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The LHC, the Higgs Boson, and the Chicago Cubs
Following up our earlier discussion of the theory that the Higgs boson might time-travel to avoid being found, reader gpronger notes an interview with MIT (and LHC) physicist Steven Nahn, in which he comments on Nielsen and Ninomiya's unlikely-sounding theory. "The premise is fairly crazy, but many things in physics are constructed that way... The difference here is that... previous 'crazy' ideas gave consequences that were clearly testable and attestable to the new nature of the theory, in an objective manner, and involved the behavior of inanimate objects (i.e., not humans). However, in this case, the consequences seem quite contrived... Exactly in line with their argument, I could say that Nature abhors the Chicago Cubs, such that the theory which describes the evolution of our universe prescribed Steve Bartman to interfere on October 14, 2003, extending the 'bad luck' of the Cubbies."
Least coherent summary ever. I read it twice and I'm still not sure I understand what we're talking about.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
who read the headline and was disappointed when this wasn't some kind of joke
If the LHC gets hit by a meteor five minutes before it is next switched on we may conclude that something strange is going on.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Nature *does* abhor the Chicago Cubs. What's your point?
Hope the LHC finds something, and something mysterious and exacting. If nothing governments are very unlikely to fund a 100 billion for a 100 TeV collider. (that would be very strange, the Standard model need some new physics before about 10TeV, to stablise the masses of the W,Z particles).
---
LHC Feed @ Feed Distiller
Turns out, nature DOES abhor the Cubs. Showed you, mr fancy physicist guy.
This might simply be a matter of physicist humor not translating into reporter humor: Physicist says, "Maybe we're violating the laws of the universe and it's out to get us (chuckle, chuckle)." Reporter thinks, "That sounds like front-page news!"
I don't believe in luck. The problem at the LHC that occurred over a year ago was a mistake and not the machine destroying itself in some weird physics different universe crap. The Chicago Cubs aren't doing well because well, maybe they're a bad team. Like a really bad team and need to do a complete overall to maybe start doing well. For the record I hate baseball and I don't care or follow it.
So, what this article is saying is that as you increase the number of random assumptions the validity of linked assumption increases.
Assumptions;
-The Higgs Boson particle exists.
-Nature abhors this particle.
-Time travel is possible.
-This inanimate particle will use this possible time travel to sabotage machine that can theoretically create theoretical particle.
Allow me to paraphrase in a manner that slashdotters understand.
Assumptions;
-Nature abhors slashdotters.
-Time travel is possible
-Slashdotters Procreate
-Time warps and shifts so that the procreation never happens since it is so against the natural order of things.
OMG it is true................
that is right the cubs must win it all before the World can end also the maybe the LHC can take out the Earth but the universe? other allens out there likely have much better tech.
also is the goat tied to this as well? and we need game 7 to be at 1060 west addison and WE NEED TO DROP THE ALL STAR GAME COUNTING.
at least the blackhawks and bears look good this year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bartman_incident
http://baseball.wikia.com/wiki/Steve_Bartman
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=bartman
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/cubfan1.html
http://www.tampabay.com/sports/baseball/rays/article998054.ece
Osama Bin Laden is safer walking down the streets of New York City than Steve Bartman is walking down the streets of Chicago.
I could believe that there was some strange time-travel-effects going on to prevent this poor Boson, but I can't imagine that it would establish itself as suspicious high-level events such as meteorite impacts or whatever "chance" events people are going on about. If it is happening I bet it is in the form of some new repulsive force that doesn't follow from other theories, or something basic like that. Something we will be able to measure and something we will probably be able to take advantage of.
http://hasthelhcdestroyedtheearthyet.com/
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Why would it even HAVE to come back in time to stop from being discovered unless it had already been discovered? In which case, isn't it too late? The only conclusion that makes sense then is that there are multiple time lines, in which case it still wouldn't matter if it were discovered on ours. I think.
This whole 'theory' really just sounds like an application of the Novikov Self-Consistency Conjecture to particle physics. The short version is: the probability of events which could lead to a violation of causality is zero. So, according to this conjecture if the manifestation or observation of the Higgs Boson eventually lead us to develop technology with which we might otherwise violate causality, we'll never discover it.
I can think of at least one way it might - the Higgs Boson is critical to our understanding gravity. We know from relativity that there are certain gravitric structures which might potentially lead to violations of causality. One example is a toroidal singularity, spun extremely fast, which theoretically generates stable artificial wormhole along the axis of the spin with an opening small enough to fire, say, an x-ray laser through. A signal sent through such a wormhole and then back again could lead to extremely clear-cut violations of causality.
Thus, if the Novikov Self-Consistency Conjecture is correct, the discovery of anything capable of allowing us to engage in large scale gravity manipulation of this sort might well have zero probability of ever occurring.
I don't really believe this is what's going onhere , but given the abject failure of every experiment that might lead us to real, large-scale gravity manipulation (I'm thinking of that experiment where extremely fine measurements of lasers fired down long tubes buried under the ground were supposed to be used to detect gravity waves), it's a neat idea.
--Ryvar
If this is true. can someone point the Higgs Boson to my website? I should be earning megabucks by now. http://www.blackholebunker.com/ for all your Black Hole and other Cosmic Anomaly protection needs
If people could travel in time, the universe would become unstable. People would keep going back and changing history which would result in those same people not going back and changing history ...
If the universe is going to be stable (which it seems to be) in the face of time travel (by particles or people) there must be a mechanism that keeps it stable. If it looks to us like the Boson going back and sabotaging the LHC ...
Finally, a sensible objection!
To say "a time-distorting bogon from the future did it" is about as scientific as saying that "a fairy did it", or whichever turn of phrase you prefer, if you're not going to then follow it with: "and this can be demonstrated because of such and such, and therefore the consequences are so and so."
Because while a time-distorting bogon from the future might indeed be responsible; that does not mean that it's the least bit a scientific explanation if you don't spell out a testable hypothesis, or all of the qualities of the scenario you're describing such that one can be formed. Without a testable hypothesis, an explanation is just a fairy story.
(I'm deliberately using the term bogon, don't flame me for misunderstanding Higgs boson)
God.print(9 / 0);
Table-ized A.I.
This post will enlighten you into the inner minds of a regular Slashdot reader. By the end of this post you will know everything.
So here's the deal...
Wait, you look like me. Is that a gun? No! Let me finish typ
Time does not exist in corporeal reality. It only exists in concept as a tool to methodically track and gauge the progression of the state of matter/energy.
Math is a concept, abstract, invention of the mind. Likewise so is Time.
It has been the here and now since the beginning of "time". All that has changed, is state of the matter in our observable vicinities!
There is no grandfather clock with a massive pendulum swinging in the heavens declaring every second that has been, is now, or yet to come.
The earth is not the center of the universe. You can't travel back in time and create paradoxes anymore than a hydrogen atom can. The Higgs boson isn't hiding from you and your macroscopic view. You're not special.
Either I'm missing something, or the level of arrogance in this 'theory' is exceptionally high.
The theory may be silly, and currently it appears to violate Occam's razor. It's pretty implausible for now. But, what if every time they try to discover the Higg's Boson, an even unlikelier mishap prevents them? Janitors tripping over power cords, meteors, lightning strikes, structural collapse...
I don't get it, can you give me a cars' analogy?
The "theory" of Nielsen and Ninomiya is complete nonsense. Read this and this for more information about these crackpots.
If Higgs Boson makes time loops that get solved when something break and then is not discovered, really weird things could happen to end those loops (i.e. in FAQ about time travel there were giant ants, and in PKDick's Medler were intelligent killer butterflies). That so far has been just somewhat minor problems that affected only the LHC, but next try could happen something that ends civilization, life on earth or the entire universe.
It's silliness and mere opportunism to suggest the LHC will continue to break in ways similar to how it has already--before reaching substantial energies--or that some other weird catastrophe will always occur--all because the Higgs boson is somehow "immune to detection". I can only see the LHC breaking in a spectacular new way when its highest designed energies are achieved--and that at its strangest it might break due to some new phenomenon the designers had not anticipated. The shame would be if the scientists don't obtain enough information to figure out why the LHC broke. Trying to debug such an energetic system could be a problem!
What many people do not realize, is that the cubs that won in 1908 were a completely different team playing in a different field. Wrigely field ( then called wigman park) was built for the Chicago Whales. The whales kicked but winning two championships at the same ballpark that the Cubs suck in. So yadda yadda yadda. Federal league goes kaput, the whales owner buys the cubs, just changes the name of the whales to the cubs and presto chango they never win again.
The obvious problem is that aliens can no longer communicate with the chicago whales. And thus are cursing them from space. Manipulating the flights of balls. Temporary blinding out fielders. Not even the Modern steroids coursing through Sosa's veins were a match for the alien interlopers.
So we need to go back, BACK into the past and rescue the chicago whales and bring them into the modern era where they can successfully communicate with the pissed aliens and allow the Cubs to win or lose as their abilities permit.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
That says more about American Baseball supporters than it does about Steve's actions.
Actually we're stuck in a time loop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_loop).
And the only way to break out of it to fix LHC again and again until we finally discover the Higgs particle.
Observed classical physics corresponds to the highest-probability paths for the wave functions of the particles under consideration; these correspond to the extremal values for an integral of a particular function (related to the classical action) along the path---assuming that extremum is a minimum, it means that all other paths give a result for that path-integral that's higher than that. Paths with higher values are _less_ likely, though not impossible if those values are finite.
The path-integral along a given path is exactly that: it is characteristic of the path as a whole. I believe that they are saying that all paths which include a universal state corresponding to any Higgs boson's being observed produce an effectively infinite path integral; my guess (not having read them yet) is that they claim that such a state makes the canonically real action acquire an imaginary component.
To make a rough analogy: even though there are very many possible air routes from Paris to New York, probably chosen to maximise total profit (say) by minimising fuel usage, or maximising the number of passengers by picking up some in London. So some likely paths are a single arc, Paris to New York, another includes London---a third includes a stop in Iceland to pick up the eccentric billionaire who'll pay $10^6 for the lulz....but none of them include Proxima Centauri. No signal is being sent back in time from New York telling the pilot not to go to Centauri, there is just no world in which she even tries to go there---an 'air route' must have air. (This also conveniently leaves more bandwidth for the Illuminati to send their usual backwards-in-time instructions from New York.)-
(The preceding does not represent an endorsement of the validity of their conclusion, I just don't want to see what is being contended mischaracterised.)
The best part about that site is that they have an RSS feed, so you don't need to remember to check back regularly.
Yes, because a small number of people hold an arguably tongue-in-cheek grudge against a well acknowledged scapegoat for one failed attempt to win the World Series (And just because I'm guessing someone is going to make a slightly snide remark, I would encourage people to look at the number of countries currently represented in Major League Baseball before condemning the name to 'American pretentiousness') out of more than a century's worth of them says so much about "American Baseball supporters".
If you're from the Midwest you would know something about how much of a joke the whole Steve Bartman thing was/is considered now. If you're an American you would understand the humor of the gp's hyperbole. And if you're none of these things (Hazarding a guess from your name, New Zealand? But that might be too obvious.) I would be very surprised to hear that Ameican baseball has more violent fans than soccer (Anyone who is so blinded by their need to impose their vocabulary on mine that they can't see the conversational expediency of using the term soccer in the context of other American sports instead of having the clarify which football one is referring to can shove off) or rugby fans anywhere else in the world, but you know, whatever.
And yes, I do think you're a little bit of a dick for making such an irrelevant and uninformed remark by the way.
Oh, and go Cubbies.
A much more likely explanation is that each time we attempt to observe the Higgs boson, the universe splits into two alternate paths: the one that succeeds is immediately destroyed, and the one that fails continues on. We are by definition in the universe that has (so far) failed to detect it. As far as we will ever be able to know, all attempts to measure the Higgs boson will always fail--the versions of ourselves that learn otherwise will immediately cease to exist.
Idiots. Sure, it sucked, but your team losing should not be an excuse to want to inflict grevious harm upon another human being.
Idiots.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Nothing against theories. Even the wild ones. But bring verifiable predictions, or stop acting as if it were a real theory. It's just an idea. And a pretty bad one to start with.
Mainly because, of all the stupid time travel models that were made up in movies, it is based on the by far stupidest. The one where you can cause time paradoxes, and there is somehow just one time line.
If there were some influence trough time, then that would mean the creation of new time lines. Just like you could kill your father and still live. Because you still came out of the time line where your father lived. You just could never return to it, but only to the newly created one(s), where your father would not exist anymore. Simple. Paradox-free.
But that would destroy the theory. ^^
And I am willing to bet any money you and I have, that they *will* be able to perform the proper experiments. In fact, I am willing to bet all I own, including my life and body on it. Go on. Bet against me. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
And my brother still insists, that we are not evolving backwards...
Shit, I would not even blink with an eye, to burn up every single one of those drooling retards that would want to hurt him for this. Were are we? in the dark ages??
That's what reverse natural selection — the fostering and supporting of the worst parts of society, while insulting and mistreating the best from the very beginning of education — does for you.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
at least the blackhawks look good this year.
I fixed that for you. Jay Cutler is the Bears Steve Bartman
It's a joke. Period. Physicists have a sense of humor too, and the whole community is laughing at our sorry butts for falling for it. The two physicists that are perpetrating this joke seem more like pranksters than crackpots to me. On the other hand, it was a very well-played joke.
There's nothing to do with time travel. There's time to understand that nothing cannot be created by nothing.. This something is god. And nothig more or less. If some most significat brains will create something - that can be only for good. If something creazy brain will destroy self - that in favour of good. SO, we are left with ourselves to create good for ourself. Let's prevent of destroing ourselves by some creazy people, who think we are sheeps, what follows the mainstream! In order to do so, we must understand that we are unique. Without that - we are sheeps, who must follow the mainstream. Who cares some holly molly childs if not hollymolly ? So. Ordinary people are kept still too far from real understanding what destiny they are following and what destiny they are disabled to choose for ourseves.
...but I don't think the point was that a sentient universe was specifically reaching backward in time to mess with Higgs producing devices.
I read the article, but I don't have it handy right now, but here's what I thought it was really suggesting:
The universe abhors Higgs particles, not on a conscious level, but in the same way nature abhors a vacuum. The production of a Higgs particle is so catastrophic though, that it effectively causes the end of the universe. BUT, if new universes are actually spawned every time a decision state is reached, it follows that some number of those universes will produce a string of events, however unlikely, that precludes the creation of a Higgs particle. Magnets break, parts shipments are stolen, terrorist attacks at the facility that intends to create them, whatever. From our point of view, we will always be in the universe where the thing didn't work, because in the other bubble universes there are no observers left to see the outcome. Why is it "us" that are in the universe(es) that survived? Because we're still here.
I don't think they were suggesting that a "caring universe" is saving us from ourselves, or even saving itself from us. If you accept the possibility of bubble universes it's inevitable that there will be surviving universes where the catastrophic event didn't occur, and we'll always end up being in one of the "lucky ones", because if we weren't we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
The Higgs Boson is a theoretical particle. We have no way of knowing whether it exists at all. The LHC might find it, but only if it exists to be found. What if the theory that predicted it is wrong ? I can devise a theory that deposits $100M in my bank account. When it doesn't happen, is that because the universe is somehow conspiring against me ?
On a related note, regarding dark matter/ dark energy - if quantum uncertainty is true, and a particle is never actually in existence in a certain place until you observe it, wouldn't that account for the "missing" matter / energy ? Because it actually "exists" in all dimensions at once, maybe the combined effect would explain the discrepancy we think we have found. I don't actually believe the basis for the dark matter theory anyway. Noticing that a galaxy's rotation is uniform from the centre to the edge is odd, but why would dark matter help ? Why does the solar system not act the same ? It was the application of the solar gravitational model to galaxies that brought the subject up in the first place. Maybe the discrepancy is due to the solar system not being centred around a super massive black hole. Of course the models will be different. And the fact that spiral galaxies exist surely shows that the "arms" have travelled slower than the centre at some stage. Maybe the rotation at the centre has slowed down to match that of the arms, making us think we need extra matter to account for the observation.
Questions, questions.
And tell me one more time how I'm supposed to believe the Scientists *instead* of the Bible, because the scientist have a better track record again? Weren't they just last week talking about how dark matter estimations were off by like 4x?
Well seeing how I must have skipped over the part of the Bible that dealt with the Higgs Boson and dark matter (kind of like how Christians skipped over some parts of Leviticus), I would assume that believing both scientists and the Bible is a possibility in some areas.
Now if you want to argue about carbon dating versus God's sporadic testing of faith (I think I've failed), I can see where you might have to choose one side or the other.
I thought the original article gave a quick run-down of a test you could do for this one. From what I recall, it was something along like attach a gambling mechanism to the "start button" on the LHC - if we win the experiment goes, if we lose then the experiment is called off for a day. Then, make the odds of losing vanishingly small but non-zero, say 1 in 10^18 or something huge. That way, there is a clear way to see if something is playing with probability, something that depends on inanimate objects - not people. If the Higgs (or its discovery) actually is anathema to the universe, then at some critical point the gamble button should hit a loss every day.
I'm really interested to die. Thats why am reading this and start think about mysterius things that will change my life forever. So. - Less peolpe will think about die, - less die will happen. Not statistically but forever. Just imagine that bad things happen, BUT not with us. - Who than will mention scientists ? From other hand: that one who not try, - will not make mistakes. Let's be so saigthfull to undersatand, that our bigger mistake is not believe to ourselves. everyone of us can make greatest equations, but not wveryone of us want to. Thats only and only because of that we are not sure that this is the right future for us and others. Those ones, who lack of self criticism in the hihest order, - are able to make equations and even believe - they are right.
It's good for others if they are really good. But we must admit: the good is not left for our understandig. The good is left for random event.
We leave to understand random event for people who "feels confident". That's not right. This talk would be zero, if noone would uderstand, that he is determininig the future of the world. the world he is living in, and have choosed to follow. He (or I'm) not follow anthing that was destined to "filter" by my understanding, or my health. So health is your understanding of what to follow for.
The idea is to conduct some random event, say 1,000 coin tosses, and pre-commit to cancel the LHC if we observe a ridiculous outcome, like 1,000 heads in a row.
One issue I have with this theory...Equating it to throwing a baseball into a worm hole only to have it pop out the other end and hit itself on the way in, it seems the LHC wasn't even to the point of 'throwing the baseball' They were barely circulating the first beams and far from a full power collision which would have a chance to produce Higgs.
This would be more equivalent to walking down the street on the way to the rocket launch pad to go out to the worm hole and a car runs you over. How far back in time can things be allowed to travel to prevent future events?
...that the arXiv is not a peer-reviewed journal. The article that started this has not survived peer-review and is not reflective of the opinions of every physicist on the planet. If you read the article it's also clear that the author is only being half-serious about the whole thing and his collaborators have left their names off the paper.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
I need to go make some t-shirts...
So what does a coach being murdered say about cricket supporters? Or the countless riots over soccer/football games?
Of course, it was not Steve Bartman that caused the cubs to lose that day. It was Alex Gozalez's inability to field a routine ground ball later in the innning.
As long as we are time travelling, we may as well get the history right.
Not to sound like a sissy, but can we shut this thing off and not mess with it? I've played enough Half Life and Doom, seen enough movies, and read enough sci-fi to know that we really shouldn't mess with crazy particle accelerator devices. Seriously, some of the elite physicists in the world are saying that the particles are communicating through time to ensure we don't do what this thing was designed to do? Is this REALLY a good idea?
I don't know about your unified field theory, but mine predicts there is no Higgs particle. The standard model works so long as no particle has mass. That is silly. To get around the problem, there is the Higgs mechanism. The standard model + the Higgs mechanism says not a thing about gravity. Oops.
Why I do is rewrite the Maxwell action using quaternions. The scalar is exactly the same as the tensor approach, B^2 - E^2. Because I am using quaternions which can form products (unlike tensors), I can represent SU(2) - also know as the unit quaternions with quaternions (duh). It is a simple exercise to write the gauge invariant action with all the symmetries of the standard model (U(1), SU(2), and SU(3)).
To get to gravity, switch out the rules of multiplication. These types of numbers are known as hypercomplex numbers, and are even less popular that quaternions. Crank through Euler-Langrange, and out pops the field equations which in the static case is Newton's law.
What is particularly fun is that one can combine the gauge-invariant Maxwell action with the gauge-invariant relativistic gravity action in a way where both of the field strength tensors are gauge-dependent, but those cancel each other out, leaving the action gauge-invariant. It is all up on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrVW4QG8ei4 for a talk I gave last weekend at an APS meeting.
Doug
Working on new views of old physics at http://VisualPhysics.org
So. Higgs-Boson, testable. Chicago Cubs, detestable. Makes sense to me, but only if you simultaneously answer the seemingly unentangled questions "testable by what" and "detestable to whom" since if there IS a God particle it seems likely that it plays some other game. We posit, then, that if Death plays chess, God must play solitaire.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
My favorite part is the code:
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
document.write("NO");
} catch(err) {
document.write("YES");
}
</script>
Not a lot actually, given he was found to have died of natural causes.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Woolmer
Criket fans are sophisticated and civilsed individuals (Apart form the Kiwi's).
You wouldnt understand.
> Exactly in line with their argument, I could say that Nature abhors the Chicago Cubs
I thought that was already a given.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Criket fans are sophisticated and civilsed individuals (Apart form the Kiwi's).
As a Kiwi who's not a cricket fan, I'm not sure whether to take offence to that or not.
So what does a coach being murdered [nytimes.com] say about cricket supporters?
That some pathologist didn't do a very good job, and that somehow the supporters are at fault?
Or the countless riots over soccer/football games?
That soccer fans tend to be hooligans (more specifically the British ones).
I'm not quite sure how you can compare the death of a coach and countless riots performed by a large number of people to having one guy blamed for trying to catch a ball that had already entered the bleachers, considering that if he hadn't touched it, Alou might have been able to catch it, thus giving the Cubs the opportunity to get four more outs before relinquishing the lead they currently held due to a series of other plays unrelated to Steve.
Your not sure whether to take offence?
Are you SURE you are a Kiwi!
Taking offence is what they do best generally.
So apart form your disability(Not being a cricket fan)do you get on well with other Kiwi's?
(-:
So apart form your disability(Not being a cricket fan)do you get on well with other Kiwi's?
Not particularly, I was evicted to Australia about 8 months ago.
So were you on Survior NZ eh?
And I thought being evicted was a BAD thing!
Welcome to civilisation! (-:
Note: In a show of tolerance I havent mentioned sheep even ONCE!
Welcome to civilisation! (-:
You mean where many shops (mostly food related) don't support EFTPOS and I have to regress back to carrying cash everywhere? Where my power gets cut off for 3 weeks because when we requested the name be changed on the account they thought it meant "please disconnect me, I don't like electricity"? Where my ISP tells me to contact my modem provider and my modem provider tells me to contact my ISP because the two aren't compatible with each other (and most other ISPs don't service the exchange)? I'm not sure I like civilisation, give me grass skirts any day :(
Note: In a show of tolerance I havent mentioned sheep even ONCE!
Note: The tolerance seems to have expired ;)
I don't get the obsession with the sheep jokes. There are more sheep in Australia than in New Zealand.
I feel a bit remiss in this summary. I had submitted the stuff, but later that day, it struck me that the way I presented it was approaching slanderous (basically very strongly dismissing the original premise) and hoped that the summary wasn't posted. Slashdot editor kdawson took pity on me and re-worded; and frankly I'm grateful for it. My guess is that in re-wording, some was lost in the translation.
Greg