Backrooms: a Scientific Perspective
How to survive non Euclidean geometry and the dangers of no-clipping out of reality
As a 25 years old guy, I was basically born with internet.
As a former iPad kid growing up, I saw every major trend become popular and then immediately get killed by any corporate trying to make money out of it.
I saw countless idiotic things like the tide pod trend, which basically acted like an hyper-fast natural selection, but also a wide range of silly challenges like the cinnamon or the chubby bunny up to the still silly, but with good faith, trends like the ice bucket challenge, that raised more than 220 million dollars worldwide for research on the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
This to say that I’ve seen my fair share of internet things.
But years of excessive and premature exposition to Youtube could have never ever prepared me to what would come out a simple photo of an empty furniture store snapped back in 2002.
STEP 1: ACKNOWLEDGE THE ANOMALY
In 2019, a random user posted the image you just saw on a thread of the social network known as 4chan, inviting other to join him in the search for:
“disquieting images that just feel off“
Nothing more and nothing less.
A simple invite to share innocent images that would somehow be uncomfortable to look at.
Another anonymous user added some bits of context to the original image, introducing for the first time the name backrooms:
“If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in.
God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.“
And so the first bits of lore were added to what was only an image of a random furniture store.
The concept of no clipping was introduced, explained as the possibility to randomly vanish into this scary realm. The term was taken directly from the gamer slang referencing a cheat that would allow players to pass through normally impenetrable objects, which in this case became an horrifying possibility.
The geometry of this place was defined as “incomprehensible“ and “unnatural”, hundred millions of square miles, all equal and all different, possibly populated by weird and dangerous beings.
A concept so simple became widely popular in the following years, thanks to incredible works made by artists and writers from all around the world, each with its own and unique take on the subject.
Probably the most popular is known online as Kane Pixels, a 20 years old guy who (when he was only 16) started a web series on this topic that led him to direct a full blown movie that it’s currently the biggest opening and domestic box office performance for A24, the movie company behind it.
So, of course backrooms aren’t real and abandoned furniture stores are just… that.
Simple places whose photographs leave us with an uneasy feeling, probably due to their emptiness and to the weird feeling that arises when looking at inhabited places that were once full of life.
But as always, what if there was something true behind it?
What if the Universe proved itself once again to be as weird as the concepts that we invent for our entertainment.
What if no clipping was a true possibility? How could we survive in places with irregular geometries and where could the Backrooms really hide?
STEP 2: PHASE THROUGH A SOLID WALL
So, quantum mechanics is weird.
If you’re not a new reader here, you’ve probably seen me start many posts like that.
But it’s true.
In all of its weirdness, quantum tunneling will always be a favorite of mine. Defined as:
“A quantum mechanical phenomenon in which an object such as an electron or atom passes through a potential energy barrier that, according to classical mechanics, should not be passable due to the object not having sufficient energy to pass or surmount the barrier.”
it can be visualized as always in an easier and simplistic way.
Suppose you’re on a rollercoaster. At some point you arrive at the start of a very steep climb. To go over it, you would need to be going at a certain speed sufficient to overtake it.
That’s just what particles do in a very simplified way. Except sometimes they just don’t have that required speed (more in general energy for the particles) but somewhat they pass it through. They literally pass through the next part of the rollercoaster and reach the section after the climb without actually climbing anything.
Now you might ask: “Well, that’s cool and all, but to reach the Backrooms I would myself have to pass through a wall or a solid surface in some way, so why should I care about particles?”
That’s the actual cool (and kinda spooky) part. We are all made of particles.
So, it could happen. At any moment we could noclip out of reality and find ourselves through the wall we were facing a few seconds before or even worse in a different realm of reality. . .
Ok, to be an actual serious physicist I need to say that this can happen but it simply won’t.
The probability can be roughly estimated to be around:
Still, it’s not zero.
(Here’s a fun Youtube short explaining the scale of this probability).
PHASE 3: DO NOT TRUST YOUR COMPASS
The word “Euclidean” obviously comes from the name Euclid, greek mathematician considered as the father of geometry.
The term is often used to describe the geometry we know from school, that can easily be represented on a flat surface like any piece of paper. It’s safe and secure if you walk in a direction for 10 meters and then walk back for the same distance you end up at the starting point.
Sadly the backrooms don’t always seem to behave like that.
They are a weird and intricate labyrinth actively working against you to make it hard to retrace your steps.
They definitely look more like a type of geometry we would define as non-Euclidean, where the flat and simple sheet of paper now is curved, distorted or folded into itself.
The concept of straight line doesn’t make any sense because curvature makes it impossible in the way we intend it.
We could define two type of non-Euclidean geometries: hyperbolic and spherical.
Now, you might be thinking: wait a minute, Earth is a sphere, so we already live in a non-Euclidean space! That’s totally true, but in our daily lives our movement can be approximated by flat space. When we go to the park we move some meters, which on the scale of the planet do not allow us to “feel” the curvature.
(That’s also the main reason behind the existence of those ridiculous flat-Earthers…)
Also, the spherical curvature is closed, it doesn’t change.
Hyperbolic geometry is the exact opposite of that.
The more we move towards a direction, the more we get further away from it.
Does that sounds any familiar?
The true horror of the Backrooms is that we are Euclidean creatures trapped in a non-Euclidean nightmare, where the math required just to retrace our steps, becomes too hard for us to comprehend.
STEP 4: BEWARE THE COMPACTIFIED DIMENSIONS
The current main problem in theoretical physics is that we have two perfectly fine working theories that describe only certain specific phenomena which, however, cannot communicate between themselves.
Quantum mechanics describes everything that’s subatomic while general relativity deals with huge masses and gravity. However, to this day, we still can’t find a way to make these two theory “communicate”, to find some sort of quantum description of gravity.
The best attempt we ever made is called string theory and it’s an incredibly complicated theory on which physicists have been working for more than 50 years, with cool and at the same time disappointing results.
One of the main weird things about this theory is that to be fully working, it needs 10 dimensions to make sense.
The problem is that we only experience four: 3 of space and one of time. So where are these other dimensions?
To answer these questions, physicists and mathematicians came up with the so-called Calabi-Yau manifolds, unbelievably complex and tiny geometrical shapes that could represent the compactified 6 dimensions that we cannot perceive.
Imagine you see a rope from a very far distance. From where you are, the only thing that can be seen is a thin line that appears to be only two dimensional. But for a tiny insects walking on it, it’s clearly three dimensional. He could go up, down and around it.
That’s a simpler way to see it.
PHASE 5: SEARCH FOR THE EXIT
What if the backrooms were contained in these microscopically folded dimensions that are not described through a Euclidean geometry but are instead ever expanding hyperbolic places only reachable with the incomprehensibly rare phenomenon of quantum tunneling?
I don’t know but I highly doubt it’s true.
So, if you ever do noclip out of reality and into the Backrooms, take a deep breath and remember this post. Everything you are experiencing, and the exact reason you are trapped there in the first place, can be perfectly explained by physics.
Well, kinda.
But hey, look at the bright side, you managed to beat the astronomically impossible odds of quantum tunneling!
If you ever find the exit, I highly advise you to play the lottery.
Good luck!
Brilliant article, to compliment a fantastic film
It was an interesting article, and I enjoyed it. Don’t you think the whole trend of creepypasta incorporating the backrooms into their stories has also played a role in building the myth?