I had just finished typing a lengthy response to your "blow up the Moon" question and it got zapped. The entire post, I mean.

I'll have a look at your history before I dismiss you as a quack.

Hey, wait a minute, me a quack? C'mon. I think we need to ask, who deleted your post about the moon, and are you hearing any funny voices in your head?

What did you say?

Jules

Ex wireless technology editor for globalspec...that's my history

I like to think of myself as a gourmet nut, thank you!

Oh, I see. Like one of those speciality type nuts. Cool.

Come on guys this is just a fluff article based on a theoretical possibility based on an unproven theory idea blown out of proportion.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/10/is-a-time-travelling-higgs-sab.html

The answer is no, nice and simple. If we gave up on things because of possible temporal causeality we wouldn't get anywhere (the same if we believed everything we read on the internet).

I feel I must Digress..... ALL THEORY's are unproven ! Hence the the word UNPROVEN. And if it werent for the LHC I would not exist in this Anti matter form.

As far as time is concerned most scientists believe that only runs in the forward direction. There never has been any evidence of anything being able to go backward in time. This story seems to be perhaps a product of sensationalist writers.

Does that mean we never re-visit are past...... What was that I said ?

Question, who actually proved that time only runs forward? Doesn't quantum physics prove that we don't know everything there is to know in the universe?

I agree this is sensationalistic journalism, but so is our daily paper, where ever we live.

Well I believe that it was Einstein that proved time runs only forward, but many more also. If you want to read a very good book on such things as time, strings and sub-atomic particles that is not too overly technical Brian Green's book 'the Fabric of the Cosmos' is very readable and informative, lots of footnotes and suggestions for further reading.

Thank you, that sounds like a good read.

I always figured time was non-existent, as we rely on our ability to sense in 3-D, so we sense time, but it's really just a construct. Beyond our crude senses (in which we believe we are truly intelligent) lies a realm of the unbelievable, found only in our imagination.That's my theory. Read a lot of science fiction as a kid...:)

Time does seem to be an actual property of our universe just as physical things are not just a thing in our own minds. Physical things obey the law of time speed of light and laws of reletivity. I wish time was only in my mind, there's a few things I would like to go back and undo, But then again there's the paradox, if I can go back to undo something, why do I have to go back and undo it if I have already undone it from the future?

According to current particle physics, particles can move in both directions in time. When we see a particle going backward in time, we interpret it as an anti-particle. Check with Feynman.

Yes, I could perhaps agree with a particle going back in forth in time, but we are not talking particle. It would stagger the imagination to have a series of particles going back in time all to the same place in time at the same time. Much like throwing several decks of playing cards into the air and having them land all back in the precise order they were before. Unbelievable odds of that happening. Actual anti particles perhaps will be found if and when the collider is in operation. I also believe that there is the theory that black holes and anti-matter may be produced. Mind you these would be on the sub atomic level size.

Anti-matter is almost always produced. It's nothing that rare. There are even isotopes that give off anti-particles... Look up what PET in PET-scan means.

Well, that is interesting but what I got out of it was that the positron is an antiparticle to the electron, that's not the same thing as saying that the positron is antimatter. As far as I thought, they haven't really seen antimatter, but it is thought to exist. An electron with antimatter properties would have to have the same mass as an electron but with a positive charge.

fyi...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihydrogen

A positron has the same mass as an electron and does have a positive (as opposed to negative) charge. If an electron and a positron collide, they destroy each other and release energy in the form of x-rays.

Anti-particles are anti-matter... You might be confusing this with the question that some physicists are asking, "Why weren't equal amounts of matter and anti-matter created during the Big Bang?" This is largely a "matter" Universe. However, it doesn't mean that anti-matter doesn't exist. There are a lot of anti-matter particles in our Universe. A lot of these are created from high-energy events, such as super novas.

When, say, two protons collide at Fermi Lab or at CERN, there is a large amount of ejecta created in the form of particles - a veritable zoo of particles! Many of these particle are very short lived, and many are anti-matter particles.

So anti-matter is not just a Star Trek thing... Remember, the Federation simply chose a matter/anti-matter reactor, which doesn't propel them, but powers the warp coils, which propels the ship at warp speeds. The Romulans use a singularity (small black hole) to power their warp coils.

I guess that I am mixed up about masses of electrons and protons and positrons. The theory of antimatter is well in place and is generally taken to be correct. Although I readily admit I know very little about antimatter, I find it hard to believe that it could be connected to time travel.

According to my Mayan calendar, they won't get the LHC up and running until 2012.

That's pretty funny. Remember, the Mayans sacrificed humans, they were a bloody, violent, superstitious race. Kind of like us...

That would be hysterical if not so true.

I don't know much about the high level physics involved in the Higgs Boson/Gravity issues, but when I put on my tinfoil hat it all starts to make a little bit of sense. It seems to me that we have been looking for gravity waves for quite a while, using systems that should work, and should have detected them by now. To the best of my knowledge we have found exactly none. CERN has been having its share of start-up problems, and they may in time find evidence for the Higgs particle, but the tinfoil gives me a nagging sense that maybe we are looking in the wrong place, not out of stupidity, but because we are sensibly 'looking for our keys under the street lamp' since that's the only place we can see.

I don't have much knowledge about the math behind string or 'brane theory, but it is interesting that these theories all require the existence of additional unseen dimensions that we can't 'see' and don't know anything about. It is clearly possible that gravity waves and Higgs particles appear in our four dimensions (x, y, z, and time), and we just haven't detected them yet. But it is also possible that the Higgs particle only exists and gravity waves only propagate in these hidden dimensions. Just a hunch...

That's a very good explanation, thank you. Aliens or not, I'd like to know what exactly that Halderon thing is for anyway, ultimately, and by the way, while we are on the subject of weird questions, how do you get water from the moon in the first place? I tried to post to this subject but my post was deleted so perhaps we can slip in the question here and someone has an answer for it. When was there water on the moon, and how is it that we can't just take a sample and check it for water rather than looking at vapor created by an explosion?

(The explanation was pure speculation. I also might have made up the part about the aliens)

Rocks, even hot rock like lava, contains significant amounts of water trapped between the rock crystals. Asteroids contain water as well. Since the theory is that the planets and their moons were made out of rocks similar to asteroids, they have always contained water.

As to the moon, there is water trapped in the rocks on the moon, but it's hard to get at. The surface rocks that are exposed to direct sunlight are probably getting a bit dry after baking for the last few billion years. Whenever a meteorite hits the moon a lot of the underlying rock which still contains water is blasted out of the crater. Much of it is turned to water vapor by the heat of the impact, and much of that is lost to space because of the moon's weak gravitational field.

But the theory is that near the north and south poles of the moon where sunlight only hits the surface obliquely, the bottoms of the craters are in permanent darkness and very cold. Any water in the surface rocks would still be there. In addition, some of the water that was released as water vapor by meteor impacts might recondense and settle to the surface because of the extreme cold. So they crashed the spaceship into (or very near) the south pole, hoping to see evidence for water in the plume.

Astronauts could have prospected for water-bearing rocks on the earlier trips, but they never landed anywhere near the poles. The hope is to eventually have bases on the Moon. If there is water avaliable, we won't have to ship it up. In addition, they hope to make rocket fuel from the water by splitting it and trapping the hydrogen. Then the moon can be used as a staging area for trips to more distant places. Or maybe we'll go broke first.

That makes a lot of sense, thank you for explaining the theory. I thought it was strange and expensive to crash something rather than just have it take a sample, but if I read what you wrote correctly, there needs to be a lot of sampling, hence a large explosion.

Gosh, I hope the little moon people are doing okay...all in the name of science!

the bottoms of the craters are in permanent darkness and very cold

WHY?? Heat energy is transferred by radiation, convection, or conduction in ascending efficiency. The energy received from the sun is all radiation which is not efficient while the energy recieved by the "permanent dark" areas is received by conduction (from the sunlit areas) which is much more efficient. Thus, the difference in temperature between the two should be very little. The "atmosphere" does not exist so there is no energy transferrance by convection, much like a Thermos bottle.

Where where you in like 8th grade science? Because of the vacuum of space, it's like a 150° F in the sunlight and something like -150° in the shade. This even happens with space craft... Special shielding or rotation or something like that or its +150 on one side of the craft and -150 on the other. Bad for electronics!

Conduction heat transfer can actually be very poor depending on the material properties involved.

The temperature range between sun and shadow can be as large as 250 F (sun) to -250 F (shadow) and is listed in several sources, including this one...

http://www.pbs.org/spacestation/station/living_spacesuit.htm

...I'd like to know what exactly that Halderon thing is for anyway, ultimately, and by the way...

Not a clue but the SCSC Super Conducting Super Collider would have made a great antimatter generator.

As a person who worked for this project, I have my opinion about happenings. I used to work on another very large project and I am convinced that, like in LHC case, all the tolerances add up to one end.

About the LHC, it was designed and directed by academics, mostly. Very smart guys (those physicists) but not very experienced for engineering jobs. Expenses were at the pinnacle, working meetings held often (of coarse, in CA, FL, TX, Geneva) with hosting at good hotels and I am not talking about the Collider that had to be built in TX in the '80s

For you, engineers, I will give an example that, I think, will explain my opinion: It was a photomultiplier base, a DC/DC converter from 24 Vdc to up to 2200 Vdc, to supply the high voltage for the photomultiplier. Designed by one of the smartest guys I met (driving a small, red, British convertible). He used, in the feedback loop of the controller, a positive feedback in one of the stages. On the ensemble, the action of keeping the high voltage constant was (theoretically) correct but, practically it latched the output to a certain value due to the different response time of the stages.

So, my opinion is that if this project was directed in the "enterprise" way, it would be cheaper, with no ghosts appearing from the future.

Once again, I am trying to say is that those really smart guys working on this project weren't all qualified for the job that they were supposed to do.

This is a typical story. The scientists, all brilliant, yet not involved enough with the engineers, also brilliant, who know how to actually build things properly.

Guest, are you allowed to identify yourself? I was hoping that someone would step forward from the industry to explain this phenomenon. So, is it your opinion then that this project was not developed as the Starship Enterprise (which incidentally has had some time travel incidents occur during wormholes and the like) to go only forward in space? Is the Halderon Collider actually revisiting itself to stop a giant wormhole that would devour us all?

And how, from an engineering standpoint, could this be occuring? Thank you again!

Jules

I was hoping that someone would step forward from the industry to explain this phenomenon..... Is the Hadron Collider actually revisiting itself to stop a giant wormhole that would devour us all?

Everybody has a broader of a narrower horizon for his views. For some of us, this horizon is so narrow that it becomes a...point. It happens that such persons always say: ...and this is my point of view!!

It is not easy to explain the phenomenon. But it happened before in Texas, there still are tunnels, south of Dallas. Oh...many working in Waxahachie continued working for STAR and LHC. Politics play an important role too. Definitely the personal philosophy towards the approach of the project.

As for the the time travel, I will accept Jorrie's explanation.

Tunnels blown there by accident or on purpose? I know what it's like in Dallas, very very flat and covered with glass buildings. Curious how tunnels appeared without any noticeable tremors above ground.

As stated above, typical journalistic fluff article. A few hiccups in an incredibly large, complex, and cutting edge research project and now the UNIVERSE or GOD is trying to stop us? Those are disingenuous excuses since the real cause, HUMAN ERROR, is painfully obvious.

If this were true, we wouldn't see any novas, super novas, gamma-ray bursters, black holes, etc.. All of these events are many magnitudes more powerful than the largest collider we could make on Earth. Surely, if the Higgs-boson exists, it's been created many times over within the astronomical events.

Further, the argument implies that the particle has some sort of intelligence, and knows exactly what to change in the past to prevent its creation. My guess is that we have a couple of physicists trying to grab the limelight with hyperbole.

Agreed. GA

Are the physicists grabbing the limelight rather than fixing the engineering problems associated with the Hadron Collider?

"If this were true, we wouldn't see any novas, super novas, gamma-ray bursters, black holes, etc.. All of these events are many magnitudes more powerful than the largest collider we could make on Earth. Surely, if the Higgs-boson exists, it's been created many times over within the astronomical events."

Ah, but the production of even a single Higgs boson is not at all guaranteed, no matter what the energy level, and so those energetic events that we have seen - novae, supernovae, GRBs and so forth - must not have produced HBs therefore, and those events that did produce HBs consequently never existed (by virtue of the fact), thanks to Higgs' Censorship (my term, like it?), and so we didn't see those events. Of course we didn't! Higher energy levels only favor HB production; they by no means guarantee it.

How's that for playing Devil's Advocate, Mister Vermin? I haven't had my fair share of abuse yet today, so please feel free ...

"What are you doing?"

"Keeping the tigers away."

"You idiot! There's not a tiger around for thousands of miles!"

"Yeah. See? It works."

OK. Now time for an impression... "Wha!!! Wha!!! I'm a pissy, little quantum physicist, and my equations don't work in black holes! Wha!!!" To understand this, you need to read the current issue of Scientific America. there's an article about black stars, which might replace black holes (for the reasons stated in the impression).

God! How I hate quantum physicists!!! Bloody, stupid assholes! I hate 'em! Kill the lot of 'em I say, and use them for brown gas! Your stupid science is so damn new, of course you still can't figure everything out! It makes me mad! Mad! Mmmmad!

Now. Where was I? Oh yes! No tigers around here, thank you very much.

"God! How I hate quantum physicists!!! Bloody, stupid assholes! I hate 'em! Kill the lot of 'em I say, and use them for brown gas! Your stupid science is so damn new, of course you still can't figure everything out! It makes me mad! Mad! Mmmmad!"

I'm sure that's exactly what Steven Hawking would say - if he had the time...

"... the argument implies that the particle has some sort of intelligence, and knows exactly what to change in the past to prevent its creation."

[SCENE 1: Opens with Higgs1 and Higgs2 seated at a wooden table, planning their day on a February morning, 2011]

H1: <handing cup to H2> "So, what'll it be today, Number Two?"

H2: <taking coffee> "Thanks, H1. Lessee ... we already nearly melted those hundred or so VERY EXPENSIVE cryogenic magnets (YES!), got some poor chap suspected of terrorism or some shit, fooled the assistant-vice-assistant-deputy-director's wife into believing he's having an affair with the third-floor custodial service, burned up a transformer (let's not do that again, gawd those things stink!), and spooked a whole lotta folks with that OMG-Black-Holes-Are-Gonna-Eat-The-Earth scare..."

H1: "Oh, man! Wasn't that the balls! Dontcha just love screwin' with folks on the left side of The Curve?!"

H2: "Hell yeah!! Now shut yer bloody gob an' let's finish this ...........ah, yes; here it is: next we stop up the Visitor Center's toilets - all of them - just as the Oversight Committee breaks for lunch."

H1: "When?"

H2: "Oh, about a year ago."

H1: "SNAP!!!"