Scientists think their experiment may have sabotaged itself from the future

<snip>
Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, 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.

Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half.

<snip>
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

What about Skynet?

Muh! I understood most of it, but is it true?

At the sub-atomic level things get weird. However, there is a hint of "Hey, the grant's running out. If we can't dazzle 'em with our brilliance, baffle 'em with a our bs."

:rofl:

I've always thought that "aliens" could just as easily be ourselves from the future as strangers from other planets--and maybe even more likely, given how tricky it would be to physically travel across space versus time--so who knows what we might see fit to try to change. If so, I'd like to know why we don't fix crap like the freakin' Bush dynasty and other crimes against humanity. Maybe that's a different parallel universe.

Is this my "woo woo" quota for the day? :)

It makes my head hurt, but I love it.

could be that time exists in all places, with all times accounted for. THis is an awesome story.

What I also like about this is that it implies a future and its technical AND ethical as well. :)

Asteroid sized cylinders of neutronium rotating at near light speed.

We won't be doing that any time soon, IMO.

Although I haven't paid attention to this stuff in a while so someone may have come up with a somewhat less technically challenging plan in the last decade or so.

Should aliens exist they are far more likely to be our descendants time-traveling than space-travelers.

The future sounds like it's going to be alot of fun.

“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”

... that journalists don't understand.

:spray:

:cry: :rofl:

And God don't show Its Face to mortal measuring devices.

is well known phenomenon in quantum physics. It makes the head hurt, but it's fascinating. Also, Quantum parallels with mental phenomena are much more promising avenue than the still prevailing reduction of mental phenomena to classical mechanics.

Interestingly and somewhat parallel to OP, human cognition constantly projects mental future images or states, possible futures, which are simultaneously or near simultaneously valued according to preferability, and preferability valuation of potential futures affects actualizing behaviour. For example banana peel on road and mental future image of slipping and getting hurt causes consciously or subconsciously change in present walking pattern to avoid slipping. So, future influences present actions in most ordinary human experience.

Reductionists may object that imagination cannot have causal power over classical mechanics, contrary to common everyday experience plus vast body of experimental evidence. But why consider mental phenomena any less real than classical mechanics? Just because they and these cannot be measured directly with measuring devices available? If mental phenomena are, say, 4D-spacetime events and measuring devices can directly measure only 3D-objects?

for further readings in backwards causation? Thanks.

I haven't saved any links from a life long dilletante study, but here's some that a quick google produced:

For basic introductions to the theme:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-backwards/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality

As far as I understand, this guy has currently the best understanding, but he's speaking physics, not normal language, so I don't understand much ;) : http://matpitka.blogspot.com/
He's lately tried to explain his theory in video lectures, which I haven't yet watched:
http://tgd.wippiespace.com/public_html/videos.html
One basic and IMHO very usefull distinction Matti makes is between psychological and geometric time. I don't much understand their relation, but the distinction is needed to avoid paradoxes. What is essential is that each quantum jump rewrites both future and history.

Links to some experiments (Libet and Tillet, there is more but don't remember now):
http://www.consciousentities.com/experiments.htm
http://cengiz.akinli.org/~maat/archive/mar2/tiller.htm

joke. I've just seen some bashing of the topic on DU and dared myself to ask you. I'm glad I did.

from http://cengiz.akinli.org/~maat/archive/mar2/tiller.htm



This is the very definition of woo. At risk of understatement, I don't believe it.

You can't meditate over a crystal or silicon chip or light bulb, (unless the "electrical device" in question is a pump attached to a reservoir of acid), wrap it in foil and place it next to a glass of water and thus change the pH of the water in the nearby glass.

Anything combining quantum mechanics with thought processes is woo.

And the stuff in the OP? It's a gag in a non-peer review journal. A clear attempt at satire and probably an attempt for an Ignobel.

"Anything combining quantum mechanics with thought processes is woo."

Therefore all thought processes inventing/finding/creating/observing/in any way combining quantum mechanics are woo. :D

Here's a question: what's behind the mystery of fully deterministic classical mechanics machines inventing/finding the strange math that allowed and allow formulation of quantum mechanics? Because thus it was written in the density matrix of Big Bang (which is how certain kinds of theists name their Creator God ;))?


And now more woo:
"Scientific investigation

An attempt to study the physiological effects of Tummo has been made by Benson and colleagues (Benson et al., 1982; Cromie, 2002) who studied Indo-Tibetan Yogis in the Himalayas and in India in the 1980s. In the first experiment, in Upper Dharamsala (India), Benson et al. (1982) found that these subjects exhibited the capacity to increase the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 8.3°C. In the most recent experiment, which was conducted in Normandy (France), two monks from the Buddhist tradition wore sensors that recorded changes in heat production and metabolism (Cromie, 2002).

While the physiological effects of Tummo are well known, they are not the primary purpose of the meditation practice. Tummo is a tantric meditation practice that transforms and evolves the consciousness of the practitioner so that 'wisdom' (prajna) and 'compassion' (karuna) are manifested in the individual"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo#Scientific_investigation

"Here's a question: what's behind the mystery of fully deterministic classical mechanics machines inventing/finding the strange math that allowed and allow formulation of quantum mechanics? "

Come again? Classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and mathematics are three different things. Quantum mechanics requires calculus, linear algebra, and partial differential equations. There's nothing strange about the math whatsoever.

"Because thus it was written in the density matrix of Big Bang (which is how certain kinds of theists name their Creator God )?"

Please rephrase this question in the form of a rational thought.


"While the physiological effects of Tummo are well known, they are not the primary purpose of the meditation practice. Tummo is a tantric meditation practice that transforms and evolves the consciousness of the practitioner so that 'wisdom' (prajna) and 'compassion' (karuna) are manifested in the individual"

I see nothing to support the claim that the physiological effects of Tummo are well known. Or that there are any physiological effects whatsoever. The "scientific investigation" is not scientific as there's nothing reported that's peer reviewed. Furthermore, none of it's got anything to do with quantum mechanics.

Maybe the issue, after all, is that each to their beliefs. If you sincerely believe you are fully deterministic clockwork machine whose each action is dictated by some initial values set at the Big Bang act of Creation, and refuse to understand anything else, why should I try to make you understand something less restricted, try convince you to be or believe something else?

So if and when those initial values of Big Bang determine you to behave like you do, you cannot be blamed as you have no freedom of choise, you are just acting as programmed.

A fascinating program, it acts like it want's to participate in a discussion but all it can do is debate, to claim that nothing else exists beyond it's program.

scoffs at the notion that mass multiple vaccinations could present more danger than the epidemic they're putatively intended by Big Pharma to prevent.

I also scoff at the notion that seatbelts, bicycle helmets, and condoms kill more people than they save.

:shrug:

Try it yourself and see for your self.
Seriously.
Anyone can do it.
Even you.

try what?

Nielsen and Ninomiya have never wavered in the years since they initially published this theory. They seem to take it seriously, though nobody else that I know in the Physics community does.

http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/respectable-physicists-gone-crackpotty/

The link you provided makes it look even moreso.

SSC?

:rofl:

they stand behind their published work. Both have good reputations, one is actually working at LHC right now. If it's a hoax, their intention must be to keep up appearances well past the time anyone with common sense and scientific training takes the proposal seriously.

Now I found the link to the experiment I was really looking for:
http://www.parapsy.nl/uploads/w1/retrocausal_tucson3.pdf

Bierman and Radin experiments show the neurological (p)response happening before emotive stimuli is perceived.

***

Also this gossip that google just brought maybe of interest:

"Dr Dick Bierman, who has a PhD in physics, informed me that he did in fact approach James Randi about the Million Dollar Challenge in late 1998. Bierman reported a success in replicating the presentiment experiments of Dr Dean Radin (where human reactions seem to occur marginally before an event occurs), and was subsequently asked by Stanley Klein of the University of California why, if his results for psi effects were positive and replicable, he didn't respond to Randi's challenge. Bierman replied that he would rather invest his time in good scientific research, rather than convincing skeptics in a one-off test. However, after further discussion, he decided that he may be able to combine the two:

"After some exchange of ideas I was brought into contact with Randi. Randi sounded sincerely interested and I worked out a proposal for an interesting experiment that would last about a year. Experimental effects in this type of research are small and require a lot of measurements to reach the required statistical significance (I think Randi wanted a p-value of 0.000001).

Note that he didn't insist on showing the effect on stage. Rather I proposed to do a kind of precognition (actually presentiment) experiment on-line over Internet where he or some other independent skeptic could generate the targets once the responses were communicated over the Internet (all this would be done automatically on a computer under his control within a second). This would prevent cheating from the experimenter's side but we still had to work out how to prevent cheating from the Randi-side.

At that point Randi mentioned that before proceeding he had to submit this preliminary proposal to his scientific board or committee. And basically that was the end of it. I have no idea where the process was obstructed but I must confess that I was glad that I could devote myself purely to science rather than having to deal with the skeptics and the associated media hypes.""
http://www.dailygrail.com/features/the-myth-of-james-randis-million-dollar-challenge

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/169-swift-february-29-2008.html#i9

#10

To simplify, the researcher asked the subject (who is hooked to an EEG) to decide to do some arbitrary thing, like wave, at the time of their choosing. They were then asked to note the precise time they decided to do this act.

The researchers consistently noted that brain waves spiked a few tenths of a second before the subject self-reported the timing of his decision.

The researcher attributes this to quantum effects, bla bla bla.

Why does the obvious elude people?

The obvious conclusion is found by only a cursory review of the directions. 1) Decide 2) Act 3) Take note of the time. It stands to reason that no one is going to be able to note a time which precedes their decision. :crazy:

The methodology of every one of these experiments are questionable.

I'm not immune to my own form of woo. I personally think there's a high probability that we live in a simulation, and only now is science devising experiments which can detect the "resolution" of that simulation, and failure to create the particle theorized in the OP is a mainfestation of that. The recent discovery that the fundamental granularity of space time is a unit much larger than the Planck length gives credence to that idea.

http://www.niburu.nl/index.php?articleID=20121

Bierman's repetition of Radin's experiments was nothing like you describe. The results were based on Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) data.

is very ancient philosophy, animistic view of world and self common also in Eastern philosophies ("you can see all the universe in a scpec of sand"). AFAIK it was phycisist David Bohm who first used the hologram metaphor (very similar to Indra's Net) to describe cosmos according to his theoretic approach. As technology advances, the latest metaphor is that universe is a giant holographic quantum computer. :)

This kind of holistic "woo" can be very educational in terms of self-realization. All kinds of difficulties may be involved, but in my experience people with holistic attitude tend to be much nicer to talk with and be with than those with strictly reductionistic belief system. So it's worth the try, any case. :)

That inclusion, for those who have experienced various psychic or "unexplained" phenomena -- and/or not had the memories of childhood experiences beaten out of them -- supports the awareness that the "supernatural" is quite natural.

And good science does not exclude any unexplained phenomena or "anomalies", even when they are so called "anecdotal evidence" but tries to explain all phenomena.

a hundred years. Looks like DU is ready! :hi:

My first response to this was "...Wooo....kooks"

"You can't meditate over a crystal or silicon chip or light bulb, (unless the "electrical device" in question is a pump attached to a reservoir of acid), wrap it in foil and place it next to a glass of water and thus change the pH of the water in the nearby glass."

You can't. Some can. :hi:

And despite the fact that the objects of my meditations are physically proximate to computers to which mine is physically connected via copper, I have yet to effect meaningful change, pH or otherwise.

:hi:

your power of persuasion. :think:

THAT was funny.

"But why consider mental phenomena any less real than classical mechanics? Just because they and these cannot be measured directly with measuring devices available? If mental phenomena are, say, 4D-spacetime events and measuring devices can directly measure only 3D-objects?"

"Interestingly and somewhat parallel to OP, human cognition constantly projects mental future images or states, possible futures, which are simultaneously or near simultaneously valued according to preferability, and preferability valuation of potential futures affects actualizing behaviour. For example banana peel on road and mental future image of slipping and getting hurt causes consciously or subconsciously change in present walking pattern to avoid slipping. So, future influences present actions in most ordinary human experience."

But that's the present image of a possible future banana peal slip causing one to act so as to foreclose on the possibility of slipping (whether or not there is a banana peal). Using imagination as a guide is not reverse causality. Or have I misunderstood you?

Unless the argument is that the LHC is some kind of emergent intelligence, the example does not hold.

Sure, psychological time is (mostly) 2D linear and unidirectional, but allready Einstein theorized geometric 4D timespace as planes with curvatures etc., a complex landscape, and quantum approaches and attempts towards TOE complicate the picture even further. This may be partly misunderstanding and largerly oversimplification from my part, but the 2D psychological time experience seems and feels to arise from some kind of loop structure crawling along the multidimentional spacetime(s), interlinked chain of "time bubbles". Which time bubbles, to add, come and go in various sizes with bubbles inside bubbles etc., so very complicated! :D

So I have hard time understanding why mental images of possible futures would not really exist in geometric futures. Where then, if not in future as experienced? The fact that these potential images can affect actualizing present AFAIK has something to do with "tachyons" or something similar, causal arrows from future to present so fast there is no delay or very little delay. The causal arrows from past to future are restricted by speed of light, so there is basic asymmetry. BTW the causal arrows from past to future are cumulative and Buddhists call aggregates of cumulated causes 'Karma'. And Karma, according to Buddhism, is gradually cleared by some sort of "wind", maybe that refers to what some scientist would call "causal arrows from future to past in geometric time".

Interestingly some sort of energy metabolism seems to be involved in the process I've (poorly) attempted to describe, which may at least partially explain the tummo phenomenon or the much more common phenomenon of hands warming when doing healing work and similar tasks. I haven't seen any scientific research on the subject of hands warming, but I can assure you it is quite common phenomenon.

Enough of my babble, these confused thoughts are largely product of this discussion: http://matpitka.blogspot.com/2009/10/new-dark-matter-anomaly.html#comments

This comment by Matti helped to understand imagination as part of action little better: "Multiverses as quantum superpositions of geometric objects are unavoidable in any theory of quantum gravitation starting from a geometric description of gravitation."

So, "potential future images" in my amateur language can be defined as "multiverses as quantum superpositions".

My amateur understanding of quantum superposition comes from the notion of qubit: 1, 0, and their superposition (both and; neither nor 1 and 0).

Having some experimental machine realizing after achieving AI in the future that it's such an abhorrent thing that the best course of action is to just develop time travel to go back and off itself.

:rofl:

I love the fact that physics can bend through probability and space-time... any fan of Schroedinger's Cat would understand, eh?

hehe...remember that line from the Matrix, when Neo visits the Oracle for the first time...
"Whats really gonna bake your noodle later, is would you have still knocked it over if I hadn't said anything."


yep! nothing like some physics to bake your noodle first thing in the morning!
dig it

the other ones are hairball free...
:rofl:

Flux capacitor and all.

best book I EVER read.
http://quantumenigma.com/
'This book is unique. I know of no other which so artfully tackles two of the greatest mysteries of modern science, quantum mechanics, and consciousness. It has long been suspected that these mysteries are somehow related: the authors’ treatment of this thorny and controversial issue is honest, wide-ranging, and immensely readable. The book contains some of the clearest expositions I have ever seen of the strange and paradoxical nature of the quantum world. Quantum Enigma is a pleasure to read, and I am sure it is destined to become a classic.
George Greenstein: Professor of Astronomy, Amherst College, Co-author of The Quantum Challenge: Modern Research on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics'

Einstein's Dreams became a bestseller by delighting both scientists and humanists. It is technically a novel. Lightman uses simple, lyrical, and literal details to locate Einstein precisely in a place and time--Berne, Switzerland, spring 1905, when he was a patent clerk privately working on his bizarre, unheard-of theory of relativity. The town he perceives is vividly described, but the waking Einstein is a bit player in this drama.

The book takes flight when Einstein takes to his bed and we share his dreams, 30 little fables about places where time behaves quite differently. In one world, time is circular; in another a man is occasionally plucked from the present and deposited in the past: "He is agonized. For if he makes the slightest alteration in anything, he may destroy the future ... he is forced to witness events without being part of them ... an inert gas, a ghost ... an exile of time." The dreams in which time flows backward are far more sophisticated than the time-tripping scenes in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, though science-fiction fans may yearn for a sustained yarn, which Lightman declines to provide.

His purpose is simply to study the different kinds of time in Einstein's mind, each with its own lucid consequences. In their tone and quiet logic, Lightman's fables come off like Bach variations played on an exquisite harpsichord. People live for one day or eternity, and they respond intelligibly to each unique set of circumstances. Raindrops hang in the air in a place of frozen time; in another place everyone knows one year in advance exactly when the world will end, and acts accordingly.

http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Dreams-Alan-Lightman/dp/140007780X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255627053&sr=1-1

I love this book. It is so hard to think of time occurring any other way. Each chapter is a vignette with time occurring differently such as running backwards.

It is a novel, but scientists like it too.

I think the Master may be involved. Call the Brigadier and meet me at the TARDIS!

:shrug:

who knows. i can't wait to see, that's for sure.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x57635

I hate to be a wet noodle, but the media sensationalism surrounding the LHC gets under my skin.

try to understand this. If I tried, I should think my brain will implode on itself.

:rofl:

I didn't understand it, but then there are many things I hear that I don't understand (I think).

But these guys just won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Oh wait; no they didn't.

But I could have sworn . . .

Hmmmm.

:D

Cosmic rays hitting our atmosphere generate a lot more energy than the LHC ever will. Whatever particles the LHC will produce have already been produced in our atmosphere a long time ago.

from the future? Didn't anyone think of setting up a kroniton force field around the facility BEFORE trying the experiment? :eyes: Sheesh, humans...

Do not remember title - probably read it in Analog. Details may be approximate recall.

Two civilizations that had been locked in interstellar war for generations. One discovers that there were many previous civilizations that had suddenly vanished from the galaxy and they all had one thing in common before they collapsed: they had made a discovery that would make time travel possible. Apparently, the universe itself was intolerant of causality violations.

Also, the technical information to build a time machine was in the ruins of a planet near their enemy's region of space. So they decide on a novel strategy, let the planet that held the secret of time travel fall to their enemies. They would discory the technology, but not the history, and perish when they tried to experiment with it.

But it turns out the universe does not care how causality was protected. As soon as the leaders approved the plan, their star went nova.

I find this whole thing (CERN, black holes, time travel, etc.) so intriguing

does happen, just not in a controlled or directed way.

Once, many years ago, when I worked at National Airport in Washington DC, a man's suitcase arrived about five hours before he ever went to the airport to check in.

as billions of years slip by outside the gravity well.

Really, really, really good weed.

at least they didn't waste the 10 Billion on something stupid. :)

('course, in my day it was still "Graphics")

Far Fucking OUT.

Make it so, Number One!!

Holistically, if we take this cosmos as a joke, it is - seriously!

The joke of Higgs bosom (nice Freudian slip, let's leave it there :)) brings to mind Hoffstadters book Gödel, Escher, Bach and the cosmic joke about "a phonograph which destroys itself by playing a record entitled "I Cannot Be Played on Record Player X" (this being an analogy to Gödel's incompleteness theorem)". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach