This article is a bit of fun, but also quite serious, and it seems apropos of the season that when Christians are celebrating the ultimate "portal opening" that scientists are trying to come up with their own version. This story was spotted and shared by J.K. (thank you), and since we've discussed such topics many times in our vidchats and occassionally in public blogs on this site, it seems appropriate to do so again.

The fun part of this article comes from the fact that it's a tabloid newspaper, The NY Post, that's reporting it from last July:

Scientists are trying to open a portal to a parallel universe

In spite of the headline here, that scientists are trying to open a "portal", the experiment involves, I rather suspect, something else entirely, namely, quantum tunneling. Here's what's said about the experiment:

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in eastern Tennessee are trying to open a portal to a parallel universe. The project — which has been compared to the Upside Down in the Netflix blockbuster “Stranger Things” — hopes to show a world identical to ours where life is mirrored. Leah Broussard, the physicist leading the experiment, told NBC the plan is “pretty wacky” but will “totally change the game,” ahead of a series of experiments she plans to run this summer. Broussard’s experiment will fire a beam of subatomic particles down a 50-foot tunnel. The beam will pass a powerful magnet and hit an impenetrable wall, with a neutron detector behind it. If the experiment is successful, particles will transform into mirror images of themselves, allowing them to burrow right through the impenetrable wall. (Emphasis added)

Now why do I suspect that this is about quantum tunneling and not "opening portals"? Because quantum tunneling is the phenomenon whereby small atomic or sub-atomic particles somehow burrow their way through impenetrable barriers, usually very thin ones. In classical pre-quantum mechanical era physics, they should not be able to do this. What's interesting here, however, is that the "wall" appears to be thicker, and that the experiment is predicated on a hypothesis that many have thought to be the reality behind the phenomenon: the creation of "mirror images" of the particle impacting the barrier emerging on the other side of it. In other words, the particle doesn't really burrow through the barrier, but rather, knocks a particle in the barrier - a mirror image of itself - loose. In a way, it's a kind of entanglement. What the article is suggesting is that this experiment is being conducted on much larger levels and scales than previous tunneling experiments, perhaps to see if the tunneling phenomenon itself can occur at much larger scales than hitherto thought. If so, then it would dovetail nicely with recent experiments demonstrating that entanglement itself can occur at much larger scales than previously thought.

But at the very end of the article, there's a statement that forms the matrix for today's high octane speculation:

However, there wouldn’t be an alternate version of you. Current theory, the outlet explains, only hypothesizes that mirror atoms and mirror rocks are possible — and perhaps even mirror planets and stars.

It's that statement that I take is the clue for the idea that the tunneling phenomenon may work at larger scales than once thought. But it's that statement that "there wouldn't be an alternate version of you," that really sent my high octane speculation motor into overdrive, for what it suggests is that there's no reason to expect that conscious intention has anything to do with the tunneling phenomenon.

Here I beg to differ, and strongly suspect that the exact opposite might be true. After all, at the heart of quantum mechanics is the Uncertainty Principle that one cannot measure the position and momentum of an electron at the same time, one must choose one or the other. And it's that act of choosing one or the other than put the Observer squarely in the center of modern physics,for before an experiment is even performed, one has already determined the quality of its outcome based on that choice. This has led to a whole new focus on the Observer not only within physics, but within scientific studies of "the paranormal" (for want of a better expression). Anyone familiar with the work of retired materials science professor at the University of California, Dr. William Tiller, will be familiar with the astonishing results of his experiments in the ability of mere human intention to alter material or chemical states with measurable results. Similar experiments were performed during the USA's covert and highly classified "remote viewing" experiments of the 1970s and 1980s.

Now apply that idea to the tunneling phenomenon: could it be rendered more, or less, efficient by human intentionality? I suspect so, and if I can think of it, rest assured, they have too, but we'll probably never hear about the results of those experiments...

See you on the flip side...