Why large hadron collider can never be activated

[makc]

This theory comes from comments to recent bird conspiracy thread on slashdot:

this theory has actually been proposed: That activating the LHC would actually destroy the universe, that is, the whole universe, even reaching back into the past. That would mean that the only possible universes are ones in which the LHC is never activated, which means that if we keep trying, implausible events will continue to occur, preventing the LHC from activating- after all, we're here now, right. That's _proof_ that the LHC will never be activated!

I guess this theory can now be dismissed due to inconsistency with experimental data. Because that's how science work, baby!

[Chris Peterson]

This theory comes from comments to recent bird conspiracy thread on slashdot:

this theory has actually been proposed: That activating the LHC would actually destroy the universe, that is, the whole universe, even reaching back into the past. That would mean that the only possible universes are ones in which the LHC is never activated, which means that if we keep trying, implausible events will continue to occur, preventing the LHC from activating- after all, we're here now, right. That's _proof_ that the LHC will never be activated!

I guess this theory can now be dismissed due to inconsistency with experimental data. Because that's how science work, baby!

The theory is still valid (even if extremely unlikely). That's because the actual theory says the problem comes from creating a Higgs boson, not from operating the LHC. It could turn out that this device isn't even capable of creating such a particle, in which case it is no threat to the Universe and therefore this particular universe hasn't been prevented from creation.

The only way to conclusively falsify the theory is to actually create a Higgs boson.

[apodman]

Pardon a serious question, but what are we going to do with a Higgs boson when we get one?

I suppose we will first detect one without actually capturing it to poke and prod.

Will we ever get to the capture, poke, and prod stage?

What are the potential experimental and practical uses once we have a bushel of them in hand? Will we be able to conduct experiments that will explain all the mysteries of the world of quarks? Will we be able to propel a starship, blow up an enemy's sun, or send a killer asteroid far away from target Earth? How much energy spoda be in one of these things?

[Chris Peterson]

Pardon a serious question, but what are we going to do with a Higgs boson when we get one?

I suppose we will first detect one without actually capturing it to poke and prod.

That's about all you ever do with a collider. Very few particles are actually subject to capture. They are poked and prodded by watching their creation, interaction with other particles and fields, and decay. You don't need a bottle of Higgs bosons to study them. In fact, the properties of this particle are generally understood... assuming the particle exists. So the most significant thing scientifically will be the creation of a Higgs boson- a feat which will really help fine tune the Standard Model.

[astrolabe]

Hello All,

HEY! WAKE UP! (slap, slap). It's Groundhog Day, the LHC has been started up millions of times, the very first time resulted in trapping us in a time loop. Every time we fire it up we end up back to a moment just before starting it up. Again, and again, and again......................welcome to Limbo.

[rstevenson]

It's Groundhog Day?!?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_%28film%29

Does that mean this is As Good As It Gets?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Good_As_It_Gets

Rob
(I think, after months of reading neufer's posts, that I'm finally getting into the spirit of irrelevantly relevent references. Now if only I could figure out how to write URLs so they are invisibly attached to the link text. Anyone care to enlighten me?)

[bystander]

It's Groundhog Day?!?

Does that mean this is As Good As It Gets?

Rob
(I think, after months of reading neufer's posts, that I'm finally getting into the spirit of irrelevantly relevent references. Now if only I could figure out how to write URLs so they are invisibly attached to the link text. Anyone care to enlighten me?)

Code: Select all

It's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_%28film%29]Groundhog Day[/url]?!?

Does that mean this is [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Good_As_It_Gets]As Good As It Gets[/url]?

[rstevenson]

Thank you. Enlightenment has occurred.

Rob

[makc]

you could have received your enlightment months ago, by clicking quote button

[orin stepanek]

If you could go back into the past; wheere would you go?

Orin

[astrolabe]

Hello orin,

That's an easy one- the Garden of Eden.

[orin stepanek]

Hello orin,

That's an easy one- the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve kind of messed that time period up!!!

Orin

[astrolabe]

Hello orin,

Yeah, but I'll bet Eve was a HOTTIE! However I don't believe I could have persuaded her not to eat the apple. which goes with my thinking that the past cannot be changed in order to change the future. Future events are built on past ones. Therefore any changes by someone from the future are fated to be an actual part of an already receded past and results in nothing more than validating existing future events to be exactly as they are- unchangeable..

The real value of time travel would be knowledge gained WRT filling in blanks in natural, geological and human history. And even that would already part of the future's history so, again nothing changes.

[bystander]

If you could go back in time and change the past, it would have already happened. 8)

[The Code]

If you could go back in time and change the past, it would have already happened.

The question for me, would be, Which point in time would you like to go to. And Why.

[orin stepanek]

If you could go back in time and change the past, it would have already happened.

The question for me, would be, Which point in time would you like to go to. And Why.

Pretty much what I asked. I'd go back to the 1950's; they were great! 8) I wouldn't change anything.

Orin

[rstevenson]

I'd go back to the 1950's; they were great! 8) I wouldn't change anything.

Ah yes, the 50s... Bowls of cigarettes put out by the hostess at parties. Cars without seat belts. Polio. Yep, nothing there worth changing.

I'd go forward and take my chances rather than go anytime into the past.

Rob

[BMAONE23]

Hello orin,

Yeah, but I'll bet Eve was a HOTTIE! However I don't believe I could have persuaded her not to eat the apple. which goes with my thinking that the past cannot be changed in order to change the future. Future events are built on past ones. Therefore any changes by someone from the future are fated to be an actual part of an already receded past and results in nothing more than validating existing future events to be exactly as they are- unchangeable..

The real value of time travel would be knowledge gained WRT filling in blanks in natural, geological and human history. And even that would already part of the future's history so, again nothing changes.

More likely, your presence there would prompt Eve to bite the apple given it would lead to your existance and ability to travel through time. She would have a taste of the technology to which the apple leads.

[BMAONE23]

I'd go back to the 1950's; they were great! 8) I wouldn't change anything.

Ah yes, the 50s... Bowls of cigarettes put out by the hostess at parties. Cars without seat belts. Polio. Yep, nothing there worth changing.

I'd go forward and take my chances rather than go anytime into the past.

Rob

I think that if the past is accessable, it is unalterable (you might be able to prevent Kennedy from being shot but he would die anyway) and the future is fluidic, constantly changing as dictated by everyones actions.

[Chris Peterson]

I think that if the past is accessable, it is unalterable (you might be able to prevent Kennedy from being shot but he would die anyway) and the future is fluidic, constantly changing as dictated by everyones actions.

Your example is a bad one. If you stop Kennedy from being shot, you've changed the past regardless of whether he dies or not. The repercussions of his dying differently would spread into the future. It would be a different future.

If travel into the past is possible, there are really only two possibilities: you can influence the past and change the future (with all the apparent paradoxes that introduces), or you can influence the past and create a new family of futures (change the timeline you're on, but not the one you came from). I can't imagine any mechanism that would allow interaction with the past that wouldn't also change it.

[neufer]

Large Hadron Collider Shatters Energy Record
By Richard Adhikari
TechNewsWorld 11/30/09 11:57 AM PT

<<The Large Hadron Collider created by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, officially became the world's highest-energy particle accelerator on Monday.

The enormous facility has sent two beams of protons shooting through its ring at 1.18 teraelectronvolts (TeV). It happened 10 days after scientists started up the collider again following a one-year hiatus due to technical problems.

The previous record of 0.98 TeV was set by the U.S. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's Tevatron collider in 2001.

The LHC is designed to smash proton beams into one another at 7 TeV to help simulate the sort of conditions present just after the Big Bang. In doing this, scientists hope to answer some of the most fundamental questions in physics. These include proving whether or not the Higgs boson exists.

Built in a circular tunnel 27 km in circumference and buried about 50 to 75 meters underground, the LHC is designed to bash together two beams of protons or heavy ions moving at 99.999999 percent of the speed of light. The beams rotate in opposite directions.

That cosmic train wreck will let scientists get a peek at what happened microseconds after the Big Bang theoretically created the universe. How does it do this? High-energy particle accelerators can, in effect, act as microscopes that examine fundamental physics at distances a hundredth or a thousandth of the size of a proton, according to Penn State University physics professor John Collins.

One of the questions the LHC was built to answer is, does the Higgs boson really exist? A boson is a subatomic particle that obeys Bose-Einstein statistics. Scientists have observed bosons, and, using the Standard Model, have predicted that the Higgs boson exists, but they have not yet observed one.

The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory of three of the four known physical fundamental interactions and the elementary particles taking part in these interactions. These particles make up all visible matter in the universe. The Standard Model falls short of being a complete theory of fundamental interactions because it does not include gravitation, dark matter, or dark energy.

A Higgs boson, if it exists, would explain the origin of mass in the universe. "An elaboration of the Standard Model of particle physics suggests there's another force in the universe which confers mass upon all basic particles," explained Phillip Schewe, a spokesperson for the American Institute of Physics. "A very basic question that hasn't yet been answered is, why do quarks and other known particles have the properties they do, such as mass and specific charges?"

Why is a Higgs boson different from other bosons? This boson is really a precipitation of the Higgs field, which permeates the universe, Schewe told TechNewsWorld. "Just as moisture in the air could precipitate as a raindrop, so can the Higgs field precipitate as a particle," he explained. That particle would be the Higgs boson.

While the Higgs boson has mass, it is very unstable as a particle, so it cannot easily be observed in a laboratory, Schewe said. It has to be artificially created in order to be observed and, even then, it will exist for a very short time. To create Higgs bosons, the LHC needs to smash together particle beams at pretty close to the speed of light. "You need lots of energy for this because these particles are so heavy," Schewe explained.

When the beams are smashed together, the resulting energy is converted into a very small fireball that manifests briefly as a particle which decays rapidly into a daughter particle. The daughter particle has a longer life, but it's still very short. "It may be the fourth- or fifth-generation daughter particle that is stable enough to observe," Schewe said.

If everything goes according to researchers' plans, the LHC will smash proton beams together for the rest of the year to calibrate its equipment. The first proper physics results are expected to emerge in the first quarter of next year.>>

[makc]

I think that if the past is accessable, it is unalterable (you might be able to prevent Kennedy from being shot but he would die anyway) and the future is fluidic, constantly changing as dictated by everyones actions.

Your example is a bad one. If you stop Kennedy from being shot, you've changed the past regardless of whether he dies or not. The repercussions of his dying differently would spread into the future. It would be a different future.

I think exactly the same when they play this card in movies (like 2002's Time Machine). However, one could _assert_ that nature "suppresses" changes-in-the-past that cause a lot of changes-in-the-future, but "allows" those that have limited effects (similar to "arrow of time" being function of number of particles involved), and then those movies could be justified... I still think it's too artificial.

I can't imagine any mechanism that would allow interaction with the past that wouldn't also change it.

Some other people here cannot imagine invisible heavy matter spread across the universe. Some yet another people cannot imagine instant action of Newtonian gravity... The point is, if this "mechanism" could be formulated, you don't have to be able to imagine it. As long as there is a way to tell that particular timeline came "from the future", nature can then use this information in any ridiculous way.

[Orca]

It's fun to imagine making changes to the past as a thought experiment; however it's hard to come up with one that doesn't end up in a nasty causality loop.

Say that, after a lecture at your 20th Century History class, you decide to build a time machine and go back to the early 30's to kill Adolph Hitler. You hope to prevent WW2 or at least save millions of lives. You build your time machine (after tracking down a fully-restored DeLorean), go back in time, and kill Hitler.

Now as Chris pointed out, changes we make will alter history from that point on. The trick is, the time traveler's personal history is contained in that future! So now you've grown up in a world that doesn't know who Hitler is. You don't know about him...so how can you go back in time to erase someone you don't know about? No need for that DeLorean anymore. But if you never built the time machine you never changed history. If you never changed history then at some point in your youth you get angry in history class and decide to make a time machine to fix it...

ect...ect...ect.

Another example: "don't ever make a time machine because you might make it so you were never born." If you go back in time and kill your parents, you're never born and thus can't go back in time to kill them. So what happens then? Does the "you" that went back in time continue on in your own new time line independent of the "past you" that you just destroyed? How can there be a "current you" if "you" are a product of the "past you" that now will never exist?

[BMAONE23]

Go back in time and leave yourself a message to buy Microsoft stock during its IPO and hold it until a certain date, the day after you've traveled back to the past (You must bring the investment money with you though so you don't affect your spending habits). Then you will not have altered your past until you've returned to your present timeline.

[makc]

The trick is, the time traveler's personal history is contained in that future!

Or it is contained in his own personal past, and alternative future events (that are also our traveler's future, unless he travels backward in time again) do not affect it in any way. His "younger self", however, is affected as you expect (and therefore might not even build the time machine in the future).

Go back in time and leave yourself a message to buy Microsoft stock during its IPO and hold it until a certain date, the day after you've traveled back to the past (You must bring the investment money with you though so you don't affect your spending habits). Then you will not have altered your past until you've returned to your present timeline.

It is easier to just buy it yourself and take it back to the future (or, in case of carbon dating tests expected, hide it in a safe place). This will, however, change microsoft history - by making it richer. Unless you also kill someone else who bought same amount of stocks and haven't done anything with it until now.