A Paraverse Interaction Map Might Be More Empirically Warranted Than a Dark Matter Map

 There they go again: claiming to have a map of something never observed. 

This time it's an article in the Daily Mail with this headline: "See dark matter like NEVER before: NASA reveals one of the most detailed maps of the elusive substance yet – confirming its vital influence on the universe."  We have these claims:

"NASA has revealed one of the most detailed maps of dark matter yet. Taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the map suggests the elusive substance acts as a hidden framework on which entire galaxies are built...'By revealing dark matter with unprecedented precision, our map shows how an invisible component of the Universe has structured visible matter to the point of enabling the emergence of galaxies, stars, and ultimately life itself,' explained Dr Gavin Leroy, co–author of the study."

But how can someone have a map of dark matter locations when dark matter has never been observed? All attempts thus far to make direct observations of dark matter have failed. Dark matter doesn't even have a place in the Standard Model of Physics, and no evidence for it has turned up at the Large Hadron Collider. 

We have in the Daily Mail article a claim that the map of dark matter was made by studying gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing is what the article is referring to when the article states this: "Because dark matter is invisible, the team looked for it by observing how its mass curves space itself, which in turn bends the light travelling to Earth from distant galaxies."

 But observations of gravitational lensing are not equivalent to observations of dark matter. Gravitational lensing is a strange effect produced on light rays bent by the gravity of high concentrations of matter. Such matter can be any type of matter: either normal matter or possibly some type of dark matter. 

As Scientific American puts it when describing gravitational lensing:

"According to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, mass warps space, so a large amount of matter in the foreground of a galaxy can bend its light in a way that makes it look slightly squashed. This is true whether the foreground mass is made of invisible dark matter or ordinary matter."
 
So if you are claiming to have a map of dark matter made by observing gravitational lensing, you are doing something rather like announcing that you have a map of UFO landing sites made by observing small burnt patches in the forest. Such patches might be produced by hot UFO's that are landing, but they also might be produced by ordinary lightning flashes, or by people setting campfires.

We have in the Daily Mail article some misleading language by a scientist, the language below:

"Dr Diana Scognamiglio, co–author of the study from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: 'This is the largest dark matter map we've made with Webb, and it's twice as sharp as any dark matter map made by other observatories.

'Previously, we were looking at a blurry picture of dark matter. 

'Now we're seeing the invisible scaffolding of the Universe in stunning detail, thanks to Webb's incredible resolution'." 

No, there was no actual "dark matter map" created. All that went on is that scientists saw things that can be explained by matter, and jumped to the conclusion that such things were made by dark matter, without any adequate warrant. You can't see things that are invisible. 

The scientific paper of these claimants is entitled "An ultra-high-resolution map of  (dark) matter."  The title is inaccurate. The paper has figures, and none of them is labeled as a map of dark matter. The term "dark matter" is not even used in any of the captions of the paper's figures. We have here another case of what is so common these days in science literature: citation-hungry scientists giving their papers titles that do not match what is in the paper. 

What scientists call "dark matter" is something they believe is not actually dark matter but instead invisible matter. A more candid term for "dark matter" would be "spooky matter." Scientists boasting about having created a dark matter map may say that they "saw dark matter." But they should instead merely be saying that they saw regular matter and energy, and that they inferred dark matter or guessed that dark matter was somewhere. 

What type of "map of the spooky" would have much more empirical  warrant than the claimed "map of spooky matter" that is a claimed dark matter map? It would be what we might call a paraverse interaction map 

To explain such a map, I must explain the concept of the paraverse, explained in my 2016 post "The Possibility of a Paraverse." The term paraverse is formed from the end of the word “universe” and from the prefix “para,” which means “beside” or “to the side of.” We can define a paraverse as some hypothetical realm of existence that is in some sense connected to our universe in a way that allows information and causal influences to flow between our universe and this other realm of existence. 

The two main differences between the multiverse concept and the paraverse concept are as follows:

1. The multiverse concept postulates many other universes, while the paraverse concept postulates only a single other realm of existence (without excluding the possibility of additional universes). 
2. The multiverse idea typically postulates universes that are completely isolated from each other, without communication or interaction between any two of the universes; but conversely the paraverse concept says there may indeed be interaction or communication between our universe and some other realm of existence, with perhaps causes and effects sometimes flowing between the two.

The visual below illustrates the difference between the two ideas. The arrows represent interaction or communication. 

In the diagram above the arrows ---> and <--- represent causal interaction. 

In imagining a paraverse we should be as flexible and open-minded as possible. A paraverse might be a very physical place such as we know. Or it might be some ethereal state of existence very different from our existence. Beings living in a paraverse might be biological beings, or they might be beings of energy or purely spiritual beings. Maybe some of these beings once lived on Earth. 

Given the limits of our knowledge, it would seem to make little sense to try to make a map of the paraverse. There are those who claim that after you die, you go to an afterlife realm that has seven levels. But the basis of such claims seems to be too thin to allow any map of the paraverse to be created. 

However, there is a different type of "map of the spooky" that could be made with some empirical warrant. It is what we might call a map of paraverse interactions.  A paraverse interaction may be defined as some occurrence in our world of some inexplicable paranormal phenomenon that seems to be some interaction involving causal agency between a paraverse and our familiar world. 

A map of paraverse interactions would simply be a map showing where on planet Earth the most inexplicable paranormal phenomena have been observed. I will not attempt to make such a map. But I can mention a few places that should probably be marked by anyone creating such a map. 

One such place would be London, England, the site of some of the most well-documented paranormal events in history, such as those discussed in my posts here, here,  here, and here. Another such place would be some spots in upstate New York state, USA corresponding to the phenomena reported in my posts here and here. Two other such places might be Fatima, Portugal and Lourdes, France. Another such place might be the city of Boston in the USA, where lived the medium Leonora Piper, whose case is described here. Another such place might be New York City, USA, particularly Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan, where I have photographed more than 1000 mysterious orbs, as you can see by using the link here, and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right. Below is one of the photos, from 2015.

The same city has been the sight of a long series of extremely spooky events described in my post here and my series of 100+ posts you can read here by continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right of each page. 

A thorough attempt at a paraverse interaction map might well also include various locations in India and Brazil where paranormal events have been reported. Unlike the "dark matter map" which scientists groundlessly boasted about, a paraverse interaction map would be a map listing the locations of baffling sights that people actually saw or photographed. 

Mysterious Blue Indoor Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 11)

Below is Part 11 of a retrospective showing some of the better photos I have taken indoors of mysterious blue orbs photographed indoors. 

The photo below shows a transparent blue orb I photographed in Grand Central Terminal in New York.

  In my photos below, we see two mysterious orbs that are both aligning to lines.  One aligns to the edge of a window, and the other aligns to the beveled edge line to the right of the window.

The photos below both show mysterious orbs I photographed in front of the same spot near the central information desk at Grand Central Terminal in New York.

Below we see two mysterious orbs I photographed in Grand Central Terminal in New York (both of these were cropped from the same photo). 

The photo below shows a mysterious blue orb or blue orbs I photographed near a flag in Grand Central Terminal. It could be seven different position states of a single blue orb, as we might see if the orb was moving both down and sideways at the same time. 

In my photo below we see a mysterious blue orb that rather seems to have perched on a woman's shoulder.

In the photo below we see a mysterious orb I photographed in Grand Central Terminal.

A Bright Orb

 Photo date: January 23, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious  orb I photographed indoors. 

Mysterious Red Sky Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 5)

 Below are some photos I previously took of mysterious red orbs in the sky. All of the photos were taken in clean, dry air when there was no fog, mist, rain or precipitation.

The photos below show mysterious orbs I photographed at the edge of a park area in New York City.

My photo below shows some mysterious orbs I photographed near an electrical wire in New York City.  Were they attracted to the electricity in the wire?

The photo below shows a red orb and a purple orb I photographed near a building in New York City. Is that a sky smooch we see?

The photos below show some colorful orbs I photographed above windows in New York City.  We see colors of green, orange, red, and purple.

The photos below show three red orbs I photographed in the sky.

The photo below shows a red orb I photographed above a building in New York City.

The grid below shows various photos I have taken of mysterious red orbs in the air.

A Mysterious "Snowfall Selectivity"

 After waking up this morning, I went upstairs and looked out the front window of the house where I live, seeing a puzzling sight. It had begun snowing, and I could see snow in the front walkways of both of my neighbors. But (except for a single rectangle about a meter wide) there was basically no snow in either the front walkway of the house where I live, nor in the sidewalk in front of the house (outside the fence). Here is what it looked like from the front door. Notice there is snow on the front walkway of my neighbor to the left, but none on my walkway. 

I asked my wife and one of my daughters whether they shoveled the front walkway, and they said they had not. I struggled to come up with a hypothesis to explain the anomaly. Remembering that our neighbor on the right side is a very nice man, I suggested to them the idea that maybe he had shoveled our front walkway and also the sidewalk in front of the house. This seemed like a farfetched idea, because I noticed that this neighbor's front walkway looked like no one had shoveled it. It seemed hard to believe that the neighbor would shovel both our front pathway and the front sidewalk, without doing any such work for his own front pathway and front sidewalk. 

Investigating further, I found another strange anomaly. In the area just in front of the house where I live, there was a single concrete rectangle that had snow; but otherwise the area was free of snow. The effect is shown below:

There is no reason why anyone would have shoveled the area in the bottom half of the photo above, as you can enter and exit the house without going through such an area. 

We see a "rectangle of precipitation" effect that is not explained by any structural feature of the house. There is nothing but open air above the area shown in the photo above, nothing that could explain why only one of the concrete rectangles is covered in snow. 

The effect reminds me of what I have repeatedly seen and photographed, with the photos appearing in my post "When Raindrops Fall Non-Randomly: A Marvel of 'Precipitation Selectivity'" which you can read here.  For example, On December 7, 2023 the effect appeared as below, during light snowfall. The precipitation seemed to wet only one of the concrete rectangles of the back lot. 

The effect that I have observed very many times in the back lot (and which I have photographically documented in the post above)  is that when it first starts to rain, at first only one of the concrete rectangles in the backyard will become wet, with all of the other rectangles remaining dry. Eventually when the rain picks up, the whole back lot will be wet. There are no structural features that explain this, and the whole area shown in the photo above is open to falling raindrops. 

Part of the reason I take seriously the idea that water (or precipitation that is mainly water) may behave in a non-random manner (with a kind of selectivity) is that over the course of several years (while photographing water drops falling in front of me) I photographically documented an extremely strong effect of falling water drops behaving in a dramatically non-random manner, with very noticeable patterns arising and often persisting for hundreds of consecutive photos. For 700+ posts of mine documenting this effect, see my series of posts here, while continuing to press "Older Posts" at the bottom. To see the whole series in a way that allows finger-swiping through the whole series, use the link here. 

A Huge Mysterious Striped Blue Orb in Outer Space?

 While reading the science news this morning (as I do every day) I saw a BBC article entitled "Mysterious 'iron bar' discovery in space may reveal Earth's future."  We see a deep space picture of what looks like a giant striped blue orb, one with a red stripe, and a green gaseous ring around the blue part. The structure is larger than the size of our solar system. 

As someone who has been avidly following astronomy news for much longer than half a century, I have a bit of skepticism about this story. The structure photographed is the Ring Nebula. I have been seeing photos of the Ring Nebula for most of my life, and they never showed a noticeable stripe-like structure in its center. Apparently the authors of the scientific paper have done some type of special processing to yield a red stripe in the middle of the blue circular center of the Ring Nebula. They claim that there's lot of iron in the stripe. We know what causes objects like the Ring Nebula (supernova explosions), but do not understand why any stripe or bar shape would arise in such an object. 

I have a doubt or two about the analysis of the authors of this paper, but I do know one thing. I have personally photographed more than 65 mysterious striped blue orbs, which you can see using the link here, and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom. 

When Purple Sky Orbs Formed Columns

 My 2017  photo below shows two purple orbs I photographed near a tall tower in New York City.

My 2017 photo below shows on its right three purple sky orbs I photographed near a building in New York City.