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A worker is dwarfed by components of the Large Hadron Collider's ATLAS detector during construction in an underground chamber beneath the French-Swiss border. |
Is the future trying to save us from ourselves? A series of scientific papers that have been kicking around for a couple of years suggest that if the Large Hadron Collider ever were to find something that shattered the cosmos, the future universe might protect itself by sending a backward-causality wave to break the LHC, or at least warn us.
Sure enough, the LHC is broken - leading The New York Times' Dennis Overbye to wonder half-jokingly whether there was something to the claim after all.
Does that sound spooky? What if I told you that the idea of going back in time to derail out a world-ending particle collider goes back even farther, to a novel written about the fate of the long-canceled Superconducting Super Collider? And that the author of that book is a physicist who has been conducting research into ... backward causality?
To quote the actor Keanu Reeves, who has appeared in a couple of time-travel sagas himself: "Whooooa!" And just in time for Halloween!
Each piece of the puzzle is relatively mundane by itself, but when you put them all together, it could serve as the makings for a science-fiction story as way-out as anything you'd see in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," "FlashForward" or University of Washington physicist John Cramer's book, "Einstein's Bridge":
- The papers on the LHC's potential effects were written by Holger Nielsen of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute and Masao Ninomiya of Japan's Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics. They suggest that the LHC could produce exotic particles (such as the long-sought Higgs boson), and that producing those particles would somehow be so catastrophic that the event would send back a timeline-altering signal to avoid producing them in the first place. They even suggest that physicists create a card game that would determine whether the LHC is allowed to operate at the highest levels. The game would be designed with a minuscule chance of "losing," but if the physicists actually lose the game, the LHC would be limited to lower-energy collisions.
- Nielsen and Ninomiya's papers were published on the arXiv preprint Web site, which is a clearinghouse for all sorts of papers (including suggestions that the LHC could create a time machine or lead to a relativistic hyperdrive). Just because a paper shows up on arXiv doesn't mean it's so. The big reason why the papers are getting a second look is because a helium leak and electrical breakdown forced the LHC to go dark just days after it started up. That's an example of old-fashioned forward causality. Nevertheless, the shutdown, plus the fact that the LHC won't reach full power for more than a year, has led some folks to grumble that the project is jinxed.
- This isn't the first time a big particle-smasher has seemed jinxed. Back in 1990, the Superconducting Super Collider looked like the next big thing in physics - in fact, it would have been more powerful than the LHC. But Congress moved to cancel the project in 1993, due to cost concerns. Or was that the real reason?
- In Cramer's book, "Einstein's Bridge," the Superconducting Super Collider ends up getting built - but it opens the door to problems coming in from a metaverse in a bad cosmic neighborhood. That sparks a desperate effort to hold those problems at bay, and change the collider's timeline if possible. Without going into the details, I'll just note that a similar plot twist finds its way into another novel about the Superconducting Super Collider titled "The God Particle."
- Cramer is a particle physicist as well as a novelist and columnist, and one of his latest projects is to determine whether backward causality on a small scale is actually possible under the rules of quantum physics. At last report, he was still having trouble setting up the correct apparatus. But even if the experiment is a failure, he can still make use of the concept. As he told me a couple of years ago, "If it doesn't work, I will write a science-fiction novel where it does work. It's a win-win situation."
So what's the bottom line here? Almost nobody thinks the LHC poses a threat worth changing the past over. A lawsuit to stop the collider is still being considered on appeal, however, and as we get closer to the scheduled restart in mid-November, there may be a fresh surge of particle-physics paranoia. If that's the case, don't be surprised - and for heaven's sake, don't panic.
For more about the LHC, check out our special report on "The Big Bang Machine." Join the Cosmic Log team by signing up as my Facebook friend or following b0yle on Twitter. And reserve your copy of my book, "The Case for Pluto," which is coming out this month.
Umm. If I'm going to bother with time travel to stop the LHC, I'd go back to when the decision to fund the millions of dollars in research grants this thing has tied up was made.
sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo lets sell it to iran. the thing is a piece of junk that WONT work.
this could only happen with something that involves quantum mechanics. this reeks of spooky action not only at a distance but across space and time. It makes my head hurt just to think about it.
Uh, is it just me or if someone/thing was capable of going back in time to protect itself by messing with our supercolliderhadron thingy, why would they just damage it? They are gonna fix the thing sooner or later. Seems like a waste of a perfectly good hyperspace round trip!
Personally I do not think the LHC will do anything but create great new questions, and answer tantilizing few old ones. However of all things we do not know about the world/universe, it trying to protect itself from us is not as far fetched as you would think.
If high energy particles are smashing into stuff(and each other) quadrillions of times every moment on every planet, moon, asteroid, and comet in our solar system with energies far exceeding anything humans will ever be able to achieve, wouldn't we see any exotic doomsday results already?
My personal dislike for these projects is how they suck the life out of so many other worthy projects that would benefit mankind much more directly and quickly. Theoretical physics at this level is just ultra expensive indulgence of a small group of scientists.
Silly garbage."if the Large Hadron Collider ever were to find something that shattered the cosmos, the future universe might protect itself by sending a backward-causality wave to break the LHC". Duh - There would be no future universe to do that!!! I feel sorry for the undergrads who are paying these guys salaries!
the proof of backward causality is George W. Bush.
WE ARE PLAYING WITH MATCHES, SO THE OLD ONES SEND A MESSAGE, AND TAKE THE MATCHES AWAY!! BEFORE WE HURT OUR SEL'S
Please remember that astrophysicists and the physicists at CERN are often wrong.
And please note that the Big Bang theory is quite wrong (and obviously so – keep reading).
CNN.com and AP report --
"Scientists plan to hunt for signs of the invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up more than 96 percent of the universe, and hope to glimpse the elusive Higgs boson, a so-far undiscovered particle thought to give matter its mass."
The concepts of "dark matter" and "dark energy" are spurious. These concepts are based upon the incorrect Big Bang theory.
So what is the purpose of the LHC?? Is it really a doomsday machine?
The Big Bang Theory is wrong because …
Physicists have misinterpreted the cosmic redshift. The redshifts of distant galaxies, quasars, etc are not due to the expansion of the Universe.
Electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, emits gravity.
Electromagnetic radiation is a wave phenomenon. Electromagnetic radiation is a combination of electric and magnetic waves. They oscillate. The waves can be viewed as accelerating/decelerating electric and magnetic waves.
Since the electric and magnetic fields are accelerating and decelerating, they emit gravity and the electric and magnetic fields are subject to the force of gravity as it is being emitted.
This is called a gravitation red shift as previously stated in General Relativity.
Please note that accelerating mass emits gravity (or creates a gravitational field). For example, if you accelerate while driving your car, you feel the pull of gravity - pulling you back into your seat. Likewise, if an astronaut accelerates atop a rocket, the astronaut feels the pull of gravity – G forces. This was first hinted at by Einstein's Principle of Equivalence.
In a similar manner, electromagnetic waves 'feel' the force of gravity as the gravity is being emitted. The electromagnetic radiation loses energy due to the gravitational redshift.
Also note that as electromagnetic radiation travels longer and longer distances, it will lose more and more energy and the amount of the redshift will keep increasing.
Generally (and somewhat loosely) galaxies, quasars, etc, with the smallest observed redshifts are at the least distance from Earth and those with the largest observed redshifts are at the greatest distance from Earth.
NASA and astrophysicists have collected plenty of data to conclude that electromagnetic radiation emits gravity.
Concepts such as dark energy and dark matter are spurious.
There is also the possibility that astrophysicists have incorrectly analyzed very high energy cosmic rays.
@Mike Haptmann: The articles referenced at the top of this piece on backward-causality theorize that such a thing could happen as almost a knee-jerk type of reaction to a massive cosmic event. The physicists that have thrown around this theory are not referring to some sort of time travel explicitly initiated by an individual or individuals.
With this logic, I guess an alien race must discover a fried Earth and Solar System.. Go hmmm what happened to these people and see it was the LHC. So then they decide to go back and alter time to prevent a race of idiots from destroying themselves. We wouldn't be preventing it because WE would ALL BE DEAD! sillyness at its best.. Great stuff for movies tho.. :) Oh and particles smash into each other all the time.. black holes spit them out at speeds faster than we will produce.
Watch for multiple lottery winners. These'll be the real time travellers....
I don't believe in time travel, but I do believe this thing could be the cause of our "2012 End of the world"
"Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation."
A research paper by Frank Tipler on a possible form of time travel within known physics, and a 1977 short story by Larry Niven, involving the same subject.
I recommend reading the latter (I don't pretend to fully understand the former). It's quite relevant to this topic...
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WHO can say that the NEW universe isn't BETTER than this one? :)
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Whatever way you look at it, you have to conclude that the future exists as we speak. This implies a universe that is spoken for and is laid down. It also implies all that BULL that... we have all been here before in Deja Vu . Great song !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiDOMuhpqUo
Slow day Alan?
Why exactly should the "future universe" send a message to save itself? We humans are so obsessed with the self-perceived importance of ourselves, our planet or our cosmos in the bigger picture. What a pity.
Significant, the Power of God, the creator of this Universe, has yet to publicly give his approval, disaproval or comments to these projects, or has he? Regardless on how much mankind thinks he knows, it is by and through the laws of the creator of all things that it is known. As technology increases through man's research and discoveries, there is too often that failure to recognize and credit the hand and power of the Lord. It will be at His approval as to when our actions and tamperings reach the limits of that which we are to know.
Consider this - If the future universe is triggerd by the success of the LHC to send a "causality wave" to cripple the LHC, then there will be no trigger for the future to send a causality wave, therefore the LHC will work, therefore the future will send a causality wave to break the LHC, therefore the LHC will not trigger the future to send a causality wave, there fore > > > My head hurts.
I claim no credit for discovering this paradox, just for remembering it; it is fairly well known.
@Charles Kapplinger Jr. At least the scientist at the LHC are actually trying to do real experiments to find the answers to their scientific questions. Even if some of the theories turn out to be wrong, they'll never know that without experimenting first and what they do find out may make it all worthwhile.
You on the other hand are just a poser who hides behind his keyboard and pretends to know more then he actually does. You presented your theories as facts and irrelevent data as the evidence. [...]
Wow so many stupid comments about LHC. The LHC is NOT going to be the cause of the so-called 2012 end of world. Also Kapplinger, if you are so sure that the scientists at CERN are wrong the question now is why aren't you working there?
"The Truth is out there"
Time: Takes a lickin' but keeps on tick-tick-tickin'-
(w/ apologies to John Cameron Swayze)