Want to visit a new dimension? How scientists are making it happen
Could a new particle proposed by scientists & experts lead to a portal that can take humans to a brand new dimension? This may sound like the synopsis to some mind-boggling science-fiction movie, but we assure you – this is real life. Studies have recently emerged saying this hypothetical particle leading to a fifth dimension can possibly be a reality.
New particle?
Vice announced Thursday that scientists are planning to begin the search for a proposed particle that can act as a portal leading to a new fifth dimension which mediates the cosmic realms of light & dark. A study published last month in The European Physical Journal C. wrote that “the presence of new physics” can explain the universe’s mysteries with a fifth dimension that can move & travel through the universe by particles.
If this particle did exist, Vice explained it would “‘provide a natural explanation’ for the abundance of dark matter, an unidentified substance that accounts for most of the universe’s mass, and resolve intractable problems about subatomic particles known as fermions”.
The experts responsible for the study include theoretical physicists at the PRISMA+ Cluster of Excellence at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Javier Catellano & Matthias Neubert, as well as Adrián Carmona, an Athenea3i fellow in theoretical physics at the University of Granada.
The team explained in an email that they’ve been working on studying a similar topic for a while, and their “initial motivation was to explain the possible origin of fermion masses in theories with a warped extra dimension. We knew that the masses of these constituents had some special features, which were crying out for an explanation”.
How it began
The team who conducted the study which could lead to the finding of a new dimension is made up of many experts in the field who question whether the four dimensions, 3D space & time, are really all that humans can experience in the universe. This type of research has since created numerous 5D field equations that suggest a possible new dimension and how it may affect our own realities.
Vice reported that “while researching these equations in relation to fermion masses, the team sketched out the existence of a new scalar field associated with a speculative particle that is roughly similar to the Higgs field associated with the famous Higgs boson particle”.
The team explained to Vice: “We found that the new scalar field had an interesting, non-trivial behavior along the extra dimension. Since this new particle has very similar quantum properties as the Higgs boson, it was very natural to assume that the two particles should mix with each other, meaning that their quantum-mechanical wave functions are intertwined. Studying this was one of the original motivations”.
This hypothesis led to the realization that this particle could be a window into dark matter since it would mediate a new force that intertwined dark matter and its visible counterpart that takes form in stars, planets, and everything that can be detected in light-based astronomy.
If this hypothesized particle did happen to exist, researchers explained to Vice that “it would necessarily connect the visible matter that we know and that we have studied in detail with the constituents of the dark matter, assuming that dark matter is composed out of fundamental fermions, which live in the extra dimension”.
“Confirming the existence of such a new scalar particle will open an exciting path towards the possible discovery of dark matter. This will give us in particular very useful information about the possible mass range of dark matter and its interactions with the particles we know nowadays”, the researchers added.
Search for the particle
Now that experts have somewhat of a lead on this proposed particle that may lead to a new, fifth dimension, the search for the particle has begun. Vice announced that it “might be detectable for a new generation of proposed colliders, such as the “International Linear Collider, the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC), and the Future Circular Collider”.
Researchers also predict that the particle could be found more indirectly, like through studying gravitational waves. “Another possibility, which we did not explore yet, is that this new particle could play an important role in the cosmological history of the universe, and might produce gravitational waves that can be searched for with future gravitational-wave detectors”, the team announced.
While research is still ongoing and in its early stages, the hypothesized existence of a particle that may take humans to a new dimension one day is a very exciting & monumental feat in the scientific world. Hopefully, we’ll be living out all our science fiction fantasies soon enough!
