Study may have found evidence of alternate, parallel universes

Astrophysicist Ranga-Ram Chary recently analyzed data from the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Planck telescope and discovered mysterious bright spots at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.

Prepare to have your mind blown. He was looking at a period of time just after the Big Bang, about 13 billion years ago.

"Our universe may simply be a region within an eternally inflating super-region", the Caltech researcher wrote. "Many other regions beyond our observable universe would exist with each such region governed by a different set of physical parameters than the ones we have measured for our universe". In his paper, Spectral Variations of the Sky: Constraints on Alternate Universes, he said that while there is a 30% chance the fluctuations are nothing unusual, there is also the possibility they provide evidence of a multiverse.

Chary, a researcher at Planck's U.S. data center in California, was mapping CMB when he spotted the unexpected glow.

The cosmic microwave background is the sunshine left over from the mess of the newly born universe, the traditional shrapnel of the Huge Bang. He then compared his map with that of the entirety of the night sky after which he discovered what seems to be a blob made of bright light. This ancient light is the result of recombination, when electrons and protons first teamed up to create hydrogen.

Furthermore, Jay Pasachoff, chair of the astronomy department at Williams College, affirmed that Chary's observations in the cosmic radiation had many other possible explanations and that it still is too early to explain the phenomenon with a multiverse theory.

In Chary's model of the cosmic background, however, the blob had a different color from what it should have. For a few scientists, the concept of cosmic inflation - the rapid expansion of the early universe - demands the plausibility of a multiverse.

Other skeptical scientists argue that such multiverse theories can not be proven or disproven by empirical science.

Although other scientists have said it is worth exploring additional possibilities for the cause of the ancient lights, such as the properties of foreground dust, Chary himself has eventually decided against it. He explained that while he had originally tried to look into other possibilities as the cause of his discovery, he chose not to pursue them as his ideas on them would be subject to heavy scrutiny.

Others seek a middle ground.

These spots, Chary concluded, may be pieces of evidence that can support the existence of alternate or even parallel universes. Per usual, he says more research will be required to turn his "tentative detection" into "a definitive conclusion".