Since the 1970s, astronomers have deduced that the universe is packed full of “
dark matter,” a substance that cannot be observed directly but whose powerful gravitational pull helps keep galaxies from flying apart. The latest analyses indicate that dark matter outweighs visible matter by a factor of five. Yet dozens of intensive searches by astronomers around the world have failed to identify what dark matter is made of.
Zurab Berezhiani, a physicist at the University of L’Aquila in Italy who has conducted his own
mirror neutron searches, offers an intriguing explanation: Dark matter has been hard to find because it is hidden away in the mirror world. In this view, dark matter and mirror matter are one and the same. If so, the mirror world is not just ubiquitous, it is far more massive than our own. At a recent physics conference, Berezhiani
expanded on the idea, outlining a possible parallel reality full of mirror stars, mirror galaxies and mirror black holes. Maybe even dark life?