Can atom smasher double as time machine?

Inside the Large Hadron Collider. A view of the CMS, or Compact Muon Solenoid

/ SteMaximilien Brice/CERN

The Large Hadron Collider as a time machine? According to a physics professor and his assistant, the world's largest atom smasher could indeed allow people to travel back in time.

Theoretical? To be sure. But they say it's theoretically possible.

"Our theory is a long shot, but it doesn't violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints," said Vanderbilt University physicist, Tom Weiler, in a statement.

Weiler and Vanderbilt graduate fellow Chui Man Ho, outline their theory in a paper on a site operated by Cornell.

The atom smasher, which began operations last year, was built, in part, to help scientists in their search for the elusive Higgs boson, part of an invisible force field believed to give mass to particles in the cosmos. Nobody has ever actually observed the Higgs boson in an experiment to confirm the theory that was put forward by physicists Peter Higgs, Robert Brout and Francois Englert.

Weiler and Ho suggest that if the LHC can reproduce a Higgs boson, it will also be able to produce a related particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time. This is the crucial ingredient as they theorize that these singlets would serve as jumping off points with the ability to move into other dimensions, moving across time.

"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."

There's a big plus to  this approach to time travel, according to Weiler, who says it does an end-around avoiding some major big paradoxes.

 "Because time travel is limited to these special particles," he said, "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."

Obviously, a lot of "ifs" are involved here - a fact that Vanderbilt acknowledged in its release.

Weiler and Ho's theory is based on M-theory, a "theory of everything." A small cadre of 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 "branes" 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 so 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.

If the physicists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which operates the Large Hadron Collider, begin seeing Higgs singlet particles and their decay products spontaneously appearing, Weiler and Ho believe that would offer the evidence they need to prove the materials were generated by particles which traveled back in time "to appear before the collisions that produced them."

[divinebeings]

Traveling through other dimensions is the same as traveling in our own dimension. What divides spectrums of perception (or dimensions) is not time, but pressure. Time travel is impossible! It's true that time does slow for a craft or person in motion but this is strictly a mechanical function of pressure.

In order to travel to another dimension, one must be pressurized from the inside as well. Therefore, as a result of the pressure of other pressure spectrums of perception (or dimensions) that exists outside of our solar (3D) pressure spectrum boundary... it's going to take an advanced technology of which our society or science has not yet discovered (but they will).

This discovery of advanced technology (or other dimensional technology) will eventually, be able to pressurize both man and or craft from the inside using the natural electron conduits that exist all around us and also, within us. Before we can pressurize a craft or a man in this way, we are going to have a computer program that understands these electron conduits; how they are structured and how the particles that are rotating and orbiting around us and through us, work; of which by the way, is also how the universe works. This universe we live in is a machine. It works like a clock and it is always on time; we are going to have to understand how it works before we can make these new discoveries. [more...]

http://www.divineadvancedhumanbeings.com/time-and-dimension-travel/

[GregKaye]

I had initially thought that this story was an April fool joke but also kinda feared that the originators of this concept are for real. How can Weiler and Ho talk about big paradoxes? Any paradox that had the effect that your eventual parents had a different set of interactions with the result that the individual sperm and egg that made the scientist involved would mean that the "scientist" would, at best, be in a differnt person. For instance, perhaps she might be a he or he might be a she. No grand parents would need to be killed. There is no need for anything as dramatic as that. All it may theoretically need is a tiny alteration in history and radical revisions may take place in populations. Large numbers of kids may be born with different genetics and then grow up to be, potentially, very different people.
A second problem with sending messages back in time is that, suddenly, people history might change so as do something such as allow our ancestors to know that time travel is possible. This type of revelation may get various people to get to work on different aspects of their careers than may otherwise have been the case.
In short there are simply far too many dangers regarding the use of time travel to alter the past. We just dont know whether time could take the abuse? Would a new timeline be created or would time do something less beneficial? Would the act of changing the past be an act of creation or destruction? We really dont know.
The only way that a system of messages back in time may work is if they involved the coordinated efforts of two independently operating teams. There would be a team whose job would be to recieve and action various messages from the near future and a team that could send these messages into the near past. The team from the future send details of the exact message, time sent and settings used for the sending of the message and then the team from the past could send a copy of the message sent ready to be received by the team in the future.
This kind of situation paradoxes might be avoided.
The other way in which time travel might be used is if there are situations in the past that wouldn't have otherwise have occurred unless they were initiated in the future. At an extreme level it may be theorise that, technology permitting, we may need to retrospectively create our universe.

[whiteguysrule]

I have discovered that time travel is not posable and jesus never lived.
now give me my nobel prize so i can die.

[CanadianCoolCat]

So obviously this device does not make time travel possible, or at least useful to any extent to which the author has suggested. If it did somehow allow physicists to send messages into the past, than wouldn't they already have sent a message back in time to themselves telling them how to time travel. Hmmm

[brian_norwood]

So, we set up a inter-dimensional mailbox to send and recieve t-messages (time messages). The future sends a t-message warning us about the Fukushima nuclear plant one month before the tsunami. We shut down the plant and make necessary preparations, thereby avoiding the disaster.

Why did the future send that t-message?

Makes my head spin.

[rf35]

t-mail?

[jjoe57]

There is no paradox. You go back in time and shoot your grandfather. You still exist in that time, which is now your "present." Another time line exists for you, without your grandfather. Too bad, but not paradoxical.

[rf35]

That would only be true if the hypothesis of multiple time lines is correct. Maybe there is only one timeline that cannot be split. Or maybe a new universe is created every time an event with more than one possible outcome occurs, covering all possible outcomes. Infinite universes where everything that could happen has happened. A universe-destroying paradox doesn't seem so bad if that's the case. I just hope I'm in one of the universes that find the answer.

[sivartstrebor]

But ALL of this is only possible if they can get the flux capacitor running on common garbage... right?

[WayneSmallman]

Obvious question, why aren't the scientists at the LHC seeing Higgs singlets right now?

Or is the fact that they're not seeing them evidence that the Higgs boson won't be discovered? After all, if it was to be discovered in the future, then we would expect to observe Higgs singlets in the past.

Or are they not looking?

And therein lies the paradox of this supposed paradox-free theory.