Maybe, though it’s not doing it very fast and the chances of proving it are pretty slim. But it’s fun to think about.The idea is that if you generate a strong enough magnetic potential in a region of space, matter might bolt to another universe/another dimension, assuming that another universe exists. The idea comes courtesy of Michael Sarrazin at the University of Namur in Belgium, who posted a paper at the arVix pre-print clearinghouse suggesting that neutrons kept in captivity in super-cold magnetic “bottles” are slipping away into another universe, or braneworld in the jargon.As MIT’s Technology Review explains, the proof that matter is exiting our world might come in a discrepency in the amount of beta decay neutrons in the bottle are experiencing. “That leaves open the possibility that there might be a third process at work: that some of the extra decay might be the result of neutrons jumping from our universe to another,” TR writes. “So Sarrazin and co have used the measured decay rates to place an upper limit on how often this can happen.”That upper limit suggests that the chance of a neutron saying goodbye sweet world is about one in a million. There is actually a way to investigate this further. The rate of dissappearance should be affected by changes in that magnetic potential, which comes from the Earth’s magnetic field. So if you were to observe changes in the rate of disappearance as the Earth’s magnetic field changes as it orbits the sun over the course of a year, things would start to look even more peculiar. Good luck, gents.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
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