Thursday, November 5, 2009

This Is Really Stretching Coincidence

So there's a theory out there which says basically that the Large Hadron Collider is causing ripples through time to prevent the discovery of the Higgs Boson - that the future is sabotaging the present to prevent the real-world-physics equivalent of a divide-by-zero error. Seriously: there are people who think this is truly, actually, mathematically the case, viz:

"In a bizarre sci-fi theory, Danish physicist DrHolger Bech Nielsen and Dr Masao Ninomiya from Japan claim the LHC startup has been delayed due to nature trying to prevent it from finding the elusive Higgs boson, or "God particle".

They say their maths proves that 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"


There's another reference to this idea here, from the usually sane New Scientist magazine. It's not the first time that science has suggested that quantum effects can move backwards as well as forwards in time. In fact, I believe it's an accepted part of certain quantum models. But nobody's really put forward any real-world cases for it actually doing anything... until now.

That Large Hadron Collider thing, on the border of France and Switzerland - the one everybody was worried might create a mini black hole last year before some kind of helium coolant leak shut the fucker down for nearly a year, that one? Well, they got it up and running again. And they're getting set to go, baby go. Except that all of a sudden, there's been another technical glitch, and they've had to bring it back down for a while.

And what was the glitch this time?

Well, apparently a bird dropped a large chunk of baguette onto some of the exposed workings of the machinery on the surface. Really. Here's another reference: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/05/lhc_bread_bomb_dump_incident/

I don't know about you, but that whole time-ripples-hiding-the-Higgs-Boson thing is starting to look like maybe we should give it some more serious consideration.

10 comments:

  1. well if you think it through, it must be God doing it.

    my proof:

    "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
    "But," says Man, "the existance Higgs Bison particle is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
    "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't though of that" and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

    SO there you go. Its true
    :)

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  2. God never lets us have any fun.

    I want anti-gravity playgrounds, damnit.

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  3. Maybe it's just something as simple as building a multi-gazillion dollar device and forgetting to spend a few hundred dollars for some decent window screen!

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  4. I hope the articles are a piece of humerous science writing like Asimov's 'Endochronic Properties Of Resublimated Thiotimoline.' The general standard of the science writing in the pieces seem to suggest the authors never meant it to be taken seriously.

    I mean really

    "However, high energy physics machines with their relativistic particles would [...] may [sic] influence their past and for instance such influence could have meant that these machines would have been met with bad luck by prearrangement and got their funds cut so as not work".

    and this

    "It must be warned that if our model were true and no such game about restricting strongly L.H.C. were played [...] then a “normal” (seemingly accidental) closure should occur. This could be potentially more damaging than just the loss of L.H.C. itself. Therefore not performing [...] our card game proposal could - if our model were correct - cause considerable danger."

    This gives a completely new spin to postdiction that disables its own observability by backward causation. The universe can post-dict something before it has happened, and then go back into the future.

    So God doesn't play dice with the universe, but instead card games?


    On a more prosaic arguement then surely the beam run success on 23 and 25 October would suggest that the is no influence from the future preventing its operation.

    Like I said I hope it was emant as a joke article.

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  5. Messing with time eh?

    So how does the Terminator fit into the equation?

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  6. I don't think the scientist guys with the theory are joking. But I do think the science writers for the various articles I pointed out aren't quite sure how to treat the whole thing...

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  7. I just think it's not working cus they haven't plugged it in yet but none of the pointed heads knows where the GPO is.

    Or the project has become too big to fail and the project leaders know if they switch it on nothing will happen...

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  8. As Big Bad Al can attest I blew up in a rage of anti-muppet sweariness on the Twunterbox when that load of preposterous arse got its undeserved gasp of publicity oxygen. It was so cringingly awful, and so marginalizing and discrediting for all credible scientific voices in the media, I felt embarrassed for the entire profession of research science. And I'm usually the one bringing embarrassment to the entire profession of research science, dammit.

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  9. Geez, next they'll be trying to get hold of a Sports Almanac for 2010.
    The whole thing reeks of farce layered over prank.

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  10. The 'usually sane' New Scientist... I'd have subbed 'tabloid' for 'sane', but maybe that's being picky.

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