Tuesday, October 20, 2009

I admit... I am TOO STUPID to understand this story



Okay, we all have our intellectual shortcomings - and, indeed, my own may be greater than most(?). But how often are you, after reading something, left completely baffled as to its import? I would appreciate it if anyone from anywhere can enlighten me on the guts the story below. I simply (and simple I am), I simply do not get what is being said here. Is this a joke I am missing? Can somebody please enlighten me... PLEASE! I am unable to understand what this story actually means.

[n.b. I don't mind being told I am stupid - I just want to know what is I am being stupid about. I simply don't get this story - any and all help appreciated.]

Physicists claim 'Big Bang' machine sabotaged by time traveller

Two distinguished theoretical physicists claim that the Higgs Boson, or 'God particle', may have come from the future to sabotage the 'Big Bang' machine because it is against nature.

Danish string theory pioneer Holger Bech Nielsen and the Japanese physicist Masao Ninomiya say that the yet to be discovered Higgs Boson could have the ability to turn back time to stop its cover being blown, reports NewScientist. A New York Times essay describes the theory this way:
The hypothesized Higgs boson... 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.
The pair say their theory explains why the U.S. Congress scrapped the funding necessary to bring a Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) to the United States in 1993, and also why the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had a meltdown in September, 2008. They claim in their updated paper released two weeks ago, that the SSC was so plagued with bad luck that the U.S. congress was forced to shut it down. Neilson calls it an "anti-miracle."

Just last week the project was tossed into the limelight when a suspected terrorist was arrested for alleged links to al-Qaeda and plotting to blow up an oil refinery. In the paper they argue that there should be a restriction on the running of the LHC, determined by the drawing of a card, which was proposed in their original paper, published in 2007. The duo had proposed to prove their theory by printing millions of cards with the words "carry on" written on them, and then slip in a couple of cards that say "shut the thing down". They conclude that if you randomly draw out a card that reads "shut the thing down", that Higgs is attempting to influence the future, and that the world's largest machine should be shut down.

In an email message to the New York Times, Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and co-writer of the papers said, “It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck." Regarding the theory, Dr. Neilson said, "One could even almost say that we have a model for God," the New York Times essay quoted him as saying. In a letter to a friend, Einstein wrote, “For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion.”

CERN scientists hope to begin the process of colliding protons at an energy level of 450 billion electron volts in December and gradually turn up the energy until the protons have 3.5 trillion electron volts of energy apiece, reports the New York Times. After a short break over the holidays, scientists will then begin to look for "the god particle", unless something interferes with that plan.

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