Leah Broussard, a physicist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, is now attempting to confirm the existence of the so-called "mirror matter" and effectively "open a portal to a parallel universe", as NBC News puts it.
According to the media outlet, the experiment involves sending a beam of subatomic particles past a powerful magnet and straight into an impenetrable wall.
If the experiment is successful, some of the particles will transform into the mirror images and pass through the wall, providing scientists with the first evidence of the "mirror world’s" existence.
Commenting on this development, Broussard herself described the experiment as “pretty straightforward” and “we cobbled together with parts we found lying around, using equipment and resources we already had available at Oak Ridge”.
"It all comes down to: Are we able to shine neutrons through a wall?" she said, noting that "we should see no neutrons" if the conventional physics theory is correct; but if some neutrons do show up, it would mean that "conventional physics is wrong, and the mirror world is real".
The media outlet also notes that Klaus Kirch at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Zurich is also conducting a "complimentary experiment", seeking to "capture slow-moving neutrons, hit them with a magnetic field and then count to see if all the particles are still there".
"If some neutrons oscillated into mirror-neutrons, they would disappear from our apparatus", Kirch explained.