In case I'm not seriously missing a joke, people are allowed to say anything about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) since nobody really has a deep understanding on the subject; including blaming mistakes and coincidences on nature itself.
Case in point? Time reports that two researchers have put forth papers stating that basically a result of an experiment is destined to fail - any experiment that would cause a Higgs boson to be captured will be prevented. From the future.
Yes, Niels Bohr and Masao Ninomiya think that the boson from the experiment would cause a ripple in the future basically preventing it's creation. It's just slightly crazy at this point, but then they get to the good stuff. Apparently a cooling system failed because a bird dropped a piece of bread on an electrical station and caused a power loss - and this was caused by the boson, abhorrent to nature, acting from the future.
That, or it's just a bird and the experiments have failed since the technology is complex and fragile. Or there might be a mistake in some underlying assumption and they just won't be able to prove the Higgs boson. It's just that those two researchers think it's not their fault, it's the universe itself.
You can find the Time writeup linked below. Luckily they didn't just report the crazies, they have a decent write-up of the collider and why perhaps the theory is so zany.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091111/wl_time/08599193737000
Niels Bohr thunk http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr
ReplyDeleteThe 1st guy is actually called Bech Nielsen from a Niels Bohr institute. Anyhow, some interesting points there indeed - but science has always been based on assumptions which either prove or prove not to be correct after measurements, when large enough sample is available.
This means there are theories around, and some of them are bound to be vague.
However, what I don't like is how Time reports this from an "everyday guy" perspective instead of scientific. Common people, most likely also Time reporters, do not understand the concept of time very well. They understand how to wake up in time to get to work, but that is only how time works for humans.
The article didn't approach the subject - or the presented theory - from a scientific viewpoint, but decided to go cheap and "laugh" about it. Very unprofessional and plain boring.
Secondly, where are their sources?
"Many physicists say that Nielsen and Ninomiya's theory, while intellectually interesting, cannot be accurate because the event that the LHC is trying to recreate already happens in nature." "What's more, some scientists believe that.." Who are those "many physicists" and "some scientists"? And what are their basis on these arguments? Scientist don't make "everyday guy"s assumptions nor comments like this.
What we are looking at here are some extremely poor reporting, and a vague, yet interesting theory.
I'm not even gonna go on Time's take of "two different camps of scientists".