Adventures with Allie

I enjoy learning about interesting phenomena, especially ones that are experienced en mass, and are swimming with conspiracy theories. The Mandela Effect is when many people have a false memory surrounding a specific experience, or historical event.

The name for the Mandela Effect comes from the fact that a large amount of people vividly remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980’s, when in fact, he died at his home in 2013.

Generally, these memories are based in pop culture. Two of the most widely recognized examples involve people misremembering the show “Looney Tunes” being called “Looney Toons” or the children’s books “The Berenstein Bears” being called “The Berenstain Bears.”

Other examples include people remembering Curious George having a tail, when he doesn’t, or people remembering the Monopoly man wearing a monocle when he never has, or the lyrics to Mr. Rodgers’s theme song being “it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood” when in reality, the lyrics have always said “It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood”.

Tim Hollins, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Plymouth explained during a public Q&A session that most of the instances of these mass false memories can be attributed to what is known as “gist memory” which is when someone has a general idea of something, but can’t necessarily remember the specifics, the just get the “Gist” of the memory and let their imagination fill in the blanks.

Like with Curious George, monkeys have tails, Curious George is a Monkey, so Curious George must have a tail right? Totally makes sense.

Now the conspiracy theory that surrounds the Mandela Effect is probably one of the more wild mainstream conspiracy theories out there.

Conspiracy theorists think that we are living in an alternate reality and those of us who remember “wrong” are from the other dimension.

Please reread that sentence. Conspiracy theorists think that we are living in an alternate reality and those of us who remember “wrong” are from the other dimension.

This theory is held largely by those who believe that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN caused us to jump realities when it was first turned on in 2008.

CERN is a scientific research organization located in a heavily equipped lab in the Swiss alps. You may have seen a depiction of this lab in the 2009 movie “Angels and Demons” starring Tom Hanks, the sequel to the movie “The Da Vinci Code”.

I, personally am incredibly interested by the work they do at CERN (even though I only understand about 1/4 of the information they release). Here is the most brief explanation I could find of the work that happens surrounding the Hadron Collider at CERN. This is taken directly from the CERN website:

“The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It first started up on 10 September 2008, and remains the latest addition to CERN’s accelerator complex. The LHC consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way. Inside the accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide. The beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes – two tubes kept at ultrahigh vacuum. They are guided around the accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field maintained by superconducting electromagnets. The electromagnets are built from coils of special electric cable that operates in a superconducting state, efficiently conducting electricity without resistance or loss of energy. This requires chilling the magnets to -271.3°C – a temperature colder than outer space. For this reason, much of the accelerator is connected to a distribution system of liquid helium, which cools the magnets, as well as to other supply services. Thousands of magnets of different varieties and sizes are used to direct the beams around the accelerator. These include 1232 dipole magnets 15 metres in length which bend the beams, and 392 quadrupole magnets, each 5–7 metres long, which focus the beams. Just prior to collision, another type of magnet is used to “squeeze” the particles closer together to increase the chances of collisions. The particles are so tiny that the task of making them collide is akin to firing two needles 10 kilometres apart with such precision that they meet halfway. All the controls for the accelerator, its services and technical infrastructure are housed under one roof at the CERN Control Centre.”

Now, why they would want to cause these partial collisions, is beyond my understanding. I think it has something to do with an Einstein-Rosen Bridge or black holes or something. I could be completely making that up, or that could be the next Mandela Effect, who knows? Surely not me.

All I know for sure is that there are about 1,000 of the smartest physicists from around the world working on this project together and they say the work their doing could change the way we view the universe.

Now, do I subscribe to the theory that CERN caused us to jump into an alternate reality? Absolutely not.

Do I think that the Mandela Effect is a very interesting phenomenon? Absolutely I do.

Falling down the rabbit hole and learning about these wild theories now and again brings my heart some joy, because no matter how crazy I think I am, the internet can always show me that there are crazier people that walk among us.

Be kind to your pets,

Be kind to your crazy neighbors,

And always stay curious.