Word: boson
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...piece of bread dropped by a passing bird interfered with the 17-mile-long particle accelerator's equipment in early November. On Nov. 23, the LHC sent two proton beams bashing into each other for the very first time, bringing scientists one step closer to finding the hypothetical Higgs boson particle and unlocking the secrets of the universe's creation. If preliminary tests continue to go smoothly, the LHC will start running full-speed collisions in early...
Writes Denis Overbye in The New York Times, “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.” In other words, creating an amount of energy three to four times times the amount created during a nuclear fission reaction—a possibility realizable with the detonation...
...science. When they speculated about the consequences the Large Hadron Collider would have for human civilization, physicists probably didn’t expect to answer the question of free will as well. Whether the world’s largest particle collider will ever succeed in creating a Higgs boson effect, it has already made a hefty contribution to the field of philosophy...
...series of audacious papers, Nielsen and Ninomiya have suggested that setbacks to the LHC occur because of "reverse chronological causation," which is to say, sabotage from the future. The papers suggest that the Higgs boson may be "abhorrent to nature" and the LHC's creation of the Higgs sometime in the future sends ripples backward through time to scupper its own creation. Each time scientists are on the verge of capturing the Higgs, the theory holds, the future intercedes. The theory as to why the universe rejects the creation of Higgs bosons is based on complex mathematics, but, Nielsen tells...
...Peter Higgs himself make of the intellectual controversy surrounding his eponymous particle? Speaking on behalf of his friend, Professor Richard Kenway, who holds Higgs' former position at the University of Edinburgh, says that the 78-year-old emeritus professor remains quietly confident that the LHC will discover the Higgs boson when it is eventually running at full strength. For his part, Kenway says the LHC's delays are to be expected given the size and intricacy of the $9 billion experiment. And he says if he ever needs further proof that the Higgs boson is not abhorrent to nature...