Officially The Most Awesome Thing Ever

[jakonovski]

As you may or may not know, the Large Hadron Collider is facing a lot of trouble, the latest being a piece of bread dropped by a passing bird causing overheating: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/bread-loving-bird-shuts-down-lhc

Well that's a bit unfortunate you think. But what if it's all because the Higgs Boson is traveling back in time to prevent its own discovery? Bet you never thought of that!

http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1919
http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.2991

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/230

[naum]

You mean it wasn't sabotaged from the future?

Scientists claim the giant atom-smashing Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being jinxed from the future to save the world.

In a bizarre sci-fi theory, Danish physicist Dr Holger Bech Nielsen and Dr Masao Ninomiya from Japan claim nature is trying to prevent the LHC from finding the elusive Higgs boson. Called the “God particle,” the theoretical boson could explain the origins of mass in the universe — if physicists can find the darn thing.

The scientists say their math proves nature will “ripple backward through time” to stop the LHC before it can create the God particle, like a time traveller who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

“One could even almost say that we have a model for God,” Dr Nielsen says in an unpublished essay. “He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

[jakonovski]

It all depends you know, if all else fails it might take a war between LHC owning states to stop it. Let's just play a card game for it! 

[tazelbain]

Leon Lederman deserves a beating for coming up with "God Particle".  Such mis-labeling for the sake of generating publicity to sell books only serves fuel (often willful) misunderstanding of science.

[Ookii]

Leon Lederman deserves a beating for coming up with "God Particle".  Such mis-labeling for the sake of generating publicity to sell books only serves fuel (often willful) misunderstanding of science.

Well, apparently birds tend to agree with you. That one with the piece of bread was only the beginning.

[MahrinSkel]

Actually, I'm pretty sure I remember a SciFi story (maybe a novel?  Not sure) along those lines explaining why the SSC was shut down after most of the money had already been spent: It fractured space-time and they went back to before it started to prevent it.

It's actually less crazy than the black-hole/strange matter apocalypse theory.

--Dave

[NowhereMan]

It's one of these cases of there being a mathematical model that makes this entirely possible, it's just fairly ridiculous. There are lots of working mathematical models that don't think this is possible, by and large it's probably safer to stick with the ones that don't involve obvious backwards causation.

[ghost]

it's probably safer to stick with the ones that don't involve obvious backwards causation.

That's just crazy talk.  I've seen Back to the Future.  And Freejack.

[jakonovski]

It's one of these cases of there being a mathematical model that makes this entirely possible, it's just fairly ridiculous. There are lots of working mathematical models that don't think this is possible, by and large it's probably safer to stick with the ones that don't involve obvious backwards causation.

I actually think that because of this whole thing's Awesome Quotient, they should totally implement a rng into the LHC software that has some astronomically small chance of refusing to start it up and flashing an error box with "Error: time paradox imminent"

[NowhereMan]

Only if it's in Doc Brown's voice.

[Stormwaltz]

Actually, I'm pretty sure I remember a SciFi story (maybe a novel?  Not sure) along those lines explaining why the SSC was shut down after most of the money had already been spent: It fractured space-time and they went back to before it started to prevent it.

Back in high school I started to write a story (inspired by the Tribe songs "Supercollider" and "Sleeper") about a witch whose husband was leaving her for a job on the SSC. So she cast a spell which caused members of Congress to cut funding. I abandoned it because I didn't like the message.

Also, the idea was dumb as shit.

Side story: Tribe were local band heroes in early 90's Boston. Three members ended up in the game industry. Guitarist Eric Brosius, bassist Greg LoPiccolo, and keyboardist Terri Brosius started doing music and sound for Looking Glass, where they worked on Thief and System Shock. After Looking Glass closed they migrated to Harmonix, where they worked on Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Terri was also the voice of SHODAN in System Shock 2.

[Morat20]

Actually, I'm pretty sure I remember a SciFi story (maybe a novel?  Not sure) along those lines explaining why the SSC was shut down after most of the money had already been spent: It fractured space-time and they went back to before it started to prevent it.

It's actually less crazy than the black-hole/strange matter apocalypse theory.

--Dave

Einstein's Bridge told a similar story. Effectively, using the SSC led to energy densities high enough to be noticed in other universes. The beings inhabiting another universe noticed, and created a bridge. (One that allowed only light to pass, effective for communications -- and molecular rearrangement).

Mostly to warn the Earth-folks that there was a rather nasty group of beings who liked to create such bridges and invade before the newbies could be taught how to defend themselves.

Earth lost when the bad guys invaded, and there was a bit of time-travel, so they ended up changing history to prevent it from being made.

It was better than it sounded.

[MahrinSkel]

That was it.  I'm lousy with titles and worse with authors, but I remember the cover.  Anyway, to the extent that I can follow the math involved, the idea of the Higgs being inherently self-negating is not at all a stretch, although the sensible versions of the theory work more like quantum state collapse experiments (which show negative entropy and reversed causality rather easily), rather than macroscopic effects.  But it is kind of spooky that perversely unlikely events keep preventing even *trying* to create a Higgs.  If it continues, at some point Occam's Razor is going to kick in.

--Dave

[raydeen]

Oh come on. We all know WHO is responsible for this.



Gummed it up with a jelly baby and a sonic screwdriver from what I hear.