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Atom smasher could be used as time machine
Scientists theorize that production of a Higgs singlet would allow them to send messages to the past or future.
Fri, Mar 18 2011 at 9:44 AM
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TIME TRAVEL TUNNEL: A worker inside the LHC tunnel working on the large magnets that guide particles around the LHC loop. The LHC may provide the key to basic time travel. (Photo: CERN)
In a 'long shot' theory, physicists propose that the world's largest atom smasher could be used as a time machine to send a special kind of matter backward in time.
The scientists outline a way to use the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile long (27-km) particle accelerator buried underground near Geneva, to send a hypothetical particle called the Higgs singlet to the past.
There are a lot of "ifs" to the conjecture, including the major question of whether or not the Higgs singlet even exists and could be created in the machine.
"Our theory is a long shot, but it doesn't violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints," physicist Tom Weiler of Vanderbilt University said in a statement.
However, if the theory proves correct, the researchers say the method could be used to send messages to the past or the future.
Weiler and Vanderbilt graduate fellow Chui Man Ho describe their idea in a paper posted March 7 on the research Website arXiv.org.
Elusive Higgs
The Higgs singlet is related to another theorized but not yet detected particle called the Higgs boson. This particle, and its related Higgs field, are thought to confer mass on all the other particles, and its discovery could help scientists answer the question, why do some particles have more mass than others?
The search for the Higgs boson was one of the main motivations for building the LHC in the first place. Since the atom smasher began regular operation last year, it has yet to find evidence of the Higgs boson, but the machine is still ramping up to its peak energies.
If the collider does succeed in producing a Higgs boson, some theories predict that it will create a Higgs singlet at the same time.
This particle may have a unique ability to jump out of the normal three dimensions of space and one dimension of time that we inhabit, and into a hidden dimension theorized to exist by some advanced physics models. By traveling through the hidden dimension, Higgs singlets could reenter our dimensions at a point forward or backward in time from when they exited.
"One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes," Weiler said. "Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future."
M theory
The test of the researchers' theory will be whether the LHC shows evidence of Higgs singlet particles and their decay products spontaneously appearing. If it does, Weiler and Ho believe that they will have been produced by particles that travel back in time to appear before the collisions that produced them.
The theory is based on M-theory, a "theory of everything" that attempts to unite the forces of nature and describe everything in the universe. It's based on string theory, which posits that all particles are fundamentally made up of tiny vibrating strings.
Theoretical physicists have developed M-theory to the point that it can accommodate the properties of all the known subatomic particles and forces, including gravity, but it requires 10 or 11 dimensions instead of our familiar four. This has led to the suggestion that our universe may be like a four-dimensional membrane or "brane" floating in a multi-dimensional space-time called the "bulk."
According to this view, the basic building blocks of our universe are permanently stuck to the brane and cannot travel in other dimensions.
There are some exceptions, however. Some argue that gravity, for example, is weaker than other fundamental forces because it diffuses into other dimensions. Another possible exception is the proposed Higgs singlet, which responds to gravity but not to any of the other basic forces.
This article was reprinted with permission from LiveScience.
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It'd violate the laws of causality; for example, what if they sent a message back telling past scientists never to build the LHC? Then what?
Nobody would believe them anyway. Even 26-year-old scientists who got a message from themselves 25 years in the future would think it was a bad joke and never tell anybody. Besides, they're scientists, not politicians. Nobody would listen to them. Wouldn't make a bit of difference.
Obviously, no one will ever manage to go back and kill Hitler. He was still around. Many times, these theoretical scientists go off on tangents that don't really pertain to reality. In other words, there are aspects of the real world that would nullify their more radical theories.
If it was possible, as long as it takes, we would have already known by the message arriving already.
Thank you. That's exactly what I was going to say.
If they successfully send a message back in time, wouldn't the recipient of that message also need to have an advanced Haldron Super Collider to receive it, thus negating the ability to actually send a message back in time? Additionally, if it could be done, wouldn't the future operators of the HSC have already sent a message back in time to these current operators telling them how stupid they are for believing such non-sense?
How much did the civilized world spend on this ridiculous piece of science fiction??? WOW WOW WOW!!! What a waste!
Sorry, pal. No science fiction here. The Large Hadron Collider is quite real, and what it does is also. The boon this could grant for science cannot be measured in dollars/pounds/yuen/whatever currency you want to name.
You think you know something about science, but you know nothing.
Only an ignorant, uneducated, unintelligent idiot would make a comment like you just did.
Oh... right. You ARE just that.
Lay off the insults. And I'm pretty sure that whether or not the thing is real, you don't know if it's going to work, either. So there's two sides of the line here - those who think this is awesome and scientifically progressive and a grand opportunity, and those who think it's hogwash. Let's not slaughter each other in the process of disagreeing.
Particles are theory only. No actual particle has ever been discovered. All "matter" invariably turns out to be made of energy. So if we're just a simulation, we should be able to send simulated messages forward and backward in the simulation's concept of time. In fact, the ability to figure out how to do that may be one of our experimental assignments. Oh wait, my toilet is backed up. This is real. :) :) :)
"a hypothetical particle". Who told them about it, their imaginary friends? How much are we paying for them to play ray gun with each other? How about we just give them a far cheaper "hypothetical" machine and spend the money on actual science.
Don`t confuse them with logic. Excellent reasoning!
it's ALWAYS name, email (confidential), comment.
Except for this stupid POS site.
Enter your comments
What if the message is to NOT build the LHC?
Greg Bear wrote a novel about this sort of thing--"Timescape."
Set up a device to receive information from the future using this method. If it starts picking up messages from future scientists, we know the method works.
Except the future hasn't happened yet.
I'm traveling into the future, right now.
So are you.
Ah, but you don't know that ;) What if the future is occurring right now, just not here? And what if the past is also still occurring? Perhaps time isn't quite as linear as we think!