Universe Protects Itself By Traveling Back From Future

After reading this article about the latest crazy theory on why we can’t yet prove the Big Bang, I couldn’t stop thinking about Romans 1:22. That is “Professing to be wise, they became fools.” Read on and see if you don’t agree.

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. 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.

Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half.

According to the so-called Standard Model that rules almost all physics, the Higgs is responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass.

“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”…

Dr. Nielsen and Dr. Ninomiya have proposed a kind of test: that CERN engage in a game of chance, a “card-drawing” exercise using perhaps a random-number generator, in order to discern bad luck from the future. If the outcome was sufficiently unlikely, say drawing the one spade in a deck with 100 million hearts, the machine would either not run at all, or only at low energies unlikely to find the Higgs.

Sure, it’s crazy, and CERN should not and is not about to mortgage its investment to a coin toss. The theory was greeted on some blogs with comparisons to Harry Potter. But craziness has a fine history in a physics that talks routinely about cats being dead and alive at the same time and about anti-gravity puffing out the universe…

Dr. Nielsen admits that he and Dr. Ninomiya’s new theory smacks of time travel, a longtime interest, which has become a respectable research subject in recent years. While it is a paradox to go back in time and kill your grandfather, physicists agree there is no paradox if you go back in time and save him from being hit by a bus. In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus. Although just why the Higgs would be a catastrophe is not clear. If we knew, presumably, we wouldn’t be trying to make one… – NYTimes: The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate

And if the Universe COULD travel back in time to protect itself… why hasn’t it stopped global warming?  ;)

Incidentally, we can rest assured that these Physicists are crack pots as the Higgs search collider not only is online but now has the record for most energetic collision ever.  Unfortunately no particles from the future have yet shown up to either protect or destroy John Conner.

Microsoft Vows To Finally Implement Standards In 9th Browser

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It also has a brand new JavaScript engine that will address IE’s historically weak rendering in web apps and similar code. Microsoft already claims the engine is as fast as the improved engine in Firefox 3.6 and that more optimizations are enroute.

The company also made a renewed pledge to web standards and said it will support both newer technologies like HTML5 as well as those it has ignored in the past. CSS code can now show rounded borders, and CSS selectors are now supported. Sinofsky explained that this area still needs significant development time but that a perfect score on the ACID standards test is the ultimate goal. IE9 in its very early state only manages a 32/100 score where the latest Chrome, Opera and Safari versions are already at 100.

There are “a lot of things we need to do” at Microsoft to follow standards, the executive added.

No roadmap has been given for the browser, but the development is likely to prove crucial for Microsoft. Despite the release of IE8 and many users receiving the new browser by default with Windows 7, total IE use is continuing to fall as Firefox, Safari and Chrome respectively draw more users. – Microsoft vows GPU acceleration, standards in IE9

I’m sure those two tidbits are unrelated: a crappy browsing experience and diminishing market share.  Why is Internet Explorer even still around anyway?   Oh yeah it’s pre-installed on 95% of computers and most people are too dumb to download & install anything from the internet that isn’t a virus or spyware.

Finally An Affordable Tablet PC

acer_aspire_1820pt_1.jpgAcer took the wraps off a rumored affordable thin and light tablet in Italy today.  Using the latest Intel ULV chips (which bridge the gap between netbooks and notebooks), the device will offer good performance and battery life.  No word on the US release date just yet.

And unlike previous tablets aimed at executives and hospitals that costs thousands of dollars the Acer will only cost hundreds.  Cheap, portable, and powerful.  What else could you want in a tablet?

Technical specifications Acer Aspire 1820PT

* Premium OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
* Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 (3MB L2 cache, 1.20GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 10W)
* Memory: 4GB DDR3 1066MHz
* Hard disk: 250GB or 320GB
* Display: 11.6 inch HD 1366 x 768 (WXGA) pixels or 11.6-inch SD 1024 x 600 (WSVGA) pixels, LED-backlit, 200nits, multitouch
acer_aspire_1820pt_live_1.jpg * Graphics: Intel GMA X4500M HD
* Audio: Dolby Sound Room
* Networking: Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g WiFi Link 5100, UMTS / HSPA, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
* Interfaces: 3 USB 2.0 ports, VGA, HDMI, audio jacks, multi card reader
* Dimensions: 11.2″ x 8.2″ x 1.12-1.36″
* Weight: 3.8lbs
* Warranty: 1 year