You've heard the story; a time traveler goes back in time, killing his grandfather. The upshot is that the time traveler ceases to exist. If the time traveler doesn't exist, how could he have traveled back in time to kill his grandfather? This logical paradox is known as the 'Grandfather Paradox,' and although it makes for a great science fiction storyline it's a perplexing conundrum that has physicists scratching their heads.
Enter the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator that might become mankind's first time machine, thereby helping us find out if we can kill our grandfathers in the past and still exist. Time machine is a very loose term in this case, as you couldn't actually use it to transport yourself through time, but the LHC might generate a type of Higgs particle that cuts through time and its decay particles appear in our universe before its own creation event.
0 comment(s):
Post a Comment