Stranger Things, season 4: the grand finale in the Upside Down

1983. In the context of the Cold War, the United States and the USSR race for space, but not only. Series Stranger Thingsof which the season 4 comes out on May 27, refers to another hypothetical scientific race: that towards parallel worlds and the manipulation of time, with the Montauk project. Fact or fiction? The Montauk Project is based on conspiracy theories; nothing has been proven. The name refers to the geographical location, a small village in New York State, where the experiments are said to have taken place.

In Stranger Things that we will see again very soon in a season 4, in any case, the researchers of the national laboratory of Hawkins, connected to the department of energiesmanaged to open a gate towards a world parallel to ours: the Upside Down World, or theUpside down in the original version. The places are identical, there are the same electric poles, the same school, the same landmarks, but everything else is different.

Everything is dark there, the life there does not take the same form as in the “real” world. The explanation behind this phenomenon, in the series, is given by Professor Clark: “An acrobat, who stands on a narrow rope, represents our dimension. This dimension has rules: he can only move forwards and backwards on the rope. But if we consider a flea on this same rope, it can move in both directions, but also pass under the rope: in the Upside Down World”.

The Upside Down as described in Stranger Things, is not possible

If reality is full of theories that evoke the multiverse or worlds parallel to ours, there is never any question of a world where everything is more or less identical and in which we can pass through a breach. Even less where only one intelligence has control over all this world, like the mind flayer, or Mind Flayer in the French version. But theories approach it, which suppose a universe mirror of ours or in parallel. Even worlds in parallel. In particular the theories within the framework of the gravity quantum, which attempt to reconcile the quantum physics and the general relativity ofEinsteinand which respectively describe the world on a very small scale and on a very large scale.

Among them, let’s focus first on the string theory. Established in the 1970s to explain the particular behavior of hadrons, particles of the standard model, it rather corresponds to a theoretical framework from which many other theories then derive. It starts from the principle that the fundamental particles, those which one cannot “break” to find other sub-elements, are in fact one-dimensional vibrating strings. Moreover, our world would not be in four dimensions — one of time and three of space — but in ten, even eleven dimensions.

Series Stranger Things could refer to a mirror world

However, many dimensions are folded on themselves on a scale of the order of the Planck length (10^-35m), invisible to us. Unless… ? Researchers have tested the possibility that neutrons can pass briefly into a parallel dimension and then return to our world. These particles are usually confined within the atomic nucleus, along with their positively charged companions, the protons. But when they are alone, they quickly disintegrate into protons. Depending on the method used to measure the duration before this disintegration, the researchers find a different time.

????Sleazy STEREO experience on parallel worlds???? Could there be a hidden parallel world? Physicists talk about “hidden brane”…➡️https://t.co/RYb79T4ZFG@ILLGrenoble@CEAIrfu@IN2P3_CNRS@LAPPCNRS@LPSCGrenoble & MPIKHeidelberg#neutrons#neutrinospic.twitter.com/phS2Rjk0Bl

— Laboratory of Subatomic Physics & Cosmology (@LPSCGrenoble) January 31, 2022

Hence the hypothesis, to explain this difference, that they would pass into a world ” mirror of ours before returning. The laws of physics would be practically the same there. The black matter could be there, but most of the particles of our world could not go there, with the exception of the neutrons in a particular form of oscillation. Nor could the forces be transmitted, except for the gravitation. In practice, the experiment to test this hypothesis consists of trying to pass neutrons “through” a wall : they arrive from the source to the detector when they encounter an obstacle which prevents their passage. Of course, no possibility of transposing this on a large scale as for Stranger Thingsbut nothing prevents you from dreaming!

Many theories appeal to the multiverse

Among the many solutions to string theory is that of cosmic inflation. According to this theory, at the beginning of the existence of our Universe, the latter would have undergone a phase of very accelerated expansion, allowing it to expand by a factor of 10.²⁶ in just 10^-35 seconds.

This very short phase would have stopped in our region of the Universe, but would have continued elsewhere: a multiverse composed of multiple universe bubbles distinct would then have been created, in which the laws of physics are different. But, in this case, impossible to be in contact with these parallel universes, since they are inaccessible!

Everett and the Many Worlds Theory

Finally, let’s look at quantum physics. It describes physics on a very small scale, that of elementary particles… and full of curiosities! For example, the principle of superposition, which derives from the mathematical interpretation of quantum physics : the same quantum state, a particle for example, can have several values ​​for a certain observable quantity. In practice, this means that the quantum states are described by probabilities: it is only once the observer looks at the system that the value is imposed.

Of this overlay of states have resulted from many theories and interpretations, such as that of multiple worlds described by physicist and mathematician Hugh Everett. It suggests a multiplicity of worlds in parallel: the particle where the quantum state takes on one of the values ​​in each of these worlds. Everything would exist within a quantum universe governed by a single solution of Schrodinger’s equation: the universal wave function. Unfortunately, this interpretation is not yet verifiable, for lack of experiments to test it.