Is the Large Hadron Collider self-jinxing?

[Tsuyoiko]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

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.

I think it's more likely that the technical problems are due to the difficulty and complexity of what is being attempted. It was Apollo 11 that landed men on the Moon, not Apollo 1, and I think it's unsurprising that several attempts will be necessary before scientists can recreate the initial aftermath of the Big Bang.

[Half-n-Half]

Very interesting find, Tsuyoiko. If that theory was somehow correct I think it would change how we thought of events in time being connected. For example, if the Higg's Boson really would sabotage itself, why would it choose to cause a Helium leak? Why not a malfunction in the coding, a catastrophic explosion, or the end of the universe? Is there a rhyme or reason? How does it "know" that causing this will prevent its discovery? Anyways, good find.

[Tsuyoiko]

Very interesting find, Tsuyoiko. If that theory was somehow correct I think it would change how we thought of events in time being connected.

Well, most physicists believe that the laws of physics are reversible; if that's true, Einstein's and Newton's equations would work in either direction. As Einstein himself said, “For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

For example, if the Higg's Boson really would sabotage itself, why would it choose to cause a Helium leak? Why not a malfunction in the coding, a catastrophic explosion, or the end of the universe? Is there a rhyme or reason? How does it "know" that causing this will prevent its discovery? Anyways, good find.

I think you're right to type "know" in speech marks. I don't think Nielsen and Ninomiya are suggesting that the Higgs is conscious, that the "sabotage" would be an act of volition. I interpret it as more like a defense mechanism. You might try to kill yourself by holding your breath, but that wouldn't be possible, because there's an in-built, non-conscious mechanism that makes you gasp for breath eventually. I think their "sabotage" hypothesis would work something like that, if it's true at all.

I've been thinking of analogies to help me understand what might happen if they do create the Higgs boson.

Imagine the Higgs is like a stone skipped across the surface of a pond. It creates ripples, which continue to disturb the surface of the pond long after the stone has sunk. Anything lying on the surface of the pond will be affected by the ripples, just as the Higgs gives particles their mass.

If we suddenly create a new Higgs boson and skip it on the surface of the already rippling pond, it's easy to imagine unpleasant consequences for anything bobbing on the surface of the pond, as the two sets of ripples may intersect and cause disturbances.

[bakaKanadajin]

I'm a little weary as to just what the CERN project could do to our planet. I heard it said in several articles that the chance of actually creating a black hole of any size/duration such that it did serious damage is slim. But the possibility exists! Doesn't that bother anyone else but me? In particular I remember reading about one girl in either India or Pakistan who killed herself because she was so terrified of that prospect, so it certainly bothered her.

This is just intuition or plain old fashioned fear but the CERN project just feels like one more person smoking a cigarette in the gunpowder room to me. We've got Iran ratcheting up tensions with Israel over its nuclear ambitions, we've got climate change throughout the whole solar system stemming from an increase in solar activity (the source of this spike is yet unknown but maybe it has to do with the solar system's movement through the galactic plane), the economy is recovering we have seemingly forgotten is that the economists said it would do so. We're not in the clear because ultimately what they all said was that even if we plugged the dike with our fingers for a year or two what we were seeing was the beginning of the end unless radical change occurred.

Now we have this BS swine flu virus which has been completely inflated by the media as a front for the government to push crippling vaccinations on everyone.

So there are a lot of things happening now, just, a lot of things, more events are occurring worldwide than ever before, more people are connected, the planet is more globally aware, conscious if you will, it's less and less 'us and them' and more just a big 'us'. There's just a lot of fear and negativity flowing through the global consciousness it seems.

I just feel like this CERN thing is one more event that could set off a catastrophe, or I admit perhaps a revolution in science, could be a great thing, but either way it just has that feel about it. Is that because it really is dangerous, or because I'm buying into the fear, well I don't know.

To the point at hand, I don't see how the Higgs particle could self-sabotage itself. They kinda glossed over that with the time traveler analogy, which is also just like the Terminator movie franchise. But the point is that the time traveler is a sentient being with intention. The particle can't act alone can it? 'Ripple back' is too vague a phrase, what exactly is meant by that?

[Half-n-Half]

I'm a little weary as to just what the CERN project could do to our planet. I heard it said in several articles that the chance of actually creating a black hole of any size/duration such that it did serious damage is slim. But the possibility exists! Doesn't that bother anyone else but me? In particular I remember reading about one girl in either India or Pakistan who killed herself because she was so terrified of that prospect, so it certainly bothered her.

It doesn't really bother me when you consider what goes on above our heads all day every day. Cosmic rays and particles bombard the upper atmosphere at much higher energies and much more frequently than CERN ever could. Strangely enough, no black holes have devoured us yet :relief:. Besides, even if it did create a tiny black hole it would likely evaporate before it could devour a single atom due to Hawking's Radiation. I'm sure it does bother some people. Hell, I remember when I was a little kid I got really depressed because I heard scientists might try to recreate dinosaurs. Jurassic Park didn't really help the situation. Is that a reason for science not to move forward? Of course not.

This is just intuition or plain old fashioned fear but the CERN project just feels like one more person smoking a cigarette in the gunpowder room to me. We've got Iran ratcheting up tensions with Israel over its nuclear ambitions, we've got climate change throughout the whole solar system stemming from an increase in solar activity (the source of this spike is yet unknown but maybe it has to do with the solar system's movement through the galactic plane), the economy is recovering we have seemingly forgotten is that the economists said it would do so. We're not in the clear because ultimately what they all said was that even if we plugged the dike with our fingers for a year or two what we were seeing was the beginning of the end unless radical change occurred.

Well, from our perspective, the sun crosses the galactic plane twice a year every year. And as far as I know, right now there is no clear evidence whether an increase in solar activity has any long-term affects on Earth's climate. That's not to say it doesn't, it's just that it is inconclusive right now.

To the point at hand, I don't see how the Higgs particle could self-sabotage itself. They kinda glossed over that with the time traveler analogy, which is also just like the Terminator movie franchise. But the point is that the time traveler is a sentient being with intention. The particle can't act alone can it? 'Ripple back' is too vague a phrase, what exactly is meant by that?

I don't know if you'll get a much more specific description than that unless you sit down and chat with those physicists who wrote the paper. It's probably mathematical and highly theoretical, but I can't really say as I have not read the paper they published.

Well, most physicists believe that the laws of physics are reversible; if that's true, Einstein's and Newton's equations would work in either direction. As Einstein himself said, “For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

I don't know how viable this is or if it has been addressed, but thermodynamics says that the net entropy of a system always increases. So, if by reversing a physical process you decrease the net entropy of the universe that would violate thermodynamics, but I don't know how time plays into that.

[Tsuyoiko]

I don't know how viable this is or if it has been addressed, but thermodynamics says that the net entropy of a system always increases. So, if by reversing a physical process you decrease the net entropy of the universe that would violate thermodynamics, but I don't know how time plays into that.

The second law of thermodynamics is not an unbreakable law like the fundamental laws of physics, it's a statistical rule. There's nothing in the laws of physics to prevent ice cubes suddenly coalescing in a glass of water, but the second law tells us how astronomically unlikely that is.

However, I think it's possible to imagine some kind of influence rippling back in time to prevent the LHC from working, while at any point on the time line the total entropy of the universe is still increasing.

A few useful articles:

http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/kenny/papers/entropy.html

http://finitenature.com/reversibility/index.html

http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath552/kmath552.htm