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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.
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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.
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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).
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Nature having it out for the Cubbies is at least plausible. The rest of pseudo-science is not.
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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
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...
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I don't get it, can you give me a cars' analogy?
Imagine you just got your dream car.
Everytime you try to go on a drive with it, something happens to it.
The kids poked the wheels, a meteor fell trough the engine compartment, the steering wheel just fell of...
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.
-- Alastair
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.
Yes, very good point. If something really unlikely happens, we should have a good unlikely explanation ready. It's good we are starting now, so we can be ready when something really unlikely happens.
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