A particle so evil that it's very existence threatens manki

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Diogenes
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Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

A particle so evil that it's very existence threatens manki

Post by Diogenes »

Image

':twisted:'

"A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather. . . . This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/scien ... nstapundit



We are not meant to find the Higgs.

seedload
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Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:16 pm

Post by seedload »

I must be stupid. I read that whole article and couldn't figure out what their theory was.

Was it a time paradox thingy? Something like, if you make a Higgs, it will necessarily cause doom in the past, but, since there obviously wasn't doom in the past, you can't possibly be successful in making a Higgs?

kurt9
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Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2007 4:14 pm
Location: Portland, Oregon, USA

Post by kurt9 »

I read this silliness as well.

Heim theory also says we will not find the Higgs.

djolds1
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Joined: Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:03 am

Post by djolds1 »

seedload wrote:I must be stupid. I read that whole article and couldn't figure out what their theory was.

Was it a time paradox thingy? Something like, if you make a Higgs, it will necessarily cause doom in the past, but, since there obviously wasn't doom in the past, you can't possibly be successful in making a Higgs?
??? :shock: :roll:

Do you think the article was serious???

This is geek humor.
Vae Victis

pfrit
Posts: 256
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2008 5:04 pm

Post by pfrit »

djolds1 wrote:
seedload wrote:I must be stupid. I read that whole article and couldn't figure out what their theory was.

Was it a time paradox thingy? Something like, if you make a Higgs, it will necessarily cause doom in the past, but, since there obviously wasn't doom in the past, you can't possibly be successful in making a Higgs?
??? :shock: :roll:

Do you think the article was serious???

This is geek humor.
I tend to agree with your assessment, but the primal theory is valid. For example, we don't know what would happen if you made a naked sigularity. If it is possible to create a naked singularity, some have suggested that the quantum event would be annilahated. To us, that would mean that no naked singularity would be created. If you had a machine that would create a naked singularity 100% of the time, some quantum event would prevent it from working, no matter how bizarre. This could include an event in the past to prevent you from making the machine in the first place.
What is the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

Torulf2
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Location: Swedem

Post by Torulf2 »

Collisions from cosmic radiation easy may produce higs. If the higs are so abhorrent so may there be a mechanism at particle level to stop them to be produced. So why dos the natures blow up LHC or manipulate the brains on the US senate? Its more logic to nature use same mechanism stopping production of higs as it use on cosmic rays.

seedload
Posts: 1062
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:16 pm

Post by seedload »

djolds1 wrote:
seedload wrote:I must be stupid. I read that whole article and couldn't figure out what their theory was.

Was it a time paradox thingy? Something like, if you make a Higgs, it will necessarily cause doom in the past, but, since there obviously wasn't doom in the past, you can't possibly be successful in making a Higgs?
??? :shock: :roll:

Do you think the article was serious???

This is geek humor.
Humor or not, I still didn't understand it.

chrismb
Posts: 3161
Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:00 pm

Post by chrismb »

Geek humour or otherwise, I think this idea is intriguing. The argument is that we are setting about creating particles that just shouldn't exist and if we were to make such particles then some form of 'temporal problems' may emerge.

The observation that the experiment keeps running into problems may indicate that were we to be in some temporal stream which became compromised in the future, by the experiment, then we wouldn't've been able to run the experiment in the first place.

It's the old philosopical argument about cause and effect, it's not really a 'physics' argument. As per the argument on why the universe is here. Answer; because we're here to observe it. This doesn't make sense with our cause-and-effect [dogmatic] model of science, but is philosophical because if the universe didn't exist then clearly we wouldn't be able to comment on it! The fact that we can comment on it therefore [after dropping the dogma of c-a-e] means that we can state the observation itself may have created the universe. Same here, the fact that we are observing a failing experiment may mean that the science is truly fundamental and capable of temporal damage.

djolds1
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Joined: Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:03 am

Post by djolds1 »

pfrit wrote:I tend to agree with your assessment, but the primal theory is valid. For example, we don't know what would happen if you made a naked sigularity. If it is possible to create a naked singularity, some have suggested that the quantum event would be annilahated.
If reality is quantized then singularities are axiomatically ruled out.
Vae Victis

Skipjack
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Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Post by Skipjack »

Chris, I too think that the whole matter is a funny thought experiment. There is nothing wrong with those, just dont overdo it or you will go nuts like that one math professor here, that concerned himself to long with different infinities.
Just to play a bit:
cogito, ergo sum
(I think, therefore I am)
cogito, ergo universum est
( I think, therefore the universe is ).
All the way back to Descartes, hu?

chrismb
Posts: 3161
Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:00 pm

Post by chrismb »

Skipjack wrote:Chris, I too think that the whole matter is a funny thought experiment. There is nothing wrong with those, just dont overdo it or you will go nuts like that one math professor here, that concerned himself to long with different infinities.
Just to play a bit:
cogito, ergo sum
(I think, therefore I am)
cogito, ergo universum est
( I think, therefore the universe is ).
All the way back to Descartes, hu?
I have already overdone it, and I can confirm that I have gone nuts.

Diogenes
Posts: 6967
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:33 pm

Post by Diogenes »

Update. The Evil Higgs Boson strikes Again!


Piece of Bread Stalls LHC, Adds Fuel to Crazy Theories


Image


http://gajitz.com/piece-of-bread-stalls ... -theories/

Tom Ligon
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Location: Northern Virginia
Contact:

Post by Tom Ligon »

This was the plot of a story in Analog a decade or two back. A huge new accelerator always broke when they tried to run it, and the odds against this were becoming hard to swallow.

The theory in this case was based on a QM speculation that all possible outcomes occur at every decision point, and thus each point in time creates not just one new future, but many. In this case, only in those futures where the accelerator malfunctioned did the Universe still exist, so if you were around to realize it, you were in a future where it had failed.

Yeah, it is silly. Probably. But the idea has been rattling around for some time, and is the sort of humor physicists sometime indulge in, like the Trinity Wager.

BenTC
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Post by BenTC »

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.

IntLibber
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Joined: Wed Sep 24, 2008 3:28 pm

Post by IntLibber »

Tom Ligon wrote:This was the plot of a story in Analog a decade or two back. A huge new accelerator always broke when they tried to run it, and the odds against this were becoming hard to swallow.

The theory in this case was based on a QM speculation that all possible outcomes occur at every decision point, and thus each point in time creates not just one new future, but many. In this case, only in those futures where the accelerator malfunctioned did the Universe still exist, so if you were around to realize it, you were in a future where it had failed.

Yeah, it is silly. Probably. But the idea has been rattling around for some time, and is the sort of humor physicists sometime indulge in, like the Trinity Wager.
This is akin to The Simulation Argument

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