NY Times article on the super collider at CERN, in Switzerland

[Jonathan]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html?ref=science

It's almost repaired but two physicists are thinking it should not be used.

Quote:

"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."

It made me do my patented Spock eyebrow arch and I said 'Fascinating.'

Sounds almost as crazy as a U.K. patent application claiming a Star Trek-type transporter system.

[MYK]

Larry Niven wrote a story similar to that: "Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation".  He stole the title from a physics journal paper by Robert Tipler:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipler_cylinder

[Jonathan]

Fascinating. I am not being facetious. This stuff really does interest me. It will be an exciting Friday evening, reading up on all this, as my social life is abysmal. I will then probably break my self-imposed rule and go for a late night walk. Crime is on the upswing in San Francisco and I live in a remote part of the city that doesn't have too much pedestrian traffic. Kind of an ideal situation for a person to mug someone.

[MYK]

Hah.  You think *your* social life sucks?!?  I'm sitting here at 9:45pm on *Saturday* night! :p

Hope you survive the weekend!

[Jonathan]

Survived so far, I have.

-Yoda

(yes, I am a geek)

[heman]

We all know that revolutionary new science projects are always met with skepticism, whether it is from the side of the physicist or the layman. More so, if it has any impact on the common concept of the majority. But the notion that the hypothesized Higgs boson which may materialize by the collider as the physicist conceive, could go back ward through time and hinder the process is something unbelievable. Anyways, let us wait and see what the collider built by CERN, the nuclear research centre has in store for humanity. A bane or boon?