Thursday Open Thread
Is it Thursday already? The week is flying by!
Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. 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.
Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half.
According to the so-called Standard Model that rules almost all physics, the Higgs is responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass.
“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”
I actually know some people working on finding the Higgs boson at CERN. Fundamental physics is always a bit mind-blowing, with concepts like Schroedinger’s cat (both alive and dead) and “spooky action at a distance” (AKA quantum entanglement).
Tags: Open Thread
Coincidentally, I saw a 1980’s British documentary yesterday, done right after Hawking published A Brief History of Time, featuring Hawking, Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan. Hawking and Sagan agreed that the “time travel” of humans is not likely possible based not on science or math … because our time hasn’t been visited by the future.
I thought it was a bit humorous that two of our greatest scientists sounded like my mother.
They both also made the case that the expansion of the universe, started by the big bang, shows no signs of slowing or stopping. Only Sagan left open the possibility that the expansion could be stopped by some as-yet unknown force, at which point the universe would begin reducing to the point of implosion. Hawking didn’t buy that and believed that the best evidence points to continual expansion.
And in fewer than 40 years, we’ve got a machine that, according to some theory, could create the implosion for us.
Where is Arthur Dent when you need him?
Oh geez UI–I think you confused which blog you were contributing to 🙂 !!
our time hasn’t been visited by the future.
If you had a time machine, why would you travel back to a time before time machines were invented? You could never go back until it was invented!
Anon — you assume “machine”. Hawking and Sagan were talking about negative space, black holes and math. But they still didn’t think it was possible.
God, the Universe and Everything Else
it is only about 10 minutes of this program but it is still pretty compelling listing to a small part of a conversation between Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Arthur Clarke.
Hawking and Sagan were talking about negative space, black holes and math. But they still didn’t think it was possible.
I was being partly facetious.
It is pretty hard to imagine on what principle you could construct a time machine. But it is (somewhat) easier to imagine regions or conditions in the universe where time is mixed up and swirls around in different directions.
This weather sure has brought a chill. The firewood is in full use.
I was in Western NY earlier this week and I think that they were expecting snow or a snow/rain mix today.
Cassandra — How the heck do you find this stuff so quickly with so little to go on??? You amaze me with your on-the-net-I-can-find-anything-in-an-unassuming-manner ability!
We got the full video at the library.
Hi PM! I posted up a Carl Sagan vid a week or so back and in the Related Videos portion it had this up and I watched it. This one I knew of just because I had the chance to see it recently. I do remember the whole doc tho — I should look for it on DVD. That was a great program.
Maybe that’s why we haven’t been visited by Aliens. They invent a collider that destroys their planet prior to finding faster than light travel. Or maybe they kept a GOP majority in power too long and suffered extinction.
Looooove Sagan.
Me too. Have you ever seen Brian Greene speak? He is a down-to-earth speaker and he is awesome as making physics pretty exciting and very intelligible without math.
I haven’t… I’ll look him up. Right now I’m working on a book by Matthew Alper on neurotheology. Just mental masturbation at this point, since there’s not a ton of empirical evidence behind it, but it’s still a good read.
Interesting poll: Would you vote for Beau Biden?
Hmm, already have and depends.
From the Holy F* or the WTF files…
I feel heart-wrenched for the kid.
This is a good primer.
Plus Greene wrote The Elegant Universe, which is very good but may be a challenging read.
He also wrote Icarus at the Edge of Time. Greene retells the Icarus story here, but using it to illustrate the way that time warps at the edge of a black hole. A fantastic story, illustrating some effects of relativity using some fabulous images from the Hubble telescope. Every young person I know got one of these last year for Christmas. I saw Greene tell part of this at the Philadelphia Free Library and hearing him tell it with these images was just amazing.
Smitty — If only he had a camping tool, he could slit the envelope, thereby releasing the helium and coming safely back down. Actually, I’m waiting for the follow-up story where he lands in some backwoods town and is hailed as the new Alien Overlord.
Oh man, getting worse…
From CNN:
UPDATE: this thing is breaking all over the place, new update just now, same link as above:
Holy crap, I hope they find out he bailed before it even lifted off.
Oh my. I hope the boy is o.k.
I saw that. That’s what I’m hoping, too. Maybe he got scared when it got untied, jumped off, and is hiding somewhere so he doesn’t get in trouble. I’m optimistically picturing Ralphie’s little brother hiding under the sink in A Christmas Story.
Either way, sad and scary story.
The family apparently was on wife swap.
Do the authorities not know where the boy is? That is a bad sign.
Scott,
I’m going to cross my fingers that it’s something like that, that the boy got off of the balloon and then hid because he was afraid of getting in trouble.
I’ll gladly take this back if they did have better precautions (and I know this is the time for finding the boy, not laying blame), but did the parents ever consider that they might want to make it more difficult for the kid to do this than just untying a rope? I say this not trying to lay blame, but just as the kneejerk reaction of a father of a small child. Don’t make it easy for the child to get into a dangerous situation.
I thought the same thing, Scott. When my kids were little we had gates at the top and bottom of the stairs and enough cabinet locks to drive you crazy.
I don’t much about what’s going on – did the parents know the boy was doing this?
OK, I understand now. The boy’s parents apparently kept some kind of homemade helium balloon tied up in the yard. One brother saw the boy get in and then the balloon flew away. They tracked the balloon but when it landed there was no boy inside.
Loosening export controls (Obama moves oversight of selling missile technology to Commerce Dept.)
Washington Times ^ | 10/15/09 | Bill Gertz
President Obama recently shifted authority for approving sales to China of missile and space technology from the White House to the Commerce Department — a move critics say will loosen export controls and potentially benefit Chinese missile development.
The president issued a little-noticed “presidential determination” Sept. 29 that delegated authority for determining whether missile and space exports should be approved for China to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.
…just like clinton…
Dear RICO,
How to post a link: Simply copy the entire http://delawareliberal.net/ and then paste it at the end of your comment. Like magic it will automatically activate. Seriously, we don’t have time to look up you constant cut and pasting. Please give it a try. Thanks.
The 6 year old balloon boy has been found alive. He was in his house.
Balloon Boy found–now he’s grounded!
LOL Joanne!
Joanne is always clever! BTW, just saw the father interviewed. Anyone else watch? It didn’t sit quite right with me. He spent A LOT of the interview talking about his invention, altho he did choke up at the end.
Balloon Boy is about to become a Bubble Boy (his parents will doom his existence to the confines of a bubble) and the parents are about to get a mother effer of a bill from any service that was involved in this fiasco. Trust me, one medi-vac copter lift from Middletown to Christiana Hospital (when Mrs Smitty was hit head-on) is THOUSANDS of dollars. I can’t imagine the bill from this thing.