Time Travel Idea Given New Life With Data Analysis

Once thought a dead issue, the idea of time travel was given new life this week as scientists interpret new data.

In March of 2011, Gadling reported time travel was to be tested at Vanderbilt University. Using the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, scientists hoped to find the mysterious Higgs Boson particle, the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass.

“One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time,” reported Vanderbilt’s research news.

Professor Tom Weiler and graduate fellow Chui Man Ho thought 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.

“One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes,” Weiler said at the time. “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.”This week, researchers from the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, analyzed data from the Large Hadron Collider and are “almost certain that they had proven the existence of the Higgs boson, the most sought-after particle in all of physics,” says a CNN report.

The new information comes after Illinois researchers said earlier in the week that scientists had come closer to proving that the particle exists but had been unable to reach a definitive conclusion.

No information yet on the Higgs singlet. But proving the existence of the Higgs boson would most likely give new life to the idea of time travel. Not much new life, but some. Professor Weller noted, “if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future.”

Baby steps.


[Flickr photo by katerha]

China bans time travel, America still working on it


In their latest effort to uphold the country’s values and not dare promote anything that would re-write history, Chinese censors told the film and television industry no more fictional time travel in the media. They should have waited a little while. Over here in America, physicists believe they have proved time travel is not even possible.

The Chinese government imposed a ban on all films centered on time travel, expressing that such films “Casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation” reports the National Post.

Meanwhile, physicists from the University of Maryland have created a specialized kind of material, called a ‘metamaterial,’ that mimics the mathematics of the Big Bang (theory, not television program) when light is beamed through it, reports wired. In a simulated Big Bang experiment they found that circular orbits of light, needed for time travel as we believed it to be, were not possible. That pretty much rendered time travel impossible too.

Actually, science fiction fans who live in China will probably be OK with all this. They can’t see time travel in films or television anymore but it really never existed before anyway and now we know it. Or so we think.

Don’t tell the physicists at Vanderbilt University time travel does not exist. Last month Gadling reported that Vanderbilt physicists set to prove time travel did exist using a different approach. Using world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, they plan to cause matter to travel backwards in time.

“One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.” reported Vanderbilt’s research news.

Professor Tom Weiler and graduate fellow Chui Man Ho think 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.

While they doubt a person could travel through time, they thought messages might be sent successfully.

“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.”

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Time Travel to be tested at Vanderbilt University

The world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, could be the first machine capable of causing matter to travel backwards in time. Vanderbilt University physicists are now armed with what they believe is the ability to prove the unprovable, the potential to jump into a fifth dimension.

It’s the latest theory of Professor Tom Weiler and graduate fellow Chui Man Ho that using the Large Haldron Collider is key.
“One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.” reports Vanderbilt’s research news.

Weiler and Ho thing 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.

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

Hey, it’s a start.

Flickr photo by alancleaver_2000

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