The world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, continues to grip the popular imagination
despite delays for its start. Some particularly jittery individuals have
warned that the experiments planned for the accelerator by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) could spawn world-menacing black holes, inspiring a ridiculous spot on
The Daily Show. Yet by far the most outlandish theory to date speculates that some advanced intelligence is attempting to halt the LHC's construction...from the future. As
Lauren Davis reports for io9, two respected physicists view the LHC's continuing
technical and
operational difficulties as evidence of precisely such a phenomenon:
In fact, the projects have suffered such bad luck that Holger Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto wonder if it isn't bad luck at all, but future influences rippling back to sabotage them...If the observation of the Higgs boson would result in calamity, they
claim it isn't outside the realm of possibility that someone from our
future might exert influence on our time to stop it.
More scientific scare-mongering, or is it possible that someone or something might really be '
sabotaging the LHC from the future?'
Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments.
You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
User Comments
Please type your comment and click Post. If you’re not already logged in you will be prompted to log in or register