Backwards causation and the LHC

Well, this is one of the strangest things I've seen on arXiv for some time. (And that's saying something: there was recently a paper talking about science and poltergeists!)

The article I refer to is called Test of Influence from Future in Large Hadron Collider.

This is a follow up to an article from the middle of 2007, which I missed, called Search for Effect of Influence from Future in Large Hadron Collider.

These guys take seriously the concept of backward causation, and suggest that (for reasons I can't really follow) the potential creation of large amounts of Higgs particles by the LHC might be a good way to test possible influence from the future. But the means of testing is very surprising:

The experiment proposed in the present article is to give “foresight”, a chance of avoiding forced closure of LHC due to lack of funding or other form of bad luck,as happened to SSC.

We imagine a big stack of cards on which are written various restrictions concerning the operation of LHC, for example “allow the production of only 10 Higgs particles”. On most of the cards there should just be written “use LHC freely” so that they cause no restrictions. However, on a very small fraction of cards, there should be restrictions on luminosity or beam energy or some combination of them. One card may even have “close (shut down) LHC”.

The crucial idea of this proposal is that if our model were true, then the most likely development sol with the P(sol) ≃ e−2SI (sol) factor included would be a development involving one of the cards which strongly restricts on the Higgs particle production at LHC.

It almost sounds like an April Fool article, but neither paper bears any relationship to that date, and these guys aren't nutters. (They thank the CERN Theory Group and Neils Bohr Institute in their papers.) This is how they conclude their earlier paper:

In the present article, we have proposed an experiment at LHC for determining
the effect of an influence from the future as proposed in our own model. The best description may be achieved by introducing an imaginary part SI of the action S.The experiment is very primitive in as far as it consists simply of a card-drawing game arranged so that some severe restriction on the running of LHC - essentially closure - is imposed with a probability p of the order of 5 × 10−6. If indeed a restriction card which has such a low probability as p ∼ 5×10−6 were to be drawn, it would essentially mean that our model must be true!

If, however, just a normal card that gives no restriction is drawn, our theory would be falsified unless a seemingly accidental stopping of LHC occurs!It must be warned that if our model were true and no such game about strongly restricting LHC were played, or if the probability p in the game for restricting were too small, then a “normal” (seemingly accidental) closure should occur. This could be potentially more damaging than just the loss of LHC itself. Therefore not
performing (or not performing with sufficiently big p) our proposed card game could- if our model were correct - cause considerable danger.

Sounds crazy but it just might work. Alternatively, it may just be crazy.

Backwards causation is an interesting topic of paranormal research too.

I find the idea inherently appealing, but I have to think more about why that is.