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As the LHC supposedly gears up, Harvard physicist Kevin Black, based at CERN, investigates rumors that the particle accelerator may, in fact, soon be shut down—by ripples from the future.
From Kevin Black:
 | | (Image: CERN) |
I came across a bizarre paper recently suggesting that the LHC might be shut down. Not because of the funding cuts that have been threatening particle physics projects around the world, nor because of law suits accusing the LHC of threatening life on Earth. (Not even because we at the LHC have recently been accused of having far too much fun rapping.)
No, the paper suggested that future effects caused by the production of particles, such as the Higgs, could ripple backwards in time and prevent the LHC from ever operating.
If it hadn't been written by two very well respected and accomplished theoretical physicists, I would have stopped reading at the title alone:"Test of Effect from Future in Large Hadron Collider; A Proposal". To be completely honest, the title reads like titles that occasionally appear in my inbox—“Relativity Principle Untenable," "Quantum Mechanics a Hoax," and other nerdy versions of the emails from the supposed attorney of my long-lost Nigerian uncle who apparently has died and left me millions of dollars, if I can only send him $50,000 so that he can get it to me.
But I didn't stop. I read the article. I read it for another reason other than the somewhat awkwardly sounding title and not just because the authors, Holger Nielsen, of the University of Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya, of Kyoto University, are somewhat famous. I read it because when I come across such things it tends to remind me of the first time I learned about quantum mechanics. To be honest, if it hadn't come from a professor at a university and a published text book I would have thought that the whole thing was some sort of a scam as well. I mean, really? Sometimes it acts as a wave and sometimes it acts as a particle? The first time I heard about wave/particle duality I was expecting to be asked to send the authors money (perhaps to Nigeria?).
So what did the article say? Well, it started out with a reasonable enough point. One of the basic assumptions of classical physics is that time flows in one direction and that when describing a physical system one needs to know the equations of motion and the initial conditions in order to predict the future behavior of a classical system.
However, quantum mechanics changes this a bit. Classical mechanics can be formulated in such a way that one sets up an “action” integral. The solution to the physical system can be expressed as the path that minimizes the action integral. It turns out that in quantum mechanics one needs to not simply take one path—but take the sum over all possible paths. For example, if you want to work out how a photon gets from a lightbulb to your eye, you need to take into account not just its straight-line trajectory, but contributions of all possible paths it could have taken, including paths where the photon bounces round the room. It's a bit strange, but it seems to work and 60 years+ of detailed experiments have confirmed this description over and over again to remarkable quantitative precision.
The authors of this paper claim to show that other terms can be added to the quantum mechanical action that are consistent with current theory and experiment. However, some of these possible terms include conditions in the future that need to be taken into account and summed over. That is to say, what happens in the future could (according to this paper) affect what happens in the present.
Why the LHC? The authors argue that these sorts of time-violating interactions could be associated with whatever new particles we create at the LHC. For example, the production of a large number of Higgs particles in the future could have a backwards-in-time causal effect on the machine that produced them, stopping the machine from ever running. As possible “evidence” for such a backwards-in-time effect, the authors cite the now-canceled Superconducting Super Collider (SSC)—a particle accelerator that was meant to hunt the Higgs and was partially constructed in Texas before Congress pulled the plug on the project. As the authors write in their paper: “Such a cancellation after a huge investment is already in itself an unusual event that should not happen too often. We might take this event as experimental evidence for our model in which an accelerator with the luminosity and beam energy of the SSC will not be built.”
It’s as though the Higgs plays the role of the time traveler who goes back to the past and murders his grandfather, thus preventing his own birth.
Now, I must admit that this is where I started to get a bit skeptical. The authors go on to suggest that the LHC is also under threat from a possible “miraculous” shutdown caused by the backward influence of particles like the Higgs, which it may create in the future: “Since the LHC has a performance approaching the SSC, it suggests that also the LHC may be in danger of being closed under mysterious circumstances.”
Visions of the X-Files’ Fox Mulder launching into some hour-long diatribe about future conditions (and of course government conspiracies) started to appear. But I read on nonetheless, becoming a little bit more amused and a lot more confused as I tried to finish the paper.
 | | (Image: margot mystic) |
In order to make it topical they proposed an experiment. Play a game of cards—a kind of particle physics tarot—to determine if future LHC conditions could affect the draw of the cards. The idea being that if the cards were arranged to represent different possible LHC outcomes—discovery of the Higgs particle, discovery of SUSY, failure or cancellation of the LHC, destruction of the world by the creation of mini-black holes, etc—then what actually happens in the future could affect the outcome of the card drawn now.
As crazy as it sounds, it’s at least a novel idea. Certainly, time travel and causality violation are topics that physicists, such as FQXi’s Ken Olum, are seriously investigating (see “Charting the River of Time”); so why not look for backwards causation at the LHC?
As an experimentalist working at CERN, I’m ready to pull cards out of a hat in the name of science, even at the risk of prognosticating the demise of the LHC. However, I can't get my head around one basic thing. How can this possibly prove or disprove the theory? They went through some argument (which I can't say I completely understood) claiming that a concrete test of this idea could be put in place, but I am not convinced. Even if I pull the “shutdown card” and the LHC is indeed shut down, how will I know that this is proof and not just a strange coincidence?
Conventionally, scientific hypotheses are considered “scientific” if and only if they can be falsified by some experiment (at least in principle). That is to say, it may not be technically possible to conduct such an experiment right now but at least in principle such an experiment could be made. That's the part I couldn't get my head around. How could you ever design an experiment that would disprove future causal influence on a current condition? I just can't imagine how one could do that, but I am open to suggestions. Any ideas?
So, for now, I will just put down the paper and get back to the grind of my usual days—debugging software and trying to commission the ATLAS muon spectrometer. I will pass this paper off as quirky, but probably not likely to lead to any major discoveries. But then again, one day I might be teaching this experiment out of a text book to incredulous students who think I am trying to sell them the Brooklyn bridge...
--
Kevin Black is a postdoc at Harvard University. He works with the ATLAS experiment at CERN, and sincerely hopes that LHC isn’t shut down any time soon.
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"How could you ever design an experiment that would disprove future causal influence on a current condition?"
build more than 1 identical LHC and see if they ALL shut down under mysterious circumstances. 20 would be enough, 100 would be better. you did say "in principle" :)
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> Even if I pull the “shutdown card” and the LHC is indeed shut down, how will I know that this is proof and not just a strange coincidence?
Well, one way to do it is to conduct the experiment more than once. If there's only one shutdown card and you pull it out of a deck of 52 cards 10 times in a row, that would be a pretty good indication that it's not just random chance.
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Both interesting ideas - but again I am stuck on the scientific proof issue. I guess the crux of the problem is that the way that I am used to thinking of scientific proof means essentially providing a reproducible causal link between two events. No doubt the experiments that you propose could be reproducible - but do they prove a causal link. I think the heart of the matter is what you define to be causal. Its hard for me to imagine proving that something in the future caused something in the present to occur. To start with - how do you know what did or didn't happen in the future if something that happens then stops it from ever happening??
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This could never happen - the Microsoft OS that runs the universe doesn't do multi threading.
Seriously though I want to be in the time thread alternate universe where the collider finds does nothing. I feel safer.
www.vivzizi.com
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I am -totally- out of my depth when it comes to considering physics [I'm not even going to say 'higher physics'].
However, the fantastic comes easy to me.
So here's a thought: -if- running the LHC teaches us something wildly spectacular about the way time flows in more than one direction [don't ask me to expand on that, please, have mercy] and this effect can be kinda sorta maybe controlled: would it occur to the scientists working on the -then- machine to design an experiment that flows back in time [don't ask me how, -tell me-] to make the -now- machine behave in a totally unanticipated way which would act as a strong indicator that such a thing was possible?
And if it is: why have we not yet seen any strong evidence of it? Does it require the LHC to be operating at least once, to establish causality that in -this- universe the device actually functions as designed and it can receive a signal? Maybe it requires modifications that have not yet been completed, much less considered?
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Just to tweak a little: Doctor Black mentions the paper referring to 'some events that would stop the machine' by dint of the huge amount of Higgs particles it would generate.
I specifically mean: an experiment, by adjusting the way the machine works, that would allow -then- to send an unambiguous message back to -now-. It doesn't have to be the complete works of Shakespeare, it should be an outcome that the machine could not possibly come up with on its own, the first 10 primes pulsing in sequence for instance.
Not eloquence, just a glaring signal: LOOK HERE, SOMETHING'S HAPPENING!!!
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You should read Thrice Upon A Time:
http://www.amazon.com/Thrice-Upon-Time-James-Hogan...
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This sounds to me like someones lame excuse for missing a deadline.
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Maybe you guys are going about this the wrong way? It's like those illusion drawings where they depict impossible 3d shapes on a 2d bit of paper. There is no problem because the actual illusion is only 2d. The mind invents the third dimension. And that contradicts. But there is no real physical problem.
It sounds crazy to use a time machine to go back in time and prevent the machine from being built. But what happens is that as soon as you go back you go to a version of the "then where you went back". Which is different from the "then where you did not go back". (The then you remember.)The idea that there is a loop is just an illusion. In reality there is a continuous consistent time line for the observer involved.
The other observer, the experimenter experiencing his machine being wrecked apparently by himself from the future is also continuous. No laws are broken by this. Something appears from another place and stops him from building a time machine. Then it leaves again. There is no problem if you consider this two superpositions of the same universe. Which is perfectly acceptable in quantum mechanics. Our normal mode of thinking would have one exclude the other. But there is no actual physical exclusion.
The fact that something appears out of nowhere sounds like a law broken. But quantum mechanics allows for this. The odds against it are astronomic. But its theoretically possible for complete objects to appear out of nowhere. No matter how unlikely the odds. This allows for a time line to cross itself without forcing the whole system into an infinite loop.
There would be a law broken if the experimenter who's machine is destroyed before being finished would later use that machine to go back to the past. That would be impossible since it was broken.He cannot get from that position to the point where he travels back in time in it.
It's a bit complicated because it requires another way to look at the problem. But you can easily do it by just imagining being the experimenter and allowing for multiple possibilities. Don't observe the bigger picture just stick close to the locality of the experimenter and note that there is no contradiction.
This is like Einsteins relativity. Implications of that allow us to theoretically go faster than light seemingly breaking the laws of physics. Unless you look at it locally and realize no laws are actually broken.
I think most problems people have with time travel are directly related to their instinctive response to consider space and time independent of the observer. Which is not accurate as Einstein patiently explained to us :)
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ok I made a python program to test this theory, and here is my first result (and only, since i only ran it once)..
'nothing out of the ordinary'
here is my python program:
import random
c = ('nothing out of the ordinary', 'explosion', 'shutdown','black hole', 'time travel', 'anything can happen')
print random.choice(c)
...ok just ran it 4 times more to make sure it was working and my next three results were the same as the first, 'nothing out of the ordinary'. the fourth one was 'explosion'.
based on these results, there is only a 20% chance of explosion, 0% chance of time travel, 0% chance of creating a black hole, 0% chance of something unexpected happening, and 80% chance of it operating as expected.
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The effect they describe reminds me of time loop computation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=273822#Time_loop_logic
perhaps this could be used for a proof of causality.
The idea is write a program that waits for some effect sent back from the future. Next, perform a calculation (like solving some np-hard problem) such that not solving it would result in a paradox based on the event or message from the future. Therefore, if the universe is paradox-free, you would always solve the calculation.
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Absintereo: Thanks for the thoughtful post, that sounds a lot like "Benders Big Score" futurama movie to me, thanks for helping make more sense of it's plotline. Futurama also did an episode about universes in boxes which really confused me :)
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How could you ever design an experiment that would disprove future causal influence on a current condition?
You turn on the machine. That's the experiment.
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Here's a more concrete example... say we somehow had a device that could create higgs particles at will (hopefully the LHC =]), and, lets say we know it will only break if we try to use it.
Next, lets say we want to determine once and for all if there are any pair-primes over 10^100 or something.
So, we start calculating, iterating over possible paired primes. When we find one, we immediately use our device to create a higgs particle (thereby breaking our device at some prior time).
Meanwhile, we monitor our device to see if it ever breaks. If it breaks (and we havent used it yet), we know we must have used it at some point in the future. Therefore, we must have found a really large prime-pair.
Those are really tough criterion in the first pp. maybe there is something simpler...
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Perhaps if you were to set up several kinds of experiments that depend on random events and observe a distance relationship from the core of the experiment it could be taken as reproducible evidence of the influence of the experiment from the future. Such things as radioactive decay rates could be measured for example as a function of distance and orientation from the core as a function of time till the experiment is suppose to take place. If any of these kinds of observations could be made and documented I would like know...
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Hmmm...wasn't LHC supposed to be running by now? Why the delay? Magnet issues, cooldown rates...what excuse will we see next?
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I'm not a physicist either, just a programmer reading reddit. So you shouldn't take this seriously, but...
My theory about time travel is that if someone does an experiment that alters things in the past, the new past would slightly change the experiment, because even small things like breaking a twig in a forest, cause exponential growth of perturbations in the resultant future.
Any experiment that changes the past will be altered in the alternate time-line... therefore the alternate experiment will cause a slightly different affect on the past, which in turn alters the experiment more, changing the past again etc... in a loop.
To break out of the loop, the changes to the past will need to stop. What we see in our reality is the final outcome, when the past stops changing.
So I agree with the authors of the paper, that if in the future you do an experiment that alters something in the past, it's likely that machine from the future has already caused a reality for us that prohibits the past-altering machine to exist. Even if you could do a test with a "shut-down card", is it more likely that our reality will change to pick the "shut-down card" instead of being changed to have a faulty component in the machine? I think that the machine is more likely to have a faulty component in our reality, given that it's the closest thing to the past-changing particles created.
So I think the tree in the forest will burn down in our reality, just to stop you from going back in time to break one of its twigs. Since small changes in the past cause many iterations of changing the past (because the machine is changed each time), and since those changes grow exponentially, I like to call my theory the 'Chaos Theory of Time Travel.'
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I'm Not sure I understand the problem at all. You don't need an experiment to prove causality. You need a theory that makes definite predictions and is falsifiable.
The definite predictions are "you will choose the shut down card." And the falsifying result is: "You will not pull out a shut down card."
If it's not a 1/50 card you're pulling but a whole object pulled out of quantum theory at odds of 1/a lot, you don't need as many expirements.
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'near-periodicity' springs to mind
and
Turing's (praise be) Halting Machine
and
Zenoan Riddles/Paradoxes.
fwiw: 'mini black holes' ftw.
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Has anyone seen the film Primer? Do so at your own peril!
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Ok, so a single draw of cards is problematic because random chance could make the shutdown card pop up. Another problem is if such a card poped up, no one would seriously even consider shutting down the plant so the backwards causality would work on that anyways. What you have to do first is to come up with a test that will be so convincing as to shut down this many billion dollered investment. One possible way to retain the card idea is to make the option to shut down the plant much much more unlikely. Say, 10 decks and you have to draw all 520 cards in a specific order... TWICE!!! lol Then you would have an order of improbability so high as to be quite impossible for it to be chance, and while it might not lead to the shutdown of the LDC it would certainly freak people out enough to put it on hiatus to figure out the physics behind what the hell just happened. Interestingly if this worked you might be able to harness the improbability to do fantastic things. A la hitchhikers guide to the galaxy's improbability drive. We'll only shut down the LCH if someone invents cold fusion... tomorrow!
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You come to a fork in the road. One branch leads to success, the other to certain doom.
In the crotch of the Y are two skulls. One only tells the truth, the other only tells lies. You may ask one question.
How do you find the safe path?
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What an elementary problem, I don't see the relevance though.
You ask one skull, it doesn't matter which, the following question: "If I asked the other skull which path leads to success, what would be its answer?"
Go down the other path.
Back on topic. I accept that there may be particles that travel backwards in time, but can someone explain to me how it is conceivable that these particles would create a 'miracle' (the example given by the paper seems to be convincing Congress to cut funding of the SSC) many orders beyond simple interaction with other particles?
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you ask either skull "which way would the other skull tell me to go to get to success?", and go the opposite wzy
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I am not a physicist, so am certainly confused about the line that implies a theoretical particle traveled backwards in time and convinced Congress to cut funding for the SSC.
One stretch of an explanation: Higgs-bosons (or whatever theoretical particle) don't "cause" Congress to do anything, let alone cut funding for the SSC.
But generated in sufficient quantities, they flow backwards and erase the universe that created them from existence.
We live in a universe that exists, therefore something will always happen to prevent the generation of higgs-bosons in sufficient quantities.
That's my shot in the dark, I'd love to get a hold of the original paper and see their explanation for how the particle caused Congress to cut funding.
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"your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true" - Bohr
brilliant people can say stupid things. and they can do it without ceasing to be brilliant people. nothing to see here, move along.
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there is a ligical fallacy in there somewhere we just need to find it
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build more than 1 identical LHC and see if they ALL shut down under mysterious circumstances. 20 would be enough, 100 would be better. you did say "in principle" :)
---
You can't build identical LHCs. Not to mention they're so huge that there would most likely be some architectural error along the way, if we're talking about quantum effects, the LHCs need to be identical to the atom, which isn't really possible.
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Testing for this theory would be only marginally less sensible then properly testing for the supposed outcome of the quantum suicide experiment...
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One issue is that you can't just build a highly improbable shut down test, because something more probable will cause the LHC to fail first (like a broken part). Imagine you create an nearly impossible shut-down-card test, like "someone better invent cold fusion by next week or we're turning it on". But instead, a horrible plague engulfs the earth because that was more probable.
So maybe the right test is something like a 1/100 chance. enough to take seriously, but not totally impossible. Do it more than once and it's still a 1/100 chance each time, since it has no memory, so you should keep getting the same results forever (or until you get sick and don't make it to work that day or something). That should be enough It can't be too improbable or something else will happen first. You're literally pitting all improbable actions against each-other, all with the end result of stopping the LHC!
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ok, ok, so the physicist walks into a bar and he says, if I don't get laid tonight, I'm starting the particle accelerator tomorrow!
And.... he doesn't get laid.
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I'd believe that there was something to the paper if it indicated that, say, a Higgs particle would somehow annihilate itself before it ever came into existence due to some causality violation or something - i.e. I'd believe the paper had relevance if it was talking about considering various past present and future paths of a SINGLE PARTICLE, not some mystical BS about how the human race is predestined to never see a Higgs. The paper sounds like a good candidate for an Ignobel award.
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Ok. I’m not in any way qualified to make these arguments, but my intuition tells me that there is a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the future Higgs influence hypothesizers.
The only part of this theory that I don’t buy is that the generation of a particle could influence the actions of the US congress, or of budget committees, or of any other person. What would make more sense to me is if the production of the Higgs particle sent a different kind of ripple backwards in time- not one that influences history on the top levels of bureaucracy, but one that influences the local physical environment of the past. Meaning, what if the future production of the Higgs created a field of energy/radiation/dark energy/whatever in and around the LHC site here in the past, and this field of whatever in turn created an environment that made the operation of the LHC, as it is intended, impossible?
Personally I find that easier to believe. It’s not that events are being influenced, like a time traveler telling congress to slash a science experiment budget, but that the Higgs particle (or anything created by the LHC for that matter) is in fact a self-deprecating particle. The creation of the particle makes it impossible to create the particle, on a physical level. Is it possible? The only way to disprove it is to run the experiments as planned, and make a Higgs.
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Sounds like it was a success then...
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Regarding the cards, I've got the feeling that it could only be relevant if decisions where made directly based on what card comes out. So, in addition to being nearly impossible to test, it wouldn't be reproducible as a final decision can only be made once.
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Couldn't you make two identical particle collidors, one with the intention of finding Higgs particles, and one with the intention of not running any tests that could produce Higgs particles and if the Higgs one shuts down that would be pretty strong evidence.
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"Couldn't you make two identical particle collidors, one with the intention of finding Higgs particles, and one with the intention of not running any tests that could produce Higgs particles and if the Higgs one shuts down that would be pretty strong evidence."
--
The problem is that if you build two identical machines, both of them will have the same results, if you intend them to or not. Dropping a glass onto concrete will cause it to break whether you want it to or not.
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You're all forgetting that time does not exist.
'Time' is a means of measuring how things move, change and decay, made by humans, for humans, to help us organize the day.
Nothing can go backward in time, because there is no time to which one can go back. If you somehow rearranged all the particles in the universe to how they once had been at a set moment, you will have gone "back in time" as much as anyone ever could.
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> You're all forgetting that time does not exist.
Sure it does. It may not be quite the same as the way humans typically visualize is, but many physical systems definitely depend on a time coordinate.
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... baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time ...
-jagger/richards "The Rolling Stones"
Hmmm, wasn't this around 1975, and about when the Apollo program was canceled? QED
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Why not set up a couple of Ronald Mallet's "Time Machine" devices, designate them and a certain particle solely for future communication regarding CERN, and wait for a signal?
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"How could you ever design an experiment that would disprove future causal influence on a current condition?"
Perhaps the sum of all such experiments have already self-cancelled? ;)
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The problem with the card test is that it assumes the particles will use the path of least resistance to shut down the LHC. I see no reason to assume the card game might be influenced rather than infinite other events that would have the same effect (broken part, funding, Sun explosion, etc.)
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It's all about intent... xxxxxx
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Obviously the effect of the LHC will be/was the shutdown of the SSC.
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I know of no good reason to believe in a linear construction of time. While we have evolved within this system and are accustomed to it, it is nonsnese to think that what is past does not exist, or that what is future has not begun to exist yet. This is saying, basically, that endless entire universes have ceased to exist, and that only the current fleeting state is actuall existant. I don't buy it. All fo the "thens" do not fall into nonexistance just because we can't access them. For that matter, thinking that one past leads to one future is a silly assumption. I put my money on the hypothesis that each possible progression from each given state does, in fact exist. I further contend that it is the limitation of our existance, and not of the real universe, that makes this seem unlikely. All of the thens are still nows within their own frame, and they are still existant. Just not right now.
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I just read "Einstein's Bridge" by John Cramer which deals with people from the future coming back in time to stop construction of the SSC to prevent a disaster from taking place (disaster not DIRECTLY related to the device by the way).
Very close to this thread of thought.
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The LHC will be activated, go back in time, kill his own grandfather, then impregnate his own grandmother. This will make his unborn father carry a mind-altering gene that will cause his son (the LHC) to go on a time-traveling rampage against his own grandfather instead of doing what he was supposed to do.
Unfortunately, before he could do that he mistook the SSC budget for his grandfather and killed that. This awful incident, of course, was caused by the Higgs particles, which cleverly deceived him at the precise moment.
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The underlying article sounds like a spoof. Have any of you ever read Isaac Asimov'z "articles" about The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiotimoline
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So what I should be getting from all of this is that the LHC won't start because we're going to start it? Urgh...
When we start the LHC, the particles will travel back in time to make sure we don't start it... but then won't the particles be non-existant? but still there...?
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Sometimes granners has those cold cold hands and we dont' even know what to do. Pop Pop Charlie comes over and its all over for me and roger... when we sleep in the basement. Today I'm 43 years old and granners basement is so cold and musty like an old doorknow with a gruntfist attached. Oh, the trials of it. As I roll my dice in the darkness and imagine the hammershelf of all of you people.
You think you got it good but you didn't with your haing plan. right? haha. Oh Roger.
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Maybe the LHC will both create a quantum black hole AND shut itself down in the past.
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Kevin -
So, I did major in physics during my undergrad, but I am by no means a physicist (i.e. I wasn't one of those guys who did his physics homework on his napkin at lunch)
But, I do understand the gist of the situation. However, I disagree with the idea that a time-reversed effect from the production of the Higgs or other qualified particle could cause a macro-scale effect like a reactor shutdown. Now that's not to say the Higgs couldn't travel back and prevent itself from being created, because, that's plausible. But, it couldn't lead to a situation where the whole reactor project is cancelled etc. (as the authors claim with the SSC's shutdown). The cancellation of funding for the SSC was the result of electing an individual who despises science. As soon as Bush got into office he dismantled the Congressional Scientific Advisory Board and cut funding for the SSC and a variety of other, non-defense related areas of research.
Anyways, it seems far more likely that the Higgs would come back and cause a relatively small effect, something on it's own size, energy, and time scale. i.e. the Higgs comes back and interferes with itself in such a way that we never see the Higgs at all. This phenomenon is relevant considering that we have expected to have found the Higgs prior to this and have not. The move towards higher energy levels was only felt necessary after the particle wasn't found at the operating levels of fermilabs and CERN. (although this move to higher energy levels is also supported by more recent theory)
So, I would expect that the reactor comes online and works just as expected. But, if the authors are truly on to something, we're more likely to just not find the Higgs. In which case, I would agree with you that there will never be a scientifically testable hypothesis in this regard. It would also indicate that is most likely impossible to actually create a Higgs Boson because the future existence of the particle initiates a reverse causality and interferes with its creation.
Just food for thought
-James
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Hypothesis: The operations/interactions of the Higgs Boson on matter occurs in a state of reverse causality. i.e. it's creation and 'lifetime' (however short) flow in the reverse direction as our perception of time's flow.
Result:
Our flow of time always exhibits increases in entropy.
Think it over, what would the result be if the elementary interaction responsible for the creation of mass was occurring in a time-reversed reference frame...
Thoughts?
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Hi, this is Kevin from the future.
Wow, we certainly didn't expect THAT to happen. Yes, please, turn it off.
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Maybe the physicists are getting death threats from the religious establishments... considering someone coined the term "God Particle" for Higgs Bosons.
Paranoia concerning whether the LHC has the potential to destroy the earth or to restart the Big Bang or end the Mayan Calender in 2012, etc, is probably spread by specific parties. I agree with what James posted above in this regard.
If a test must be run to see whether running this machine is possible, shouldn't the following experiment stand up?
-Hire a random -uninformed- person to work at the LHC and eventually make him -casually- press "the button" without any clue of his intentions or its purpose. (Possibly making him press many other buttons before and after as to make it even more insignificant.)
-This way the conciousness of the man starting the machine has no influence on its outcome. (This concept already being a stretch for my current understanding of things....)
-If for some reason he cannot complete the task (ie: sudden death) or the LHC fails; then things get interesting.
As for the skull and the fork road mentioned above, I disagree that you can make a safe choice. The liar can say wtf he wants, and the "truth" is different for each case. The honest one cannot determine how the liar will lie, so he must therefore lie himself.
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And continuing on analysis of the Skulls, you might as well not say anything and walk through it. Either way your odds of success are still 50%. The complexity of this problem can be made ridiculously high by over analysis of the possible outcomes of what the skulls might say.
Stop being pussies and press it. Or I will.
If we all stop existing instantaneously (worst case), who's left to care? They certainly didn't with the nuclear bomb.
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What about spacial location?
To my understanding the earth is zipping around inside a galaxy that is zipping around. So, if I created an apple at my current location and moved it backwards in time only even a few seconds, would it not end up frozen in space somewhere along earth's orbit?
And if you grant that a paradox can occur, IE a future event stopping a past event, then why halt that causation in the normal direction?
In other words, if the Higgs particles stop the collider then the collider wouldn't produce Higgs particle to stop itself, would it?
Thats the real reason you can't safe JFK, because if you did, he'd be saved and you'd have no reason to go back in time to save him. Does this work both ways?
QM seems like crap to me, but crap very close to the mark. I just don't like the touchy feely anything is possible feel, given that our existence proves that to be untrue. For example I know that all existence (pluralmultiomnieverything-a-verse) wasn't destroyed 5 minutes ago.
QM: OH but there's also a pluralmultioptimegaversic multidimensional fold-twist-weave where every “thing” was destroyed except us, so naturally we're giant flying purple zombie Lincolns.
QM to me is like this.
Me: Whats 1 + 1?
QM fan: Somewhere between negative infinity and banana.
Headline: “Scientists prove 1 + 1 = 2”
QM fan: “Told ya so. 'nother successful prediction.”
Me: !?!?
And whats with all this bowing and scraping? So you're not a physicist, does that mean you'
re incapable of providing a good question or a new theory? The science establishment is quickly turning into a faith based initiative.
innomen.blogspot.com
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The main problem I have with this so-called "hypothesis" is that I do not see any reason to suppose it. What evidence are they basing it on? It seems quasi-religious and mystical. Why would the creation of the Higgs mean that the Higgs would have to go back in time and nullify its own creation? Or is this just a grand justification of why the Higgs has not been found yet?
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Reminds me of a quote "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."
--Arthur Eddington
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Brandon M. Sergent wrote on Aug. 6, 2008 @ 22:46 GMT
"Headline: “Scientists prove 1 + 1 = 2”"
Wouldn't that read mathematicians?
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This would make a great episode of Star Trek. Starfleet discovers that a pre-warp civilization is about to activate some kind of doomsday device thinking it's going to generate a whatever particle. The Enterprise has to decide whether or not to interfere, and if so, how to do so without revealing their existence.
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"Wouldn't that read mathematicians?"
No, since it was a metaphor for the science of QM and related predictions and discoveries.
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Dennis:
Check out the episode "All good things."
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This sounds like a journal article for the Journal of Irreproducible Results.
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I am not quite sure about how all the details would work out, but: It may be possible to make an experiment as follows: Immagine an experiment you would run to test forward causation. Say, unstable atom, when it decays a swich flips over. (This example will not work, of course, we know atoms have forward causation, not backward).
Start it with a decayed atom and a flipped switch.
Just run the whole show backwards.
This will of course require a full prediction, you cannot look for 'any' backward causation.
Leo
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This effect could be useful as a way to determine that there will be a future in existence that could stop the collider from starting.
On a possibly less significant but also cheery note, key people winning the lottery might might cause them to leave the project...
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All the intelligent and knowledgeable people here... this is a perfect place to post my time travel experience!
Well, not so much 'experience', but I did discover a real-world time paradox.
Back in the early 1980s I was helping a friend make a SciFi movie (Google for 'fun 1981 sci-fi home movie') and on the way to his place I stopped at a convience / drugstore for a soda. On display were 'Worlds smallest Trinitron Color TV'. 2.5" or so diagonal CRT. About 10" to 12" long with the screen on the end. Shaped something like a loaf of Italian bread with 20% cut off one end. Garishly colored. Large battery compartment, with detachable stand for tilt/swivel. I thought it would make a nice prop. Two side by side to make electronic binoculars!
I was just a little better than broke at the time and didn't buy any.
Present Day (or so)
I remember the TV I saw years ago and wonder if any are on eBay. No. I go to the Sony site. They say their smallest Trinitron tube ever was 4". I contact a vintage TV collector. He assurres me it never existed.
I know what I saw! No, it wasn't LCD! A similar sized TV from Panasonic appeared in the film 'Tootsie' and I can find information about that one.
So, what is the explanation?
jsl151@pioneeris.net
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