New Scientist reports on the possibility that NASA's FERMI satellite may be about to do that very thing, according to researchers for the University of California, Irvine. FERMI was created to detect gamma rays, and one of the expected sources of these rays is the annihilation of dark matter made up of "weakly interacting massive particles." Except, the researchers believe, the annihilation of these particles may also result in the creation of one photon and one giant particle... like the Higgs boson. According to the team's Tim Tait:

If there is a strong connection between the physics of dark matter and the physics of mass generation, those dark matter particles probably like to interact with the Higgs boson... FERMI has very good prospects of discovering the Higgs if this model is true.

Other scientists accept that this theory may not be entirely outside the realms of possibility. There's even a chance that the satellite has already discovered it, and we haven't realized it yet; FERMI has already captured data, but scientists haven't gone through it entirely. LHC scientists: The race is on.

Higgs in space: Orbiting telescope could beat the LHC [New Scientist]

The quest to observe the Higgs boson has certainly been plagued by its share of troubles, from the cancellation of the Superconducting Supercollider in 1993 to the Large Hadron Collider's streak of technical troubles. In fact, the projects have suffered such bad luck that Holger Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto wonder if it isn't bad luck at all, but future influences rippling back to sabotage them. In papers like "Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal" and "Search for Future Influence From LHC," they put forth the notion that observing the Higgs boson would be such an abhorrent event that the future is actually trying to prevent it from happening.

"It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck," Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, "Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God." It is their guess, he went on, "that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them."

Nielsen and Ninomiya recognize that the theory sounds pretty crazy and that other projects involving a lot of delicate technology — such as the Hubble Telescope — have gone through their own periods of apparent bad luck. But their theory — wild as it is — is situated in current research in theoretical physics and time travel. If the observation of the Higgs boson would result in calamity, they claim it isn't outside the realm of possibility that someone from our future might exert influence on our time to stop it:

While it is a paradox to go back in time and kill your grandfather, physicists agree there is no paradox if you go back in time and save him from being hit by a bus. In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus. Although just why the Higgs would be a catastrophe is not clear. If we knew, presumably, we wouldn't be trying to make one.

The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate [NY Times — Thanks to Boas_MC]

Aether (also called ether) was a theoretical substance that supposedly permeated the entire universe, including solid matter, more or less evenly. While aether theories evolved over time, it was generally believed to be made of particles so tiny we couldn't detect them. The inherent properties of the aether determined many of the physical properties of the universe, such as the speed of light and the strength of gravity. These forces propagated as waves through the aether. Aether theory survived into the 20th century - Einstein even adapted it to fit his theory of special relativity, although it was so drastically changed that it was hardly aether theory at all. In his 1920 address "Ether and the Theory of Relativity," Einstein said:

The ether of the general theory of relativity is a medium which is itself devoid of all mechanical and kinematical qualities.

To be certain, neither theory is "bad science" in any way. They are the types of theories that physicists come up with when they are working out beyond the current observational abilities of humans. Eventually, physicists identified the dual wave/particle properties of electromagnetic energy. This, along with experiments that confirmed general relativity, negated the need for aether theory. Likewise, new experiments conducted with the Large Hadron Collider later this year could detect new particles like the Higgs boson that will give us additional clues to the physical makeup of the universe. Will they invalidate dark energy? Photo by: NASA.