Mirror, Mirror

On October 6, 1967, Star Trek broadcast its fourth episode of the second season.  Written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Marc Daniels, the episode focused on a transporter malfunction that swapped Captain Kirk and his companions with their counterparts from a parallel universe.  The episode was entitled Mirror, Mirror, and it introduced the idea of a Mirror Universe to Star Trek.  The episode remains one of the top rated episodes of the initial Star Trek series and a high point in Science Fiction.

I mention that as backdrop, because it seems we have discovered a potential mirror universe intersecting with our own.  NASA has observed the phenomena in Antarctica over a period of years.  Using a weather balloon sent up in the atmosphere to measure high energy particles arriving downward from space, the scientists instead began observing high energy particles exploding up from the ground.  To the scientists, explaining this signal requires the existence of an alternate universe created in the same big bang as our own and existing in parallel with it.  In this mirror world, positive is negative, left is right and time runs backwards.

Up is down.

We've had our transporter accident. 

Now, in the Mirror Universe of Star Trek, it also follows that Evil is Good.  So of course, the crew of the Mirror Universe Enterprise is evil.  You can tell by their goatees.

So if you run into a copy of yourself with a goatee (assuming you don't have one), be wary.  The Mirror Universe is here.

In all seriousness, this is a fascinating discovery that reveals how little we understand about the universe around us.  From dark matter and dark energy to this potential mirror universe intersecting our own, there will always be mysteries of the universe around us.  Additional avenues for us to explore and additional fodder for our science fiction.

To boldly go where no man has gone before...