The first results from a detector designed to look for evidence of particles reaching us from a parallel universe have been unveiled by physicists in France and Belgium. Although they drew a blank, the researchers say that their experiment provides a simple, low-cost way of testing theories beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, and that the detector could be made significantly more sensitive in the future.

A number of quantum theories of gravity predict the existence of dimensions beyond the three of space and one of time that we are familiar with. Those theories envisage our universe as a 4D surface or "brane" in a higher-dimensional space–time "bulk", just as a 2D sheet of paper exists as a surface within our normal three spatial dimensions. The bulk could contain multiple branes separated from one another by a certain distance within the higher dimensions.

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