

Shutdown of the LHC, by Kevin Black - hhm
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/230

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donw
Reminds me of a science-fiction short story that I once read. A team working
on a massive particle accelerator built to study some exotic low-energy
particle kept having it break down every time they tried to use it. Even if
everything was working perfectly, _something_ would fail right before the
crucial moment, and stop the experiment dead.

Months of replacing perfectly good parts went by, until they finally figured
things out: They had been accidentally destroying the universe, due to the
nature of the particles being studied.

~~~
DavidSJ
What story was it?

~~~
donw
I wish I could remember... I'll let you know if I do.

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netcan
There's a bit in "The Elegant Universe" about how at this point it's
impossible to distinguish between real but weird physics and just crazy.

~~~
river_styx
Normally that's a sign that you're heading in the wrong direction...

~~~
netcan
The guy who wrote it (Brian Greene) is a string physicist, so he definitely
thinks so.

Every time you hear a physicist interviewed about string theory what you get
is: 'It's not very good, but it's all we got'

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jcl
Proof via rigorous computer simulation:

    
    
      >>> from __future__ import LHC
      
        File "<stdin>", line 1
      SyntaxError: future feature LHC is not defined

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Robbie2008
They haven't actually started high energy collision tests yet, so... the black
hole possibility is still there. Here's what might

happen (it's a flash but it shows the real possibility):

<http://www.yaplakal.com/forum8/topic208652.html>

The guys behind LHC say nothing like that will happen and suggest that nature
conducts similar experiments in the Earth's

atmosphere every day. However Dr Wagner is pretty sure that nature does not
collide two highly focused beams of particles with the

energies seen only when the universe was born. See his web site here:

<http://lhcdefense.org/>

The second argument of CERN is that even if a microscopic black hole appears,
it will quickly evaporate due to hawking radiation.

However, hawking radiation is just a theory. Hawking changed his mind about
black holes once, and there's not reason to think he'd

get it right this time. There's not reason to bet your life, the life of your
children and the future of the planet based on a

word of one quantum physicist.

Even though the odds of the black hole appearing are not that high, did anyone
ask you if you're willing to trust a bunch of

scientists with your life just so that they can test their theories?

I sure hope that the next time $6 bln dollars are spent by scientists it will
be on finding cure for cancer and not the

hypothetical higgs particle. Last time quantum physicists produced something
useful resulted in millions of people dead in

Hirohima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl.

The first high power experiments will be conducted end of 2008 or early 2009,
so there's still time to stop this doomsday device.

I hope that anyone who cares about the future will take an action. Please
suggest your ideas on how to do this (no violence,

please). Will injunction help? For example:

[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080123210737AA...](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080123210737AAn0nZV)

I hope that if enough of us do that, we will be able to save our planet.

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henning
It's time to play "I don't know crap about physics".

If events in the future can influence the present, wouldn't people in the
future try to harness that to influence the past?

It's impossible to read the OP without thinking of the "future Dwight" prank
from The Office.

~~~
dfranke
I think this is supposed to be the "fixed point seeking" theory of time
travel, where the resulting timeline is one where any future impact on past
events is such that it results in exactly the same future as the one which
caused those changes to the past. Basically, applying a Y combinator to the
universe :-).

I had to phrase that really carefully to avoid having to invent new verb
tenses.

~~~
hhm
Are you talking about this?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel#Immutable_timelines>

~~~
dfranke
It's a poorly-written article so I'm not certain, but model 1.2 might be
getting at the same thing that I'm describing.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_loop_logic#Time_loop_logic> is a better
description.

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netcan
According to Carl Sagan, the experiment will not produce much. I don't think
they actually expect to produce micro black holes. The most 'interesting'
probable result is actually a negative outcome. IE they fail to detect the
Higgs boson. That would mean that the 'standard model' needs to be abandoned.

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gaika
That's just looking at the Schrödinger's cat experiment from the point of view
of the cat: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_immortality>

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ph0rque
I suppose you could form a hypothesis and conduct and experiment that, if the
hypothesis is correct, would cause something "miraculous" (i.e. statistically
impossible) to happen in the present...

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
Like, if I forgot my keys, and then decided that, when I eventually find my
keys, I'll go back in time and put them under this rock, and then WHOA my keys
are under the rock!! (Now to remember to do that, so the universe doesn't fall
apart...)

disclaimer: didn't rtfa, just having fun.

~~~
andyjenn
Like it... my first thought was "Bill and Ted meet Stephen Hawking."

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chris_l
Well, I've only read the introduction of the actual paper, but they do start
talking about God :)

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gaius
It is ridiculous to imagine that a species that doesn't even have warp engines
yet could destroy the universe.

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biohacker42
TNG anyone?

~~~
zandorg
But no sign of Brannon Braga...

