Random Thoughts on the Universe

Friday, January 23, 2009

Have Hidden Dimensions Been Discovered?

About a month ago there was an article posted on the arxiv, which suggests we may already have experimental evidence of hidden dimensions beyond the three (or four if you count time) we already know about.

The main idea is that if there are additional dimensions, then the Universe would contain additional gravitons created shortly after the Big Bang happened. These gravitons would coalesce into a halo around each galaxy, with greater density towards the center.

These graviton clumps would then decay slowly over billions of years and generate a large amount of antimatter in the galaxy. Antimatter cannot exist for long in the presence of matter, so it would quickly annihilate and release radiation that would constantly bombard the Earth.

The interesting thing is that this radiation has been measured! A satellite measured a flux of radiation caused by positrons, and the source of those positrons cannot be explained within the Standard Model.

Of course a lot more research and data will be required to prove this idea, but for now it provides an interesting suggestion that we may have now seen hidden extra dimensions!


FREE hit counter and Internet traffic statistics from freestats.com