New and wacky Higgs boson theory: The Higgs is a time traveling particle assassin

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New and wacky Higgs boson theory: The Higgs is a time traveling particle assassin

In the absence of actually finding the Higgs boson, there’s a lot of theories about why it can’t be found and what it might be like. One of the more interesting one is that the Higgs is so elusive because it’s an actual example of the grandfather paradox. That is, they can’t find it, because it has a bad habit of traveling back in time and erases its own existence. Or possibly going back in the past and accidentally its mother Higgs, now younger, fall in love with it and want to take it to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance.

According to the physicists’ calculations, the Higgs singlet may be able to travel in a fifth dimension (a dimension beyond our four-dimensional universe). But for this theory to hold true, our universe needs to abide by the laws of “M-theory,” a theory that requires there to be 10 or 11 dimensions (basically an extension of string theory).

In M-theory, our Universe is only one of many universes that can be envisaged as layers of an onion skin, each layer being a different universe. The skin that represents our Universe is known as a “brane” and it is stacked atop other branes as part of the “bulk.”
In the bulk, some forces, such as gravity, are predicted to permeate from one brane to the next. The details of M-theory are complex, and as yet unconfirmed, but the high-energy collisions inside the LHC may produce artifacts (such as short-lived micro-black holes) that reveal the presence of these predicted extra dimensions.
So, assuming M-theory describes the real nature of our Universe, how could we detect a Higgs singlet? If this particle only travels in a fifth dimension, time in our Universe isn’t of consequence to that particle, so it could be created by the LHC in the fifth dimension, and when it decays, its “decay particles” (i.e. everyday particles that the Higgs singlet will create after it dies) will be detected at an arbitrary time.
This arbitrary time could be in the past, before the particle was even generated, or even in the future. Therefore, if physicists see particles spontaneously pop into existence before an LHC collision even occurs, that could be indicative of the Higgs singlet decay particles appearing in our universe. Simple!