Re: The Higgs Boson is a killer robot driving instructor

Despanan · 10-15-2009, 08:59 PM

who travels back in time for some reason.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/sc...ace/13lhc.html

Interesting article about theoretical physics. Basically, two physicists theorise that any machine made to discover the Higgs Boson is doomed to failure because the particle itself is so abhorrent to nature that ripples through time prevent it's existence.

also: there are some friggin awesome comments about this:

Quote:

This is basically just quantum immortality on a global scale... we can never survive a reality where the LHC works, so we will always live in a universe where it breaks.

Then you can make it really scary by saying this machine could destroy the world, while ignoring that the theory really means this machine could never destroy the world.

Quote:

The only way for it to function tomorrow is if we destroy it today and then use it yesterday! That third part sounds the hardest but thankfully it's already been done.

Quote:

Lets just hope a strangelet doesn't get hold of a sports almanac.

HumanePain · 10-16-2009, 05:40 AM

Similar to Schrödinger's cat: as long as we don't open it, it might be alive.
Or dead.

Let's open it. So what if the world gets swallowed up by a black hole, doesn't a black hole sound like a nice place for goths anyway?

Methadrine · 10-16-2009, 06:02 AM

Well, we could always create one of these ubergoff thingymabobs, and then fervently hope something goes wrong.

..and for the more observant ones: I'm only jesting, it's actually a lens, not a black hole of any sort. Ironic with black text, eh?

Raptor · 10-22-2009, 06:33 AM

The paper is interesting but I don't understand most of it, especially the maths. Particle collisions of greater energy than the LHC happen in the atmosphere anyway and if that was explained in the paper I missed it.

Not Tha Duckman · 10-22-2009, 07:31 AM

The point is, to discover the Higgs Boson would pretty much throw science into one shit ball of a tailspin. I remember reading a book years and years ago which was essentially a guy making simple math difficult, like actually proving that 1+1=2, that sort of thing. Imagine if he DISproved it, what that would do. Or if God actually showed up, these things would change just about everything.

Yeah, particle collisions happen (We think), but no one's around to witness it. It's like that movie, Flatliners. We're in uncharted territory, so who knows what'll happen? Science is rewritten every day.

Raptor · 10-22-2009, 08:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Not Tha Duckman

The point is, to discover the Higgs Boson would pretty much throw science into one shit ball of a tailspin. I remember reading a book years and years ago which was essentially a guy making simple math difficult, like actually proving that 1+1=2, that sort of thing. Imagine if he DISproved it, what that would do. Or if God actually showed up, these things would change just about everything.

Yeah, particle collisions happen (We think), but no one's around to witness it. It's like that movie, Flatliners. We're in uncharted territory, so who knows what'll happen? Science is rewritten every day.

I thought it might be suggesting that observing the Higgs Bosons was the problem, but the paper looks like it's talking about the creating causing the change in the past. The products of atmospheric particle collisions are detected, just not Higgs Bosons if they exsist. That's why it makes more sense to me if it means observe rather than create, but like I said, I don't understand the paper properly.

Not Tha Duckman · 10-22-2009, 08:37 AM

Of course it means observe. That's what the whole point of the LHC is, to see what happens.

Raptor · 10-22-2009, 09:16 AM

Reading it, I just don't see how it could be about observations. It talks about the number of Higgs produced during inflation and how that number should remain largely unchanged afterwards and other examples of production. I'm pretty sure that it means the number of particles produced is the important factor. Their proposed experiment suggests that too.

Despanan · 10-22-2009, 04:20 PM

Wow, I think this may be the smartest thread on Gnet.

HumanePain · 10-22-2009, 04:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raptor

Particle collisions of greater energy than the LHC happen in the atmosphere anyway and if that was explained in the paper I missed it.

But the problem is we don't know when or where so we cannot observe them.
The LHC gives us the when and where, so we can mount all sorts of very expensive, extreme cold and vacuum tolerant cameras and photo-detectors, and capture it when scientists are darn good and ready to watch it.

Raptor · 10-24-2009, 04:51 AM

Well you don't get observations of Higgs, but atmospheric collisions are observed. That's how some experiments were done before particle accelerators, the Pion was discovered with photographic emulsion and a balloon. The ATLAS detector at the LHC can detect cosmic Muons, and I think I read somewhere that it was going to be calibrated using those detections. So you would think that if those collisions were capable of producing Higgs, that the LHC would just be another source and not change much. Yet Nielsen and Ninomiya have the future influence theory in Despanan's link. So it would seem as though their theory suggests a difference between cosmic interactions, and those in the LHC. Their papers suggest that it's the number of Higg's in the universe rather than humans being able to observe them that causes this influence. Though even they don't think there is much of a chance of their theory being correct.