Are Higgs boson particles preventing their own creation? Two scientists have proposed that the Large Hadron Collider, a giant particle accelerator designed to smash things together and create ever-more-exotic subatomic particles to study, is being sabotaged from the future by the large-scale production of Higgs bosons (the predicted but only never-seen particle necessary to the current model of subatomic physics, often dubbed "the God particle"). I kid you not–the article in question is perfectly sober stuff.
The world of physics, since the whole quantum mechanics business entered the picture, gets weirder all the time. These scientists, one from the Niels Bohr Institute, say influence from the future is perfectly acceptable to the current model of the universe, strange and counterintuitive though it may be. But it sounds even more like a joke thought up by a science fiction writer when you hear what they propose: allow the "future influence" to show itself by creating a miracle along the lines of an exceptionally unlikely card draw. If the future influence appears, shut down the LHC pronto, because it will never work anyway.
What I find weirdest about all of this is that it's supposedly the future creation of Higgs boson particles that would change the present to prevent the creation of these particles, which, apparently, nature abhors. But of course this brings up the age-old conundrum–if the particles aren't created, how can they prevent their own creation? It makes more sense if you try to think of it like the speed of light–you just can't create a Higgs boson, to the extent that if you did, it would prevent itself. Maybe I'm just not getting what they mean, but that certainly seems to be the claim.
I love reading about physics, but still–I'm going to go look into two mirrors facing each other for a while. Although I think there's a large chance as well that the card these two fellows will pull out of the deck will be the joker…
