My favorite thing about scientific frontiers is how crazy the fringed edges get until we discover the next good theory.The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate - NYTimes.comThen one day we will figure out that little bit of physics and from that point forward people will laugh at all the craziness that lead up to it.
...it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.
Like when we discovered that all those sneakers hung over telephone wires were actually cobbled together by elves in the middle of the night and strung up by griffins. No drugs involved at all.
2 comments:
Kinda like Quantum Immortality, then? A universe in which we create a freestanding Higgs Boson cannot exist and would be destroyed. By process of elimination we can only exist in a universe where the Higgs particle hasn't been witnessed? Groovy.
I guess one could consider this a variant of the anthropic principle. While it is a weak scientific theory, it is a scientific theory (unlike 'intelligent design'). The theory can be tested and proved wrong by creating a Higgs boson.
YAY Science!
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