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The LHC, the Higgs Boson, and Fate
Reader Maximum Prophet sends a piece from the NY Times by the usually reliable Dennis Overbye reporting on a "crazy" theory being worked up by a pair of "otherwise distinguished physicists": that the Large Hadron Collider's difficulties may be due to the universe's reluctance to produce a Higgs boson. Maximum Prophet adds, "This happened to the Superconducting Super Collider in the science fiction story Einstein's Bridge. Now Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, are theorizing that it's happening in real life." "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."
No, I think the theory is that a universe in which we create a Higgs boson is impossible, because such a universe would not only cease to be, but cease to have ever been as soon as the boson appears.
...but did you notice no one mentioned that it is simply hard to create the conditions necessary to detect the Higgs boson? We too quickly opt for the sci-fi answer and though the idea of time based sabotage is fun, it makes for a better movie than it does an answer. And how was such a conjecture published without data or peer review? Nothing to see here, next particle please...
[quote]the Large Hadron Collider's difficulties may be due to the universe's reluctance to produce a Higgs boson[/quote]
Let's apply Occam's Razor. One of two cases must be true, either:
(a) "the Large Hadron Collider's difficulties may be due to the universe's reluctance to produce a Higgs boson"
or
(b) building a machine like this is rather complicated and it might take a few goes before they get it right.
Of course, there could be an option (c) they really suck. I'll try that on my boss the next time I fuck something up. "No, see, it's not that I'm not any good at my job, it's that the universe is conspiring against the proper completion of the project. Have I ever mentioned Schroedinger's Cat?"
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
i brought this up before, and was shouted down a little bit.
i think it's less like the future leaking back to prevent the present, and more like the present just isn't capable of reaching the future we expect.
it's like the first time you ever put two little toy magnets together, north pole to north pole. not really knowing anything about them, you think they might stay, but one flips as soon as you take away your hand. try as you might, there is no way for you, as a child, to keep them together effectively. eventually you give up and walk away. your present can't reach a future in which the magnets stay aligned in a way which you desire.
" ... [To say] that the Higgs boson is abhorrent to Nature is ridiculous. ..."
Of course it is. Being ridiculous is the absolute minimum required of anything worthy of study by Physicists; when it is no longer ridiculous it ascends to theory.
Actually, if you go ahead and tell your wife that, it may just be that one of your descendants would just be so abhorrent that the universe decided you should not be allowed to breed, and this is the method it's using to enforce that.
No, it's just the guys running the simulation don't have any code to handle what we're doing with the LHC, so they keep tweaking things to break it while they work on a patch.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
If information theory wants to stop us from observing a higgs boson then we won't be able to observe it in the experiment. What won't happen is that every time we try to test it some mechanical component breaks down. That's ridiculous.
I have to point out that this is merely superstitious thought; there is no evidence to indicate that this is the reason why the collider failed, and while the theory *is* possible, it defies rationality. The simplest/most obvious explanation is the the collider simply failed due to technical reasons due to flaws in design or construction. Anyone could tell you that. Saying that it didn't happen because the Universe simply didn't allow it is the same as if you just substituted "God" for the word "Universe." Why didn't X happen? God didn't allow it. Why did Y happen? God made it happen. I'm not saying that it's wrong to believe in God, but these "explanations" are really non-explanations.
This is ridiculous and not worthy of any publication, let alone the NYT (and should not be propagated on slashdot, imho).
In short, the Higgs boson (if theories are correct) is a scalar that provides mass to all particles. That means it 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.
You are not even really "you" in any sense beyond the illusory narrative created by the mind, to order its disparate sensations.
That depends very much by what you mean by "illusion", and what you mean by "you". If I identify myself as this particular chunk of matter in the state it is at the moment, then yes, I am me.
It's like describing a program as an illusion. In the sense that it abstract, perhaps. But it does have real, physical consequences -- at the very least, the color of the pixels on your screen (or which ones are lit by how much, if you want to be pedantic).
Black hole? Maths say they exist - but you will never really know... Reality is so totally comprehensive that all of imagination is an infinitesimal subset.
Perhaps. What is your evidence for this?
It seems to me that we are refining our understanding of reality, but the subset which we do understand, we understand fairly well. It has been a very long time since we've been truly and profoundly wrong -- and even then, we weren't.
For example: It was once believed that the earth is flat. But even this is not particularly wrong. On the scales most of us deal with in day-to-day life, a flat earth is a good approximation.
It was once believed that the sun revolved around the earth. This is still a good approximation, for most purposes here on the ground. It is only when we begin to consider the motion of other planets that it becomes important which is which.
People often point to Newton being "disproved" by Einstein, as a way to show how "unreliable" modern science is -- usually in an effort to promote some non-science, such as religion or "Intelligent Design". What they miss is that Einstein was, for all practical purposes, a refinement of Newton -- the Newtonian equations are at the core of the relativistic ones, and most of the time, we still use Newtonian physics, because it's still a good approximation and is easier to calculate.
So while I agree that there is always more to understand, we shouldn't pretend we know nothing simply because we don't know everything.
So, going back to what you've said here:
Black hole? Maths say they exist - but you will never really know,
In the sense that I can "really know" anything beyond the internal consistency of mathematical and logical systems, I can know that black holes exist, until a better explanation comes along. And as I've shown, that "better explanation" probably won't look that different than the one we have now.
For example, it is possible that we are wrong about what the singularity of a black hole looks like. But it seems unlikely that anything would ever make its way back out -- and if it did, it probably would not come back the way it went in. Even if black holes were shown to be an entirely different phenomenon, it seems unlikely we'd show that it isn't somehow swallowing up matter, energy, even light.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
That misinterprets the theory, by falling for the news author's anthropomorphism on the universe. The theory isn't that the universe is actually a conscious being that throws a wrench in the works and makes the LHC break just in the nick of time. The theory really is that in every multiverse where the LHC works correctly, the multiverse is destroyed by the abominable bosons. We are all riding through a series of universes in which the LHC repeatedly fails to work. At each point where a quantum event occurs which eventually leads to the LHC either working or failing, the universe splits and our consciousness follows the branch where the LHC fails, because existence is extinguished in the other branch. Is this somehow more solidly believable than the author's "sentient universe messing with stuff" explanation? Probably not.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
It's the other way around. The universe "does" nothing. It merely prevents certain scenario's from happening. You might think of the current situation as one of infinitely many parallel universes. That we're currently slashdotting in the one were those magnets happened to fail, does not mean that that is the only scenario happening, it merely means that we happen to be in that universe, in that timeline. In other timelines they're probably discussing why a meterorite happened fall exactly on the LHC;-)
0x or or snor perron?!
I am truly humbled by your words, StikyPad. We cannot permit your wisdom to be restrained any longer! You must go to that Siren that has ensnared you, and proudely proclaim that you will once again wander the Earth, for the Slashdotters need your words! (And if she likes, she can tag along, but it's Fast Food from here on out.)
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
Awesome! Great stuff, and don't worry I once wrote a followup to Morte d'Arthur perfectly in the style of the original on which I received a C- for parts where my grammar and structure matched the original work but apparently were "incorrect" to the teacher... and then I won a National English Merit award for the same work when the teacher's assistant submitted it because she dug it. Grade never got changed.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
"The theory really is that in every multiverse where the LHC works correctly, the multiverse is destroyed by the abominable bosons. We are all riding through a series of universes in which the LHC repeatedly fails to work."
But that semi-sophistry could apply to any conservation law or forbidden transition:
Put on your spooky voice and say "The creation of a particle in a configuration which violated conservation of momentum would cause such a Disturbance In the Force that it would wipe out the whole of the Universe, so we are sailing in a sea of universes selected from the Master Multiverse for which only momentum-conserving outcomes just happened to take place".
More reasonably, physicists say, "Some transitions are forbidden due to conservation laws" and there are observable consequences. This is normal physics.
Would the present hypothetical Higgs case be any different?
It was completely over the top for humour value. No one is taking this seriously. No one in their right mind anyway. So there's no secret agenda to oppress women here.
The same women that complain about these jokes as being sexist usually have no problem with jokes about men. Get a grip. I'm a fat guy but I still laugh at some fat jokes. It's called having a sense of humour.
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You realize, of course, that if this is the case then you will never die unless there is no possible universe in which you could continue existing.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.