Sabotage...from the future?
That's the theory being put forward by two top physicists. Even they admit it's a little weird. The idea could be groundbreaking. Or, it could be a valuable lesson that even scientists can fall prey to the very human tendency to see patterns in actually random events.
Some people have this experience and come away believing in astrology. Instead, Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, have ended up with the theory that the Future is trying to stop us from creating a Higgs boson particle.
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."
...While it is a paradox to go back in time and kill your grandfather, physicists agree there is no paradox if you go back in time and save him from being hit by a bus. In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus. Although just why the Higgs would be a catastrophe is not clear. If we knew, presumably, we wouldn't be trying to make one.
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My Large Hadron's been Clock-blocked!
Oh, I love this! I really do. While trying to imagine it's possibility, I experience something akin to a Grateful Dead concert. Awesome!
Although, wouldn't the success of the LHC act as a stepping stone to the type of technology that might one day lead to the ability to alter events in the past, possibly by moving to/from it?
Personally I don't believe rearward time travel will ever be a possibility. Physics aside, and putting aside the theory that you could only travel back as far as when the machine was brought into existence... the mere fact that there is no evidence of rearward travel by someone from any point in the future to any date up until now leads me to believe that means it will never exist. If it did, someone, somewhen, would have used it to visit *some* period in recorded history and the odds of that going unnoticed seem extremely low.
I'm just a country bumpkin, but wouldn't a simple note from the future suffice? "Please fold up your lab coats and go play outside. You REALLY don't want to do this. Thanks, The Future". If it really were that important, I doubt the future would be so passive-aggressive about the matter.
So. You have the ability to go back in time. But instead of simply explaining why it should not be built while it is in the planning stage, you decide to try and mysteriously sabotage it while it is nearly operational?
Time travel fail.
It's John Titor!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor
But seriously, this is awesome. That real scientists are even entertaining this notion is just mindblowing. Phil Dick couldn't have come up with a better premise for a story.
I think the Superconducing Super Collider (SSC)was canceled because the project's backers couldn't maintain the power base to continue funding. Aside from all the how-much-money-for-my-district horsetrading that goes with any large project, there was real sentiment within the scientific community that the SSC was just too many dollars going into one pot (at the expense of other scientific pots).
As for the U.S. abandoning projects after investing billions of dollars- heck, we do that all the time.
geobarefoot: I believe the authors of this bold future-hates-the-LHC include the possibility that it's the non-sentient body of physical "laws" that are causing this retro-ripple-o-badness. So, in that case, a well worded missive isn't to be expected.
Then why haven't time travelers deleted this post?
Skynet pulls that shit all the time. Why not just send the next Terminator back in time a day earlier than the last one so Sarah Connor gets caught off guard? Because time travelers are dumbasses, that's why.
This is complete and total nonsense and not worth being repeated in the NYT, BB.net or anywhere!
In short, the Higgs boson (force carrying particle) is a scalar (as opposed to a vector) that provides mass to all particles (if theories are correct). That means the Higgs is present at all times everywhere. So, although it is tongue in cheek, we are swimming in an invisible soup of Higgs particles at each moment.
To say that universe doesn't want us to create one is like saying people are born blind because the universe didn't want us to experience light.
Quackery knows no bounds.
To the people who suggested leaving notes or simply explaining - how much evidence would YOU ask for if some guy you have never seen walked up to you and told you (for example) to quit your job right now, to leave your wife/husband, or not to cash in your multi-million lottery win?
Sometimes, it's simply easier and more fool-proof to apply the stick a few times instead of hoping that humans (especially when they formed an organization) listen to reason (Yeah, right, when's the last time THAT happened? :P). Or maybe I'm just one of those overly cynical time travel-... DAMMIT! *fumbles with communicator* I'VE BEEN DISCOVERED! GET ME OUT OF HERE! *BWEEEeeeee....*
if the results of these colliders are so catastrophic, how would there be anyone in the future to send back?
@johncomedy
I was wondering the same thing.
My theory is that members of the Republican Part of The Future are doing this because the Higgs boson particle ends up proving that God doesn't exist, eliminating 90% of their supporters.
This is the best explanation available.
Yes, but did Huey Lewis write a song about it?
Give the winning lottery numbers for several future lotteries across several different countries. That'll convince people the note was right.
Wait...somebody went into the past and wrote this story many hours ago...
No, no. According to such luminaries as Warren Ellis and the writers of the movie Primer, you can only travel as far back as the invention of the time machine. On the other hand, there is an awful lot of quantum hanging about at the LHC.
I'm fairly certain that the Higgs Boson is also to blame for derailing the public option. Damn that time-traveling bastard particle!
Okay. I'll confess. I did it. I came back from the future and saved you Humans from yourselves.
You're welcome.
"Although just why the Higgs would be a catastrophe is not clear. If we knew, presumably, we wouldn't be trying to make one."
If occurred to me after re-reading this statement that this could be the scientists public acknowledgment (knowing it could be referenced in the past) to the future scientists. It's like they're getting the message but they need more details.
This is the EXACT plot of Einstein's Bridge: http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Bridge-John-Cramer/dp/0380788314
I read it several years ago. It's entertaining if not mind blowing. In the book, the SSC emits some sort of particle that acts as a beacon for a world-devouring alien race. Another, friendly race tries to help a few physicists prevent the SSC startup. When that doesn't work, they go back in time and try again.
Maybe the author knows something we don't?
I didn't realise physicists had theories about what time travel actions would be considered paradoxes. What's the scientific journal where these theories are published?
The Eschaton is usually benign and uninvolved in human affairs, but it strictly enforces certain rules on human civilization out of apparent self-interest.
To this end, the Eschaton has helpfully left a message throughout human space, for example, engraved in huge letters on the sides of mountains, and dispersed everywhere throughout computer networks. The message is as follows:
I am the Eschaton. I am not your God.
I am descended from you, and exist in your future.
Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone or create a Higgs boson particle. Or else.
The most important commandment of the Eschaton appears to be "thou shalt not violate causality"; that is, the Eschaton strictly prohibits the use of faster than light travel for reaching any point in its own relative past, with the ominous proscription "or else".
The Eschaton apparently makes use of time travel itself to prevent the creation of a Higgs boson particle.
-- MrJM
(apologies to Charles Stross)
There are many ways to prove this theory is completely bogus. The easiest of all is to observe how some cosmic rays have energy orders of magnitude higher than what we'll get at the LHC. So they should certainly be generating Higgs events in the atmosphere, at a rate of millions every day. Yet, we're still here. Nobody came from the future to cover the planet with a giant tinfoil hat to protect it from nature itself.
(And yes, I say "we" because I work for CERN)
Given that science is a limited set of rules developed by observation (mostly) and calculation (for the weird stuff), it's not impossible.
Science as we know it doesn't offer capital-T "Truth" ~ it offers the best, highly limited description of the laws that govern our universe we have. A famous quote seem relevant:
Quote: Arthur C. Clarke (from www.quotationspage.com)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)
So I'd knock it off with the "Harry Potter" gags. When I was kid watching Star Trek (c. mid-70's) we all marveled at the communicator that flipped open and allowed to talk to anyone with another communicator. "Science Fiction!" you shouted, and now I have a Motorola Razor flip-phone ~ "Science Fact!" I reply.
If that change is made in 30-odd years, who knows what the future holds.
Lanval
Let's just go to the future and ask them. (I'm on my way there now!)
but that is just it. Maybe the creation of the LHC does lead to the type of time travel that could cause us to try to undermine it.
Maybe it's not a universe destroying event they are trying to prevent but the escalating turmoil that would come about from many interests building devices that go back and alter the past to shift the balance of power.
Wild conjecture on my part. Not plausible. More of a black swan in my opinion. I have more faith in the belief that we are still a bunch of apes that have traded smashing rocks for smashing subatomic particles.
Why limit this to the Higgs boson? If the effect were true, wouldn't everything that happens be the result of the future tuning the present for an optimal future?
"The easiest of all is to observe how some cosmic rays have energy orders of magnitude higher than what we'll get at the LHC. So they should certainly be generating Higgs events in the atmosphere, at a rate of millions every day."
I only play devil's advocate when I state this.
They may happen quite often but they have yet to be observed. Maybe something can bee gleaned from the observation of generating a Higgs Boson that would otherwise be much more difficult to discover independently.
We do not invent and discover on our own but on the shoulders of all those that came before us. Could the likes of Einstein, and Hawking have reached their levels of understanding if they had to discover the working of mathematics and physics on their own and without the record of others that have proved before them?
Fires occurred on earth many many time and for many years before humans learned to create it themselves and harness that power. Proof of the Higgs particle sets a foundation for theories going forward. It may eliminate others. I may lead us down a series of discoveries and inventions that are beneficial but could also though hindsight in some distance probably future be a curse.
@ianm
This is complete and total nonsense and not worth being repeated in the NYT, BB.net or anywhere!
That is exactly what the dark forces who conspire to destroy mankind would say!
They also hate the Cubs.
This is completely absurd. If it's sabotage, it's from aliens from outer space, not time traveling humans.
The assumption is that the Higgs boson is the issue. Perhaps it's something yet to be discovered that's the problem?
On another note, if we exist in a simulation and the LHC disturbs the simulation in some way, that would explain why it keeps screwing up.
What these scientists are saying only makes sense if two things are true:
1. The many-worlds theory in quantum mechanics. (there are competing theories)
2. That the LHC creating a Higgs boson will destroy the universe (seems unlikely given that the Higgs is supposed to be everywhere already).
If these two things are true, then any branches of reality where the LHC blew up the universe will contain no observers - therefore in order for us to be here at all, we must exist in a branch where the LHC isn't working yet.
It stands to reason that there will be a branch of the universe where the LHC will be one string of disasters after another and will never work at all.
This isn't necessarily the branch your future self will find itself in.
Why limit this to the Higgs boson?
Look, I've got a case of the damn things sitting in my storage locker right now and I've been trying to get rid of them for a month.
Anybody interested in a good deal on bulk Higgs Bosons? (They're the OEM version - no packaging or manuals.)
apoxia: Time travel is just cosmology, which makes Physical Review D the "good" research journal. Here is a fun article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle.
As far as I can tell the argument is that the collider crating the particles is an impossible future, therefore that future acts like a magnetic poll that pushes us way creating the increased likelihood that unlikely events will create alternative events that don't lead to it working and causing its own uncreation. Not that something is traveling and sabotaging.
Here is an interesting follow up peace.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/10/14/spooky-signals-from-the-future-telling-us-to-cancel-the-lhc/
Presumably, if someone could go back in time to try to stop some horrendous possible future, perhaps they tried, Groundhog Day-like, to be nice about it and leave notes, etc. but we did not accept these. Would you? Perhaps they found through trial and error that anonymous sabotage was the only way it would work, assuming it has.
This sounds a lot like the Novikov self-consistency principle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle What we're talking about isn't time travelers preventing the creation of the LHC, but the universe itself "preventing" it. Even that's the wrong word. Essentially, for our universe to exist, the LHC cannot come online. Since our universe does exist, the LHC will never come online. And it may not be the Higgs Boson that is the problem, but something else.
Can you believe all this is happening why LC is away?
It would explain some cryptic remarks on a Heim theory forum , perportedly from the future...hmmm
Yeah, the gist wasn't intelligent beings going back in time, but the particle or forces. It relates to the experiments with electrons. I believe the way I read it in The Elegant Universe, an electrons, in theory, takes an infinite number of routes to find the one that is most efficient, but still moves at the speed of light. Makes for some weird possibilities on the flexibleness of time.
Deus ex tempus machina!
bbonyx says:
"Although, wouldn't the success of the LHC act as a stepping stone to the type of technology that might one day lead to the ability to alter events in the past, possibly by moving to/from it?
Personally I don't believe rearward time travel will ever be a possibility. Physics aside, and putting aside the theory that you could only travel back as far as when the machine was brought into existence... the mere fact that there is no evidence of rearward travel by someone from any point in the future to any date up until now leads me to believe that means it will never exist."
BB, leaving aside (for now) the issue of whether there would BE "evidence," SF author Larry Niven wrote a very logical, and (in my humble opinion) thorough, analysis of the consequences and implications of the ability to travel through time. What stands out in the context of our current discussion is his brilliant conclusion: "if Nature permits time travel AND permits changing the past, then no time machine will ever be invented." Niven's logic is this: suppose a time machine IS invented and people start going back into the past to change things. Eventually someone will make a change that results in cancellation of the invention of the time machine, and after that happens no further changes will be made. Ergo, from the standpoint of people living in the resulting timestream, "no time machine was ever invented."
As to "evidence" -- in the theory at hand today, the argument is that the "anti-miracle" of the SSC getting canceled may BE the evidence.
As for geobarefoot's (possibly tongue-in-cheek) question that "wouldn't a simple note from the future suffice?" -- my (strictly academic) response is that Nature takes the path of least effort, and it's easier to generate a general physical phenomenon than to fake up such a highly organized, highly specific object as a note written in a human language... ;-)
For further developments to be expected, see Gregory Benford's novel "Timescape" (Nebula and Campbell Award winner, among other things).
Consider it a hint from the future; obiously someone went back to 1980 to plant it there (then?).
"When that doesn't work, they go back in time and try again. "
When it does work their future self will no longer have a reason to travel back in time.
http://www.viruscomix.com/page382.html
I love theoretical physics. It's basicly a religion for scientists.
Physicists positing an explanation for something that is not directly based on evidence, cannot be tested for, and cannot be conclusively disproven?
That's no more scientific than throwing up your hands and saying God did it.
Now, hey, maybe God did do it, but that's not science. You can never study it, prove it, or disprove it. It's paranormal speculation.
This is almost exactly the plot of Eisteins Bridge by James Cramer. A real fun read, combining science and detective fiction.
I'm no physicist, but it concerns me when physicists, Dr. Nielsen for example, use descriptive terms like "bad luck" and "hate". Intriguing idea though, and I can't help but wonder if perhaps many, or even all "now" events are being future-hacked continually. I am picturing a kind of epic "is-ness" tug-of-war occurring between "now" and "then".
String theorists are wrecking physics. They are anti-scientific in their bent: if nature doesn't follow their beautiful mathematics, it must be nature, not their mathematics, that is wrong. They produce theories with so many free parameters that they can fit any universe, meaning that they have no predictive value. The result has been that physics has been stuck for the last couple of decades. Lee Smolin's probably written the best popular treatment of this problem.
I'm not sure that the linked-to article is entirely serious, but it's typical of their nonsense. If we don't find the Higgs boson after probing the expected energy range, then something is wrong with the theory. It would be more productive to come up with a better explanation for what's going wrong than writing nonsense about time traveling Higgs censors.
Higgs Boson was going to be my DJ name in the 23rd century, but it appears that idea is now shot all to hell.
Supercollider? I just met her!
"If we don't find the Higgs boson after probing the expected energy range, then something is wrong with the theory. It would be more productive to come up with a better explanation for what's going wrong than writing nonsense about time traveling Higgs censors."
Hear hear, Joe.
I for one say that the Higg's Boson does not exist, and will not be found. Yes, I am fairly alone on this one at the time!
I have just come from the future (of where I was before.) Here it is!
I wonder how we would even know that someone is visiting from somewhen? Why would we notice them?
All enticingly (post)predicted by the 'Cern Zoo' fiction' anthology book published last June!
AT LAST! Maybe now my thesis adviser will believe me when I say that the reason I haven't graduated yet is because my experiments are being sabotaged FROM THE FUTURE.
There might be something to this time travel stuff. Sometimes I'm thwarted by malign influences from the past.
:(
Some very funny comments.
Some stupid comments from people who didn't bother to read the article.
Some frustrating comments from armchair physicists who don't understand the article.
But they were all worthwhile because @V pointed me to the brilliant of viruscomix!
Hence this applicable cartoon:
http://www.viruscomix.com/page417.html
This story keeps making rounds, bloggers and journalists copying each other on it since the NYT article. I first heard about it the same day on the NYT Science Podcast and I asked myself .... are they taking this *obvious* physicist joke seriously or are they being tongue in cheek?
Then I saw it mentioned in jwz's blogue [http://jwz.livejournal.com/1104407.html]:
- Phase 1: Physicist makes joke.
- Phase 2: NYT.
- Phase 3: ...
- Phase 4: Profit!
Seems like everybody else's taking this shit seriously.
Wake up, people. IT'S A JOKE.
HE'S KIDDING.
I'm don't want to explain it further to you, but since you're all so thick, here we go:
- LHC late
- LHC big
- LHC expensive
- Lots of kooks end of the universe
- Frustrated physicists
- Endochronic properties of resublimated thiotimoline.
ENDOFUCKINGCHRONIC PROPERTIES OF GOD DAMN RESUBFUCKLIMATED THITIMOLINE, people.
Gee.
W-E
A-P-O-L-O-G-I-Z-E
F-O-R
T-H-E
I-N-C-O-N-V-E-N-I-E-N-C-E
(can't believe I'm the first)
>This story keeps making rounds, bloggers and journalists copying each other on it since the NYT article.
yay, that's the power of new media. one day there will be a story that's at the precise resonant frequency of the blogosphere, and the internetz will explode as the repost rate reaches a singularity.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine rare particles sabotaging large infrastructure projects ... forever.
Don't see where this is revealed as a joke by the scientists at all. Admittedly "out there", and not something they necessarily believe, but they seem to be throwing it out there as a possibility.
And why not? Not much weirder then quantum theory ideas*. Is this really harder to entertain then entanglement???
*Keeping in mind that it is NOT postulating silly time traveling scientists (as some keep remarking on in this thread) but instead a natural increase (to 100%) in the odds that something will go wrong, if one accepts that the universe can't exist with a working collider.
What would be interesting is if it actually transpires--if, no matter what, the collider always fails to be completed. After dozens (hundreds) of failures it would eventually have to be accepted as more than just chance, resulting in the collider bringing to light a far more startling universal principle then any God Particle.
the truth is... they made it out of old pinball machine parts - it does absolutely nothing - and they're just stalling :P
or... It wont work until we already know what its going to do. Not in some quantum expectancy sense, but in a 'gift of the magi' sense.
or... The Akasha were too busy helping Obama to make all the arrangements. Like hotel reservations without a plane ticket.
@Nixar That made my morning. Thank you.
the idea of going back in time to write a blog post made me think... you know what would be a cool blog post? One that just said "This post will be written retroactively on [date] to fit as many of the comments as possible. Please comment creatively!"
@ArnoDick : you may be onto something, but I offer a more probable spin. It isn't religious nutjobs from the future sabotaging the LHC - [dun dun duuuuhhhhhnnn] IT'S VATICAN SLEEPER AGENTS COCKBLOCKING SCIENCE!!
Fringe elements of any religious groups (Islam, Christianity, Scientology) would try to prevent scientific proof that there is no "creator." Remember Jake Busey's character in CONTACT?
CERN MANAGEMENT: How good is your facility security to prevent single saboteurs? Did your background checks of sensitive-area workers include religious affiliations? Is the backup LHC in Japan ready to go? :)
I would totally star in this movie.
-TH
The reason we don't see any time travelers is that we are one of the early itterations of the sub-set of universes that are influenced by incursions of future information.
We may even be the 'first' of the vacua to develop time travel. Perhaps the first Galaxy to grow life? I think the odss are sufficeintly imposing enough to not warrent too much stressing of the order in difference.
And when someone does travel back to an earlier time, the instant they arrive they will fly off into the eves of some branch remote from their original time line. One in which, perhaps, people arriving from the future is no big deal.
We need a box of Occum's razors - stat!
@Daemon and AirPillo, good point(s).
Time traveling Higgs censors? One could just as easily and "scientifically" theorize that angels of God are sabotaging the LHC to protect humans from destroying themselves.
;-)
tsk. Bladerunner!
I'm guessing this is either a typically quirky joke among physicists that's gotten out of hand, or maybe the stress of working on the LHC is finally starting to crack them up a bit.
It would take an insane amount of math to prove their suspicions are possible, and not merely stress-induced paranoia.
They don't seem to understand that either the Higgs already exists and is present in all matter, or the machine can't create one even if it runs because there is no such thing as a Higgs Boson. The LHC is not creating a Higgs Boson, it's creating the right conditions to make one observable. If they don't even know what the machine does, that throws quite a bit of doubt on any theories they might have about it.
Tom Hanks, you are from the future. Nothing else explains how many movies you've been in.
If they don't even know what the machine does, that throws quite a bit of doubt on any theories they might have about it.
this is also applicable to barista's.
So, a guy walks into a bar with a Large Hadron Collider on his head...
Hi, I am a six year old from the future, and my robot is kinda bored doing my homework, which includes this posts.
Please, stop writing stuff, will you?
And, now that we are at it, yes, LHC was a f***g bad
idea from the start, and you blew it, and then God fix it,
and we're fine now, we're all Republicans.
So please entertain your brains in robotics, or some other
useful sh*t instead of this, ok?
With regards to those espousing the impossibility of the incomprehensible, I quote Einstein:
"its not beautiful enough".
I love how all of the amateur physicists and mathematicians come out of the woodwork to disprove theories created by well known and renowned scientists and theorists. Please, do go on.
^^ he sniped, anonymously.
IT'S SPACE MOOSE!!
http://www.hackcanada.com/canadian/zines/spacemoose/time_machine.html
All that shows is that no one can invent a time machine, within the restriction that you can only travel back that far in any given time line, until, er, someone does.
At which point the exact opposite of the Niven theory will apply, those who try and travel back and prevent it will be mysteriously frustrated.
correct!
I don't get the grandfather paradox. They say it's no paradox if you go back in time and save your grandfather from being hit by a bus. However you wouldn't exist in the future or at present if he was initially hit and killed by the bus in the past.
That was the best pun ever.
The comment about the Higgs being everywhere here and now is the real comment.
If people would simply cease striving to PROVE fallicy and simply LISTEN to the DARK ENERGY then they would quickly learn that the HIGGS and DARK ENERGY are one and the same entity.
You know, there was plenty of room in there to park my Tardis. I could hang out in there for weeks without being discovered.
How many times must I torque the alignment with my trusty Sonic Screwdriver before you catch the hint? Silly humans. Bosons are for Timelords, not humans.
Hows that for leaving a message? Ready to go, Rose?!
I've heard the communicator=cellphone thing before.
That argument doesn't hold any water..
Someone could have built a working flip top "communicator" in 1966 when star trek started. It was called a walkie-talkie.
That you now have a telephone styled like a fancy walkie-talkie with a flip top does not mean that everything dreamed up by TV writers on star trek or other TV
shows can and will happen.
I tend to believe that the scientists involved in the project felt that their efforts had been jinxed for some reason. Could it be that they felt a tiny twinge of guilt since the LHC has the potential to jeopardize the existence of the planet? Perhaps they substituted the concept of time-travel to avoid refering to something reviled by many in the scientific community - "God."
None of you know what your talking about. We still have a hell of a lot to learn. The universe is a much weirder place then any of us knows. Not long ago people where joking about perall dimensions and now sting theory & M theory is taken seriously.
I don't dismiss this theory because the universe most have safe guards built into it to protect against the countless alien civilization and natural events from destroying the fabric of the universe.
And, if this theory is correct it might be proof God and the universe are one in the same.
Maybe the partial goes back in time but in a parallel universe or it creates a intersection in time creating a parallel universe.