe, and then it sticks around.
13:46The right-handed neutrino would be too elusive to be detected in current underground dark matter searches.
13:52However, Andre believes there might be another way to find it, by looking up.
13:59Right-handed neutrinos are not completely stable.
14:03Like radioactive elements, they sometimes fall apart.
14:07And as they do, they create a flash of X-ray light.
14:12A very important feature about right-handed neutrinos is they decay into X-rays.
14:17So one way to look for right-handed neutrinos as dark matter is to look at a region of the sky and we see if these galaxies are emitting X-rays.
14:26In fact, recent studies of distant galaxies have detected some strange anomalies in the X-rays they emit.
14:36These anomalies might signal the border between the world of light and the shadows.
14:43What's happening in that darkness?
14:46Some astronomers believe they have found evidence of a complex shadow universe.
14:55Where ghostly substances coalesce all around us, even inside us.
15:01appears to feel only the weak force of gravity.
15:08But they may have oversimplified how dark matter behaves.
15:13Perhaps this shadow universe is made of more complicated material.
15:20Before Will Dawson became an astrophysicist, he was an offshore structural engineer.
15:29But he decided to take off his gloves and hard hat to follow his passion for dark matter.
15:37It was a decision that has him jumping for joy.
15:41Will is one of the lucky scientists who has seen dark matter's tell-tale fingerprints, its gravitational effects.
15:52So one of the major challenges that we face is how exactly do you measure where dark matter is?
15:57If you can't see it, it doesn't emit light.
15:59So what we use is a technique called gravitational lensing.
16:02And the basic principle behind this is that under a normal circumstance of flat space-time, light always travels in straight lines.
16:10However, when you introduce a mass to this space-time, the space-time gets curved and distorted.
16:17And light actually follows the curvature of that space.
16:22This gravitational distortion of light by mass allows astronomers like Will to find the position of giant cosmic clouds of dark matter.
16:32They look for double images of more distant galaxies whose light is being bent around either side of the clouds.
16:42Two particular clouds of dark matter caught Will's attention.
16:47The clouds were part of the Bullet Cluster, a collision of two galaxy clusters a few billion light years from Earth.
16:55Each galaxy cluster is composed of hundreds or thousands of galaxies.
17:02When these two cosmic giants collided, the galaxies themselves moved right past one another because they were millions of light years apart.
17:14But the diffused clouds of hydrogen and helium gas surrounding the galaxies barreled right into one another.
17:26The force of electromagnetism caused their atoms to explode into a bullet-shaped inferno.
17:32But the dark matter clouds were unfazed by all this.
17:38They sailed right through one another.
17:41They didn't feel the powerful force of electromagnetism that regular matter feels.
17:45Only the incredibly weak force of gravity.
17:49Will wondered why such a huge portion of our universe would be so oblivious to what is happening all around it.
18:01Is dark matter really just dumb matter?
18:05We know that it interacts via gravity.
18:08And now the question is, is dark matter more interesting than that?
18:11Is the dark universe much more complex than it is at first sight?
18:16Will formed a collaboration to find out if the accepted interpretation of the bullet cluster collision oversimplified what dark matter does.
18:25Is this the cluster that has the dark matter in the middle or no?
18:28It has dark matter in the middle but it's not the same thing that...
18:31The group is looking at many more colliding galaxy clusters.
18:35They want to see if dark matter always passes right through itself and stays lined up with its original galaxies.
18:42And so what we're trying to do is measure whether there's an offset between the galaxies and the dark matter.
18:49If we observe an offset then that's clear evidence that dark matter is interacting with itself.
18:55There was one galaxy cluster that had their attention.
18:59It was like the bullet cluster but older and slower.
19:03So they called it the musket ball.
19:06The musket ball cluster has much further progressed in its merger phase.
19:11The bullet cluster you're almost seeing right after the two clusters have passed through one another.
19:15Whereas the musket ball cluster has had more time to separate.
19:19Just as a plate of Italian food has sauce, meatballs and pasta, a galaxy cluster has gas, galaxies and dark matter.
19:36And just as theoretical disagreements over a meal can get heated, ingredients in a galaxy cluster have a tendency to get a little messy.
19:46A galaxy cluster is a lot like our galaxy.
20:15It's a lot like our food fight we just had.
20:17Not only are these galaxy cluster mergers very messy, but the galaxies, there's just so much space in between them.
20:23And they're a lot like the meatballs that just pass right on through.
20:27The gas, however, is a lot like the sauce, which whenever we threw it, a lot of it collided and got stuck in the middle.
20:33And the dark matter, it's a little bit like the pasta that we were dealing with, where most of the pasta misses one another.
20:40But if you look closely enough, some of the dark matter is interacting and it might slow down a little bit with respect to the rest of it.
20:47When dark matter meets dark matter in the musket ball, Will's team found that some force beyond gravity appears to be in play.
21:02If they can find more examples to support this idea, they may be knocking on the door of the shadow universe.
21:11If we see the same type of offset in these other mergers that we've observed in the musket ball cluster, it provides clear evidence that dark matter is self-interacting during the merger.
21:21Which would then mean that there is some new dark sector force.
21:26Theoretical cosmologist James Bullock is trying to help Will understand what dark matter is up to.
21:34He is simulating what galaxy cluster collisions should look like with different types and strengths of forces between dark matter particles.
21:42The main thing that I'm trying to do is interpret the kind of observations that Will makes.
21:47So, for example, we can set up a system of colliding galaxy clusters that are zooming towards each other.
21:52And we can run the simulation one time where we turn the dark matter interactions off completely.
21:58And then we can run it again, except this time we dial the dark matter self-interaction up and see what happens.
22:03And the question is, which one does the universe look like?
22:07James' simulations are showing that dark matter must interact with itself.
22:12Otherwise, our universe would look very different than it does.
22:18If dark matter can interact with itself, could it have formed into solid objects?
22:25Perhaps a parallel version of the stars, planets, and universe that we know?
22:31What if those objects are out there, floating invisibly in the darkness, on a collision course with our planet?
22:39When you look at your reflection, you see yourself.
22:45But it's not quite the same.
22:48Your nose looks shifted.
22:50Your eyes appear unbalanced.
22:52Some physicists believe the Big Bang created particles and mirror-image pairs.
22:58But those reflections became so distorted that they are barely recognizable.
23:03Those mirror particles could be dark matter.
23:07What would happen if you and your reflection made contact?
23:13Robert Foote, from the University of Melbourne, thinks dark matter has already come hurtling into our world.
23:27He believes we may have already experienced it blasting its way into Earth's atmosphere.
23:34And that giant lumps of dark matter could be buried beneath the surface of our planet.
23:43Robert's suspicion is based on the idea that the universe is supposed to be symmetrical.
23:51It's something that's easily explained in a gentlemanly game of lawn bowling.
23:58Will I bowl with my right hand?
24:01Or will I bowl with my left hand?
24:05The effect is the same.
24:08When Robert accelerates the bowls, the physical force he exerts has the same effect no matter which hand he uses.
24:16The same is mostly true when left and right-handed particles interact with the fundamental forces of nature.
24:26When a left-handed and a right-handed particle feel the electromagnetic force, they react the same way.
24:35The same is true for the strong force, which binds the nuclei of atoms together.
24:40Regardless of a particle's handedness, the forces should affect it the same way.
24:51But there is one force that doesn't obey the left-right symmetry.
24:55The force that causes radioactive decay.
24:58The weak force.
24:59With weak interactions, if I bowl with my left hand, the ball hits the target.
25:03If I bowl with my right hand, the ball goes right through the target.
25:08Robert thinks this anomaly could be a vital clue to understanding dark matter.
25:15In order to restore the symmetry of the universe, we need to take a hard look in the mirror.
25:23I'm looking in the mirror.
25:26I'm almost symmetrical.
25:29But I'm not quite.
25:31The problem is my watch.
25:33It's on my left hand.
25:36In the mirror, it's on my right hand.
25:38Robert is like the weak force, forever stuck with a watch on his left hand.
25:43But he has found a way to fix this asymmetry.
25:48By introducing another version of himself.
25:52Imagine if I had a twin, and his watch was not on the left hand, but was on the right hand.
26:04Robert thinks elementary particles could work the same way.
26:09To make the universe truly symmetrical, Robert and his colleagues believe there must be a mirror image of the weak force.
26:15And it must act on mirror image particles called mirror matter.
26:22Every particle has a twin particle.
26:25Just like ordinary particles couple with their left handed spins.
26:29Mirror particles would couple with right handed spins.
26:32Mirror matter particles would be stable and completely invisible to us.
26:40Just like dark matter.
26:42So, if they exist, Robert and his colleagues think they could be dark matter.
26:49But their existence would also have much larger implications.
26:54It would mean that everything in our universe is mirrored.
26:59In a realm we can't see.
27:02So, in principle you can have mirror star formation, mirror supernova.
27:07Basically everything that happens with ordinary matter can in principle happen with mirror matter.
27:12Mirror planets, stars and galaxies may occupy the same space as regular matter inside our universe.
27:21But these mirror structures would be invisible to us.
27:25They would pass right through the matter that we know.
27:28Without any obvious means of interacting with the shadow realm, how will we ever know if Robert is correct?
27:37The proof of his theory may have already come crashing towards Earth in the form of a mirror matter asteroid.
27:46When the solar system formed, it was a much more spread out bunch of particles.
27:52And if it captured enough mirror matter, then they could form asteroids and they could be there in our solar system today.
27:57And occasionally they might strike Earth and lead to all sorts of fascinating impact events.
28:01If a mirror matter asteroid only responds to the force of gravity, it would pass through the surface of the planet without our even knowing it.
28:10But Robert believes there is one way that mirror matter and regular matter can interact.
28:19As mirror photons from the asteroid rub up against ordinary photons from Earth, the two particles can create friction.
28:29That friction would generate enough heat to turn the asteroid into a fireball and gradually slow it down.
28:39Eventually, the asteroid would come to a stop inside the Earth.
28:48This could actually stop the asteroid in the Earth and all the energy would be released, but over a longer distance.
28:55So it might not leave a crater, but it can still release the energy, so it might melt the ground.
29:00In 1932, explorers found some very strange melted glass lying on the top layer of sand dunes in the desert of Libya.
29:10They looked like they had been melted by the fiery impact of an asteroid, but there's no crater to be found.
29:18Could this be a sign of a rare mirror matter asteroid crashing into Earth?
29:23There's no crater, there's no obvious impact event there, but it's a great mystery and this seems one explanation.
29:29Mirror matter and mirror asteroids might sound like science fiction, but Robert contends they are no stranger than accepting an asymmetric universe.
29:39But if the shadow universe is headed toward us, we'll need to know where it's hiding.
29:48This physicist is taking a shot at making a map of dark matter.
29:53She's designing the most sensitive detector ever dreamed of.
29:58The first seafaring explorers set off into the vast oceans
30:08with no idea when they would make landfall again.
30:13Today, we can map our globe to the centimeter, revealing where we are and even the slow tectonic movements of continents.
30:24Our maps tell us the history of our planet and help us predict the future.
30:30So how can we understand the shadow universe without a map of dark matter?
30:37University of Michigan professor of physics Katie Fries thinks it's about time that we made that map.
30:46To do this, we need to build a device to take a picture of dark matter.
30:53I'm sitting here in a giant camera obscura.
31:00We're looking at light coming to us from the sun outside as it passes through the trees.
31:06And then it's captured in a pinhole and redirected onto the screen.
31:12What we can do here with the camera obscura is also learn about the direction that the light came from.
31:19All dark matter hunting devices to date have been simple detectors.
31:25They can't tell the particles trajectories.
31:28Katie is planning to build a device that will trace the incoming paths of dark matter so she can map where they're coming from.
31:36Her dark matter camera has a whole new kind of lens, DNA.
31:43We start with quadrillions of DNA strands attached to a thin plate of gold.
31:49Then when the dark matter particle comes along, it strikes the gold plate.
31:54Then your dark matter particle would knock a gold atom forward into hanging strands of DNA.
32:01Katie's detector is part physics, part biology.
32:06And the method it uses to find dark matter's path is a form of forensics.
32:14We've built a model of our dark matter detector with the DNA.
32:19And it has three parts.
32:21We have the hanging strands of DNA.
32:25We have the gold projectile, the atoms that travel through the DNA.
32:35And I am the dark matter.
32:40Just like an aimed gun propels a gold pellet on a precise path,
32:46when a dark matter particle flying in from outer space strikes a gold atom,
32:51it will send it flying forward along the same trajectory.
32:55As the speeding gold atom tears through the quadrillions of DNA strands,
33:03it sends cleanly cut fragments of DNA to the floor.
33:07Well, that was fun, and it worked perfectly.
33:14The gold projectile came in here,
33:16and we can see that it broke the DNA strands as it moved through.
33:21So now what we can do is take those broken DNA strands and analyze them.
33:26For each one of these strands, we know the order of the DNA nucleotides,
33:31the A, G, C, and so on,
33:35so we can figure out exactly where this segment of DNA was broken.
33:40As Katie analyzes hundreds of broken DNA strands,
33:44she is able to reconstruct the path of the gold atom,
33:48and thus the original path of the dark matter particle.
33:52DNA is the perfect material for this kind of experiment.
33:56The accuracy you can get using DNA is a thousand times better
34:00than anything that we've ever had before.
34:03Over time, countless dark matter particles will propel countless gold atoms,
34:08each cutting a unique path through the DNA field.
34:12From those paths, Katie can slowly build up a picture
34:16of where the dark matter particles are coming from.
34:22Going backwards, we can figure out the angle
34:27that the gold bullet came in through.
34:30So we know where all the dark matter is,
34:32and where it's coming from, what it's doing.
34:35Physicists are getting closer to detecting dark matter,
34:38and to knowing the shape of the shadow universe.
34:44But could this shadow itself have a shadow?
34:48We and the shadow universe could both be controlled by an even darker entity.
34:54One that exists beyond the edge of creation.
35:06Space probes have now revealed how our universe looked right after the Big Bang.
35:12They show matter and dark matter spread around equally in all directions.
35:20But look a little closer, and there appears to be a crack in the sky.
35:26A line that suggests one side of the universe is different from the other.
35:33Is there something bigger out there beyond what we can see?
35:38A shadow that molds our universe, and controls everything we know?
35:51Dragan Hurera is a cosmologist at Ann Arbor, Michigan.
35:56He was one of the first to notice this wrinkle in the universal echo of the Big Bang,
36:01called the cosmic microwave background.
36:05Causing microwave background is the radiation left over from the Big Bang.
36:09So when the universe was very small and young, about 14 billion years ago,
36:12it was like a dense soup filled with particles.
36:16As the universe evolved and grew bigger, that soup really cooled off.
36:21Today, we can sample the temperature of that primordial radiation across the universe.
36:27We take measurements of huge numbers of tiny microwave patches,
36:32pretty much the way we would do a statistical analysis of Dragan's favorite pastime, basketball.
36:39I really love basketball, and basketball court is a really good place to explain these cosmic microwave background alignments.
36:46Here on the basketball court, we have Jimmy King, former University of Michigan basketball legend,
36:51and his buddy, Willie Vance.
36:53They will show us alignments in the cosmic microwave background using their shooting.
37:01Looking out from the hoop onto the court is a lot like looking up from Earth to see the cosmic microwave background.
37:08Dragan can compare the made and missed shots in the game to the temperature of fluctuations he sees in the early universe.
37:17Just like we have hot and cold spots in the cosmic microwave background fluctuations,
37:21we have makes and misses in basketball.
37:23So we can represent each make with a red and miss with a blue.
37:29Dragan maps the distribution of makes and misses across the half court.
37:36The results show an even distribution, one that's symmetrical on both sides of the half court.
37:43If Jimmy and Willie hit a shot from one spot, they can probably hit the same shot on the other side of the court.
37:50So the distribution of the makes and the misses is about the same everywhere in the court.
37:55The same number of makes versus the misses.
37:57This is what Dragan and other researchers expected to find in the cosmic microwave background.
38:03An even distribution of hot and cold temperatures no matter where you look in the sky.
38:10But that's not at all what Dragan and his colleagues saw when they looked more closely at the pattern.
38:18They found something so startling, so disturbing, cosmologists had no choice but to call it the axis of evil.
38:30These alignments on the sky have been noted around the same time that George W. Bush had his axis of evil.
38:37So they were named by scientists in England the axis of evil.
38:40We are not sure if the axis is actually evil.
38:43What we found analyzing causing microwave background data was instead that one direction was special.
38:49So in basketball turns it's almost as if one direction relative to the basket were tilted.
38:55If a corner of the court that Jimmy and Willie are playing on suddenly shifted...
38:59So that it now dropped off at an angle, it would make it harder to make a shot from that area.
39:16The even distribution of makes and misses across the court would suddenly be disrupted.
39:22We see more blue dots in the direction of the court.
39:25And so you conclude that something is off about the basketball court.
39:31If a basketball court were not flat, you would know something was seriously wrong.
39:37Dragan feels the same way about the universe.
39:41In the cosmic microwave background fluctuations, we see that the structure of the hot and cold spots is different.
39:47That they line up in one direction in the sky differently than they do in all the other directions.
39:52And that maybe tells us that something is different in that special direction in the universe.
39:57The largest hot and cold spots are aligned along an axis that cuts right across the cosmos.
40:03The results suggest that the shape of the universe is somehow distorted.
40:10But what could alter the shape of the entire universe?
40:15We are still not completely sure what the cause is.
40:17Is it just a fluke?
40:19Or is it that there is a reason from the early universe?
40:22It could be also that these axis of evil alignments are caused by structures that we cannot see.
40:28And yet they are there and they are creating the alignments.
40:33Just as the world of light was shaped by dark matter, the entire universe may have been shaped by an even darker entity.
40:44Could the shadow universe have a shadow?
40:48Something that controls the very fabric of space and time?
40:54We used to see the black of night as the epitome of nothingness.
40:59But the darkness isn't empty.
41:02It's full of strange material that has shaped our universe of atoms and light into what it is today.
41:10In turn, that cosmos of dark matter could be a mere spot on the surface of some far bigger plane of reality.
41:20The shadow universe could exist beyond space and time.
41:25A realm we can now only begin to dream of understanding.
41:29A dream of understanding.
41:30A dream of understanding.
41:34A dream of understanding.
41:35A dream of understanding.
41:36A dream of understanding.
41:37A dream of understanding.
41:38A dream of understanding.
41:39A dream of understanding.
41:40A dream of understanding.
41:41A dream of understanding.
41:42A dream of understanding.
41:43A dream of understanding.
41:44A dream of understanding.
41:45A dream of understanding.
41:46A dream of understanding.
41:47A dream of understanding.
41:48A dream of understanding.
41:49A dream of understanding.
41:50A dream of understanding.
41:51A dream of understanding.
41:52A dream of understanding.
41:53A dream of understanding.
41:54A dream of understanding.
41:55A dream of understanding.
41:56A dream of understanding.
41:57A dream of understanding.
41:58A dream of understanding.
41:59A dream of understanding.
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