Theory: Large Hadron Collider Could Be Used As Time Machine

There's a lot of theories out there about the Large Hadron Collider-- but time travel?

Professor Thomas Weiler and graduate fellow Chui Man Ho are suggesting it's a possibility, and doesn't defy the laws of physics. However, they're very clear to point out that this is just a theory, and it would only involve particles, not human beings.

"Our theory is a long shot," Weiler, who is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University, admitted to the school's research news department, "but it doesn't violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints."

The researchers propose that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile long particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland, could be used to send a theoretical particle back or forward in time, according to LiveScience. That particle, the Higgs singlet, is purely theoretical at this point and is related to another highly theorized (and slightly more well-known) particle, the Higgs boson.

The goal of some experiments done at the LHC is to find the elusive Higgs boson particle. According to the original summary by Vanderbilt's research news department, Weiler and Ho's paper suggests that if the Higgs boson is discovered, the Higgs singlet will also be created.

From Vanderbilt Research News:

According to Weiler and Ho’s theory, these singlets should have the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they can move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or past.

But even if this is achieved, the theory doesn't even suggest full time travel, just the potential ability to send messages back and forth through time, according to LiveScience.

“One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes,” Weiler told Research News. “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.”

The theory (which can be read in its full scientific glory here) relies on an M-theory or "theory of everything" which unites the cause of all particles. Discovering the Higgs boson particle would be a big step in proving this theory, according to LiveScience.

Comments

[Endogenous Light Nexus]

07:51 AM on 03/21/2011

The LHC might be used for time travel but in a more practical way, by generating microsingularities that can be used to warp spacetime locally. The theory was presented by a fellow named John Titor who claimed to be a time traveler and whose predictions have largely come true. See http://johntitor.strategicbrains.com.

[JTS313]

07:36 AM on 03/21/2011

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."
-Einstein

[ponyloco]

03:49 AM on 03/21/2011

maybe the future scientists should send a message back in time on how to get the damn thing working...

[hagagaga]

12:19 AM on 03/21/2011

This is yet another ridiculous paranoid statement about the LHC.

[EcnelisDoogod]

11:00 PM on 03/20/2011

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
Noam Chomsky

[Opening Shares]

09:47 PM on 03/20/2011

Gilbert Godrfey impression based solely on the head line because yes, I jumped directly to the comments without reading the story. Come on, give me a break it's about time travel. The best movie about which is "Primer." If you like special effects and famous actors this might not be the movie for you. But if you tend to think that there is certain quality that is best left to the imagination...
Cue the Afflack duck- What is it with people and time travel? Like they have the here and now figured out already. Is there something missing about the way things are that would motivate someone to conclude that the only way to

And that's all I got. Sorry. Refunds are available at the door.

[Counterglow]

11:20 PM on 03/20/2011

Good call on "Primer". I assume you've read "The Man Who Folded Himself".

[Waveskiboy]

09:01 PM on 03/20/2011

Absurd!

[zSpin2001]

06:38 PM on 03/20/2011

Ad infinitum, but we don't. I agree with the idea of vacuously true in logic, but it serves no substantive difference between evidence and no evidence. In other words, the absence of evidence is not logically equivalent to evidence of absence.

[zSpin2001]

06:35 PM on 03/20/2011

You have the whole paradox of the paradox. If we were able to go back in time or send messages back in time, then we would already know that this is a possibility because we would see time travelers or messages ad infinitum.

[MSaxe]

05:31 PM on 03/20/2011

And, according to theory, if a bullfrog had wings it wouldn't bump its @ss on the ground,

[StephenJK]

11:42 AM on 03/20/2011

I think this machines sole purpose is to attempt to understand how different types of matter are constructed from the sub-atomic realm. Why? I dunno, ask the usury pirates who funded this thing from the beginning. Maybe they want to learn how to teleport! Ooooh, Star Trekking...

[hagagaga]

12:10 AM on 03/21/2011

Well, we already have teleported photons.

[Drummin Prince]

10:28 AM on 03/20/2011

time machines would be awesome. there are loads of ladies i would like to disappoint all over again.

[EdgarAllen]

05:08 AM on 03/20/2011

I don't see how time travel, or even message sending to a different time, is possible. All theories would require both then and now to be happening and existing at the same time in a connected manor. There is no data to suggest that they are.

[FBatRNC]

12:19 PM on 03/20/2011

I think Quantum Mechanics states that this is possible. I'm not sure if it is theory or proved but still interesting. There is a thought experiment called Schrödinger's cat, take a look at it;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrodingers_cat

Also take a look at something called quantum entanglement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

Here are 2 good articles about Quantum Mechanics in general;

http://bigthink.com/ideas/20525

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=4ADF8A99-E7F2-99DF-358BE3AE32D615E8

This stuff is so very interesting, well worth the read.

[nevernot]

09:43 PM on 03/20/2011

I'm not sure exactly how it would be possible either, but if I were to see our plane of existence from a higher dimension perhaps it would appear as if it was all connected. If we lived on a two dimensional universe we wouldn't even be able to conceive what a third dimension would be like, we simply wouldn't have a point of reference.

[poster1122]

09:59 PM on 03/19/2011

Actually, he's wrong when he says:

“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."

If you can control the particles enough to send a message into the past, you reintroduc­e all the problems with paradoxes. If John Smith sends a message back in time to Bob and tells him that Jack Smith (John's dad) must die to save the world and Bob acts on this message, then Jack will have never lived to produce John. So who sent the message back in time to Bob? And if no one sent a message to Bob, then he'd have no reason to kill Jack. But if Jack never died, he produces John, who will send the message to Bob.

See the problem?

[Craig 212]

04:35 AM on 03/20/2011

Indeed. Such paradoxes are why Hawking says that, while time travel into the future remains a theoretical possibility, travel into the past is almost certainly not.

[hagagaga]

12:11 AM on 03/21/2011

Hawking actually stated that any time travel would be into an alternate universe.

[C Kevin Provance again]

08:58 PM on 03/20/2011

This is where the theory of parallel and/or alternate universes comes into play, and what is swaying Hawking's opinion.

[BillClay]

04:58 PM on 03/19/2011

The one flaw in everybody's time travel theory is......if it was ever going to become possible in the future, the time travelers would have already come back and contacted us.

[uncc49er]

01:07 PM on 03/20/2011

Interesting point of view, but how do we know it hasn't happened. May be it can only happen in different dimensions of time and space (which are the same thing) , so in that case we can not sense their presence or communicate with people from future.

[rcwhite364]

07:02 PM on 03/20/2011

Haven't you two learnd of the Prime Directive???

Sorry...I've said too much...