Helium leakages, power outages and year-long magnet repairs must make Large Hadron Collider (LHC) the world\u2019s most costly and ill-fated experiment. <\/p>\n
Now, University of Copenhagen physicist Holger Bech Nielsen claims that the machine\u2019s run of bad luck may be down to a \u2018back-to-the-future\u2019 effect, whereby the machine is doomed to failure by its own future.<\/p>\n
This is according to the British news website Timesonline.co.uk. <\/p>\n
Since its conception the LHC has been the subject of numerous sci-fi doomsday theories. Most notable is the idea that the LHC could create a black hole which could swallow the Earth, or, more dramatically, destroy the entire Universe.<\/p>\n
Most researchers and physics buffs with an ounce of theoretical knowledge have scoffed into their lab coats at such speculations.<\/p>\n
However, two respected physicists, one of them the University of Copenhagen\u2019s Holger Bech Nielsen, have added fuel to the sci-fi nerds\u2019 inferno, by claiming that \u2018backward causation\u2019 could be at the root of the LHC\u2019s numerous \u2018accidental\u2019 system failures. <\/p>\n
Furthermore, they have backed up their hypothesis with apparently sound mathematical theory. <\/p>\n
Backward causation is, in Holger Bech Nielsens own words, \u00bbinfluence going from future to past\u00ab.<\/p>\n
According to his theory, LHC and the Higgs boson particle it is meant to create 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-traveller who goes back in time to kill his own grandfather.<\/p>\n
\u00bbOur theory suggests that any machine trying to make the Higgs shall have bad luck,\u00ab Holger Bech Nielsen explains.<\/p>\n
\u00bbIt is based on mathematics, but you could explain it by saying that God rather hates Higgs particles and attempts to avoid them.\u00ab<\/p>\n
Along with Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, Holger Bech Nielsen aired this hypothesis in the paper \u2018Search for Future Influence from LHC\u2019.<\/p>\n
They argue that this malign influence from the future could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was shut down in 1993 at a cost of billions of dollars. <\/p>\n
Holger Bech Nielsen has called this event so unlikely that it can be classed as an \u00bbanti-miracle\u00ab.<\/p>\n
Some of Cern\u2019s own researchers have taken Nielsen\u2019s theory at least a little seriously. <\/p>\n
\u00bbHis ideas are theoretically valid. What he is doing is playing around at the edge of our knowledge, which is a good thing,\u00ab says Brian Cox, professor of particle physics at Manchester University<\/p>\n
\u00bbHe is pointing out that we don\u2019t yet have a quantum theory of gravity, so we haven\u2019t yet proved rigorously that sending information into the past isn\u2019t possible,\u00ab he adds. <\/p>\n
However, no matter how good the mathematics are, time-travel is a little bit difficult to take seriously:<\/p>\n
\u00bbIf time travellers do break into the LHC control room and pull the plug out of the wall, then I\u2019ll refer you to my article supporting Nielsen\u2019s theory that I wrote in 2025,\u00ab quips Brian Cox. <\/p>\n
luci@adm.ku.dk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is the CERN experiment LHC\u2019s purpose so \u00bbabhorrent to nature\u00ab that it is being sabotaged by its own future? University of Copenhagen physicist blames \u2018backward causation\u2019 for the collider\u2019s teething troubles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":24565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","expression-news_article"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n