According to Researchers, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can possibly turn out to be a first time machine. The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest and the most powerful particle accelerator. Being the most powerful particle collider, it is the most complex experimental facility ever built and the largest single machine in the world.

Purpose of LHC 

The Large Hadron Collider was built to replicate the conditions at the big bang, and answer humanity’s most basic questions — what are we made of and how did we come to exist? Scientists are still working on that, but have stumbled across something that promises to be even more exciting: The possibility of time travel and the time machine.

Image: CERN

As per the theory of Physicists Thomas Weiler and Chui Man Ho, the Large Hadron Collider– the world’s largest atom smasher, could be the first time machine capable of causing matter to travel backward in time.

“Our theory is a long shot, but it doesn’t violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints.”

– Professor Thomas Weiler 

The Higgs Boson

One of the major goals of the collider was to find the elusive Higgs Boson: The God Particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons, and electrons have mass. It is known to be what caused the Big Bang billions of years ago. Higgs Boson is the particle that gives mass to the matter. Earlier it was just a theory but now, The God Particle actually exists. Researchers claimed that if the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs Boson, it is predicted that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.

Also Watch: A simple explanation to what is Higgs boson

The Idea of Time Travel

According to Weiler and Ho’s theory, these singlets should have the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they can move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or past. The singlet is just a technical term used for a particle that doesn’t interact with the matter in the way we knew until today.

Wait, the fifth dimension? How many dimensions are there?

According to M-theory, or the so-called “theory of everything,” there are as many as 11 dimensions, of which our universe uses only four, time being the fourth one. But the Higgs singlet, if it exists, is theoretically not restrained by the basic laws of physics that govern our universe.

Scientists believe that if this atom smasher can create the Higgs Boson and it gives mass to the matter produced by the atom smasher, then The Higgs Singlet (this matter with mass) will be able to travel through space and time. The Higgs Singlet can travel to other dimensions and then come back to our dimension. By traveling through the hidden dimension, Higgs singlets could re-enter our dimensions at a point forward or backward in time from when they exited.

“One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes. Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future.”

– Professor Thomas Weiler

So with the discovery of the God particle, time travel will not just be possible but will be in our reach too and won’t just stay in theories. Researchers claim that this study does not deal with sending humans into the past but sending information backward or forward in time using Higgs Singlet.

So What Next?

Scientists want to see if monitoring the Hadron Collider, would result in the sighting of Higgs Singlet particles and its product, Higgs boson, appearing. If this succeeds, they will be able to send the particles produced back in time and make them appear before their collision. That is how the LHC can act as a potential time machine. Something mind-boggling right? Well, it has to be.

This article was written by Rishika Dange, an aerospace engineering student from Alliance University, Bangalore, India.