Have scientists discovered a ‘dark mirror universe’ to ours?

The invisible dark matter remains one of the biggest mysteries in the science world. A news study has proposed the existence of a "dark mirror universe" to ours, Popular Mechanics reported.

Dark matter is the invisible, the unknown mysterious substance that lurks around the universe. According to scientists, it fills up about 85% of our universe, which means for every 1kg of regular matter, there is 5kg of dark matter present.

The reason why we know this is through the study of light, when there is dark matter present, the objects near it gets affected.

Scientists have proposed a new idea in the preprint journal arXiv, explaining the relationship between normal matter and dark matter.

According to it, researchers say that for every physical interaction in normal matter, there is a mirror of it in the dark universe, linking the normal and mirror universe together, Live Science reported.

Furthermore, the paper suggests that while protons and neutrons have the same mass in our world, in the dark realm, this is not the same. In the dark mirror universe protons can evaporate, destabilising the atom interaction between protons and neutrons. As protons are not present, a "free-floating sea of dark neutrons" is created.

This study is not the first to propose the idea of a dark mirror universe, scientists from the University of Toronto suggest that we could see glimpses of dark matter stars, if they contain even the slightest of normal matter.