The Betfair Prof / Leighton Vaughan Williams / 02 November 2009 / Leave a comment

Why are objects the size that they are? The answer is quite simple. It's the size of the molecules and atoms that make them up.

But why is an atom the size that it is? That's determined by the size of the orbits of the electrons around the atom, which in turn is determined by the mass of the electron. Smaller mass means smaller orbits, means smaller everything. But why is the electron the mass that it is? Indeed, why does it have any mass at all? In fact, theory dictates that for all the elementary particles that compose the atom to interact as they do, their masses should actually be zero.

So what's happening? The neat solution proposed by Professor Peter Higgs would seem to have it all figured out. He suggests that there is a field which permeates space, which moving particles interact with, thus acquiring the appearance of mass. Imagine a weightless pea (if you can!) moving through treacle.

So does this field actually exist? Quantum theory tells us that fields are associated with particles (a thing called 'wave-particle duality') so there must be a particle complementary to the Higgs field. For example, the particle associated with the electromagnetic field is the photon. The particle is known as the Higgs boson, and a lot of time, money, energy and intellect is being applied to finding out whether this particle, and therefore whether the Higgs field, actually exists.

This is where the Large Hadron Collider comes in, built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It works by accelerating protons around a kind of 17-mile underground racetrack, in order to smash them together at astronomically high speeds, with the purpose of creating smaller bits of matter, one of which could be a Higgs boson. If created, it would exist for only a tiny fraction of time, but long enough it is hoped to be detected.

The problem is that the closer we seem to get to finding it, the more things go wrong to prevent that very thing happening. From the cutting off of funding for a Super Collider in the US, to the 'meltdown' of the experiment at CERN last year, to the recent arrest of a top scientist associated with the project for alleged terrorist connections, it seems like someone, somewhere doesn't want it to happen. Seems like, but not really! Surely!

Which is where two well respected scientists, Holger Bech Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya come in. In two recent papers they suggest in effect that nature has in fact created a sort of prediction market in reverse. Nature knows the consequence of an apparently successful outcome for the experiment, they suggest, and is trying to stop it.

The creation of the boson, according to this theory, would cause a ripple backwards in time to stop what created it. As Nielsen puts it, "It is based on mathematics, but you could explain it by saying that God rather hates Higgs particles and attempts to avoid them."

As Einstein once put it in a letter to the family of a friend, "For those who believe in physics, this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion."
Now let's pause for thought!