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The LHC, the Higgs Boson, and the Chicago Cubs

Posted by kdawson on from the all-the-time-in-the-world dept.

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."

4 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Well, duh! by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nature having it out for the Cubbies is at least plausible. The rest of pseudo-science is not.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  2. Re:I can't be the only one... by fractoid · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Erm, it is. He's joking that saying that some spooky future force is preventing us seeing Higgs bosons 'for our own good' is about as scientific as saying that God hates the Chicago Cubs... and that there's as much proof for the latter as for the former.

    He also says:

    Admittedly, I haven't read the whole series of papers, which means my comments should be taken with a grain of salt, but I did skim, and the authors do make an argument for why a new unknown particle (they use Higgs as their poster boy for unknown theoretical particle) can do this and not the ones we know about, based on the experimental evidence we have on the known particles and the existence of yet another theoretically possible but experimentally undetected (not without trying) phenomenon, a magnetic monopole.

    Aside from its hideous verbosity, this made me curious because there was an article a day or two about magnetic monopoles...

    --
    Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
  3. Re:Novikov self-consistency by justleavealonemmmkay · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't buy it. By your interpretation of the conjecture, the people working at CERN couldn't possibly be born.

    You make the fallacious reasoning that if A may lead to and precedes B, B to C, C to D and D to violation of causality, that A cannot possibly happen. This is faulty. Just because you can't have Y without having X and Y is impossible doesn't mean X is impossible.

  4. Re:Attention Humans by AJWM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A universe which permits time travel which can change the past is inherently unstable. Sooner or later (on some meta time axis) that universe's timeline will be changed to one where such time travel never occurs, and will then stay that way. It's the most stable state.

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    -- Alastair