There’s been a lot of buzz lately about a recent article, which proposes that the Higgs boson doesn’t want to be detected, and that some superior force is preventing it. Whether the culprit is Nature, causality, paradox, Galactus, or rogue Time Lords from Raxacoricofallapatorius, the authors claim that “unlucky” events seem to be conspiring to prevent detection of the Higgs. The gist is that, despite 45 years of intensive searching, the Higgs has gone undetected. And, even though several experiments have had the potential of detecting it, all have (so far) failed to do so, sometimes in seemingly suspicious ways.

Briefly, the Higgs boson is the last remaining undetected particle in the Standard Model, which unites all non-gravitational interactions in the universe. It would be the particle that explains why other particles have mass, by creating a molasses-like field that gives other particles traveling through it inertia. Now, the mathematics describing the laws of physics work equally well with time moving in either the forward of backwards direction – i.e., you can calculate a baseball’s final position after leaving the pitcher’s hand, or you can determine its starting position by observing it entering the catcher’s mitt. The paper’s authors conclude that, since we never seem to find the Higgs boson in the catcher’s mitt, any historical trajectory that would cause the detection of the Higgs boson is forbidden, and therefor we must always find ourselves in a present where something has conspired to prevent it. Furthermore, the authors suggest an experiment to determine whether the future is determined to prevent detection of the Higgs: Cut a million-card deck, where one card says “Don’t turn on the LHC,” and, if that card comes up, don’t turn on the LHC! (Why perform this experiment at all? Because, if we don’t give the future [or the Time Lords] a “pressure valve” – an easy way to prevent Higgs production – more drastic preventative measures may be required, such as catastrophic failure of the LHC, or production of planet-devouring black holes.)

A lot of the buzz has been backlash and loud outcries, as if the article were crankish; however, the article itself seems to have been submitted in all seriousness – it was produced by extremely well-respected physicists, the proposed mechanisms are well within established physics (or, at least, non-forbidden physics, which, according to Murray Gell-Mann, means that they’re compulsory), and it was published in an acceptable venue and manner (i.e., not a Pons & Fleischmann press conference).

I am not criticizing the authors of the paper or claiming that their article was fallacious. Speculative ideas – even wildly speculative ideas – have a distinguished tradition and a valuable place in the scientific process. Quantum mechanics in particular is notoriously non-intuitive – Niels Bohr once said, when asked if an idea was crazy, “We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.”

The problem with this (admittedly fun) paper is that the data set proposed to speculate interference from the future is incredibly sparse: The cancellation of the Superconducting Supercollider after an expenditure of several billion dollars, the shutdown of the LEP just before possible Higgs detection, and the malfunctioning of the LHC upon startup due to electrical shorts. And this also doesn’t take into account the extreme difficulty of detecting the Higgs, nor the extreme expense and complexity of the machines and projects constructed to do so. The LHC is probably the largest, most complex, most intricate machine ever built by mankind – I hardly think it requires such unlikely speculation to explain why it failed during its first trial run; I’m sure it will have many more technical glitches over its lifespan, some serious and some severe.

Of course, since the LHC has now once again been fully cooled to below the temperature of deep space, and particles have now been injected into the main ring in anticipation of the first collisions in a few weeks, I guess the proof will soon be in the pudding.

Today’s pop quiz comes from an article in the Utah paper “Deseret News” about a community college that offers a class in ghost hunting and other paranormal subjects. One student in the class is quoted as follows:

The class has made believers out of many students. “Yeah, I believe in ghosts now. Oh yeah,” said Holladay resident P.J. Rodgers, 33. “After what I captured in this class, wow, I don’t have any other explanations for it.”

Which logical fallacy does this quote demonstrate? Highlight the redacted text below to find out.

This is a textbook example of the Argument from Ignorance. This fallacy is invoked all the time in situations involving the paranormal. Basically, the student is assuming that, because he can’t explain something, the only possible explanation is the supernatural. If you can’t explain something, it’s exactly that: unexplained. It being unexplained is not evidence for the supernatural, or anything else, for that matter.

In the sky, apparently.

Argentina recently had a spate of reports of a flying cow (well, two people reported it – that’s a spate, right?). And if there’s anyone I trust to recognize a flying cow when they see one, it’s the Argentinians. I assume they were a pair of roving gauchos, wandering the pampas in their boleros and panchos, hunting the elusive llama with their bolas.

Tacos.

And this wasn’t just any flying cow – this was a flying cow being abducted by a UFO! I assume the cow was just gliding along, minding its own boustrophedonous business, maybe looking for his friends the flying pigs and monkeys, maybe just throwing himself at the ground and missing, when WHAM! No, not George Michael – aliens!

OK, you’re skeptical. I can tell.

Well, be skeptical no longer! UFOlogists have analyzed the photos, and have found incontrovertible proof of . . . hooves!

Yes, they jacked up the contrast and found areas of high contrast . . . er, I mean hooves. Among the purported proofs are:

• 3) In non-destructive super-resolution processes applied to the image, the animal turned out to be a bovine with its right side toward the camera, its head hanging to the left.

Wow – non-destructive, super-resolution processes?

• 6) The 3d analysis is self-evident.

Well, there you go, then.

But I’d be more worried about where they studied their anatomy – their claimed front right leg appears to be coming out of the critter’s right rib cage, and the head appears to be protruding from the wrong side of the left shoulder. The thing looks to me like a splayed right hand with middle finger pointed right at the camera – not a normal configuration for any quadruped that I’m aware of.

Finally, what were the witnesses doing at the time?

We went to have some mate with the kids . . .

Wow. I knew I didn’t trust those damn Argentinians.

The following letter to the editor ran in the Oct. 7th edition of Tampa Bay Newspapers:

Editor:

At the risk of having everyone think I have lost it, gone bonkers or whatever, I must share this visual sighting with everyone since it has happened two times now.

The last time was a week ago and it came out of the water further than previously and I could estimate the girth that came out of the water at 12 to 15 inches in diameter.

It continued its roll seemingly for a long time and it had to be 12 to 15 feet in length judging by the roll time. It was brown on top with mottled brown and yellow lower side. It finally flipped its tail before disappearing and it was a flat, lamprey like vertical caudal fin an estimated 9 to 10 inches maximum flare tapering to a point. I never saw the head and there was no dorsal fin nor pectoral fins visible.

I have seen many porpoise almost daily here that swim up and down the canal usually in pairs and this was NOT a porpoise, no way!

After the first sighting I thought it might be a huge snake (python like in the Glades) that someone turned loose, escaped or whatever because it did not roll as high out of the water so the size (girth) was not real evident although it was the same color on back and sides from what I could see. It did not flip its tail that time so the weird shaped caudal fin was not visible.

I am sure glad that I told Bet about the sightings so the little guys in the white jackets don’t come for me. She believes me though it sounds a bit far out! LOL!

I see people in their wee kayaks paddling up and down the canal and think about how they could be a snack for the Normandy Nessie! LOL!

I am dead serious and this is not a spoof, joke or ruse. From the size of this thing it could pose a real danger to people and small animals.

Russell Sittloh
Madeira Beach

The first thing that I think we as skeptics should acknowledge is that there’s no reason to assume Mr. Sittloh is crazy. People see unusual or apparently inexplicable things all the time. Most of the time they’re not lying or crazy.

So what did Mr. Sittloh see? I don’t think there’s enough information here to know for sure.

Where I would part from Mr. Sittloh is in his assumption that the animal he saw was something large and hostile (“a real danger”). From what little Mr. Sittloh admits to seeing, it’s tough to even be sure that he saw the same animal both times, because only on the first sighting did he see the distinctive “caudal” fin. Furthermore I have some evidence that Mr. Sittloh is letting his imagination run away with him. Some heavy duty web searching turned up Mr. Sittloh’s Picasa account (finally, the skills acquired from years of Google stalking Kirsten Dunst pay off!), and he posted a picture that implies he thinks he saw a mosasaur. That’s certainly an assumption far beyond the evidence available.

A more likely possibility, though by no means the only one, is that Mr. Sittloh saw a manatee, maybe one with a damaged tail. Manatees are unusually active this time of year and are in the midst of their migration, resulting in hilarious poop-centric headlines.

Location of sightings of "Normandy Nessie," Madeira Beach FL. Normandy is the name of the street the witness resides on. Note that Boca Ciega Bay is attached to the ocean via John's Pass. (Map courtesy Google.)