LHC could be a time machine?

[Belisarius]

Get this from New Scientist mag:

2008: Does time travel start here?

• 09 February 2008
• Michael Brooks
• Magazine issue 2642

AS YOU may have heard, this will be the year. The Large Hadron Collider - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built - will be switched on, and particle physics will hit pay-dirt. Yet if a pair of Russian mathematicians are right, any advances in this area could be overshadowed by a truly extraordinary event. According to Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich, the LHC might just turn out to be the world's first time machine.
It is a highly speculative claim, that's for sure. But if Aref'eva and Volovich are correct, the LHC's debut at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, could provide a landmark in history. That's because travelling into the past is only possible - if it is possible at all - as far back as the creation of the first time machine, and that means 2008 could become Year Zero...

You have to buy the mag to get the rest, but basically (as I understand it) it suggests that the Higgs boson will be the key to unlock time travel. Current thinking about time travel predicts that it can only go back in time to when the time machine comes into effect, which means that when the LHC is switched on, time travellers from the future will start popping up all over the place.

Twilight Zone or what?

 

[James.Denholm]

I think they get that at my school library, I shall haveth a looketh!

 

[Ghostrider]

I'm a friend of Sarah Connor. I was told she was here. Could I see her please?

 

[bujin]

It would be fair to say that I'm sceptical...

 

[steph]

Even supposing that somehow a time loop is formed, from a nanoscopic time tunnel to a time tunnel capable to transport people is a very long way. Not to mention that having a time loop in the collision area of a collider would not be the best news around.

 

[Lunar Pilot]

collision

Yeah, the scientists at LHC would wonder why they suddenly need more computer space than they intended, or why the detectors would be detecting many orders of magnitude higher number of particles.

 

[reverend]

Yes, and it's also possible that LHC may produce a microscopic black hole. If it were to get loose and 'fall into the earth' it could devour everything in our solar system....

That would suck.

 

[Urwumpe]

Yes, and it's also possible that LHC may produce a microscopic black hole. If it were to get loose and 'fall into the earth' it could devour everything in our solar system....

That would suck.

Actually not... the energy of the LHC is too low to create something, which could cause problems. Cosmic radiation on Earth is even worse without creating persistent black holes.

Also, if Hawking is correct, if all energy of the LHC would be put into creating a black hole, it would not live long enough to touch matter outside it before evaporating. But that theory is still not verified.

 

[Keatah]

Check out "The Void: It will swallow you hole!" -- a grade b sci-fi show about a particle accelerator creating a black hole and sucking up the entire lab. Great fun!!

 

[willy88]

Twilight Zone or what?

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8Y"]YouTube - Twilight Zone intro.[/ame]

Indeed.

 

[mrspacely]

Even supposing that somehow a time loop is formed, from a nanoscopic time tunnel to a time tunnel capable to transport people is a very long way. Not to mention that having a time loop in the collision area of a collider would not be the best news around.

the important thing to realize is that with such a small time machine, you can still get some very very VERY important messages across in the form of particles.

i hope the thing is a dud and breaks to be honest with you. we've already tried to build the tower of babel remember!

 

[Quick_Nick]

Maybe a little off-topic, but still cool. LHC, The Game! Some interesting ideas in it. The ending is hopefully a lot worse than reality will be.

 

[Kyle]

I am gonna hitch a ride on the thing, go back to January 1986, and warn them that I am from the Future and tell them that DON'T DARE LAUNCH CHALLENGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[willy88]

Let's just hope it doesn't cause a resonance cascade. :weird:

 

[Star explorer]

I am gonna hitch a ride on the thing, go back to January 1986, and warn them that I am from the Future and tell them that DON'T DARE LAUNCH CHALLENGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

tell them not to launch columbia or apollo 1 also oh and tell the people in 2000 not to vote in goerge bush and one more thing tell them to increase security for fights before 9/11 happens

 

[Quick_Nick]

Let's just hope it doesn't cause a resonance cascade. :weird:

Yeah, we don't want any more portals to Xen!:lol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance_cascade#.22The_Black_Mesa_Incident.22

 

[Andy44]

Anyone here ever play Doom?

 

[NukeET]

tell them not to launch columbia or apollo 1 also oh and tell the people in 2000 not to vote in goerge bush and one more thing tell them to increase security for fights before 9/11 happens

It is a good thing that time travel is impossible.

 

[tl8]

It is a good thing that time travel is impossible.

Not impossible, improbable. Don't forget that we are currently travelling through time at about 1sec every second

 

[NukeET]

Not impossible, improbable. Don't forget that we are currently travelling through time at about 1sec every second

Nitpick!:tounge:

I was referring to time travel into the past.