Secret of time travel could be unlocked by the Large Hadron Collider, scientists claim

Secret of time travel could be unlocked by the Large Hadron Collider, scientists claim - It's long been the stuff of science fiction fantasy but time travel could be a real possibility say scientists.

Furthermore, they believe the 17-mile-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC) based underground near Geneva holds the key.

The theory is that the world’s biggest atom smasher might be able to unleash the Higgs singlet - a particle that could appear before the collision that produced it.

The mind-boggling theory is that it will have entered from another dimension.

There are a few obstacles in the way, however.

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider hope it will produce the hypothetical time-travelling Higgs singlet

To begin with, scientists aren't even sure that the particle exists – or whether the LHC is capable of creating it.

The Higgs singlet is related to another particle which is also yet to be found, the Higgs boson. This particular particle has been dubbed the 'God particle' and is believed to have been crucial in forming the cosmos after the Big Bang.

Regarding the Higgs singlet, physicists say that finding it could pave the way for messages to be sent both to the past and the future, according to a report in LiveScience.

‘Our theory is a long shot, but it doesn't violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints,’ said physicist Tom Weiler of Vanderbilt University.

Writing on the research website arxiv.org, Mr Weiler and fellow scientist Chui Man Ho explain that if the LHC manages to find the elusive Higgs boson then a Higgs singlet may be produced at the same time.

To prove their theory the team needs the LHC to show evidence of Higgs singlet particles and their decay products appearing at the same.

If that happens, it means that they will have been produced by particles that have gone back in time - or through another dimension - to pre-date the collision that produced them in the first place.

The theory that allows for the Higgs singlet to jump back and forth in time is called the M Theory.

This holds that we exist in a four-dimensional ‘membrane’ – three dimensions of space and one of time - that floats in a 10 or 11-dimension universe.

All known forces and particles are ‘stuck’ to the 4D membrane, but experts believe that the Higgs singlet is not, and is able to ‘diffuse’ into other dimensions.

‘One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes,’ Mr Weiler said.

‘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.’

In December last year the LHC - which is buried 300ft close to the Swiss-French border - recreated the primordial soup that existed in the galaxy just moments after the Big Bang.

The super-hot 'quark-gluon plasma' is believed to have been the entire cosmos a fraction of a second after the Big Bang 13.7billion years ago.

For the first time, activity of the two elementary particles within the plasma was clearly tracked and a phenomenon called 'jet quenching' was observed, giving hints on how matter evolved into stars, planets and eventually life on Earth.

The results were achieved when lead ions were collided in the LHC at ultra-high energies producing temperatures some 500,000 times hotter than the core of the sun. ( dailymail.co.uk )