A physicist working on the Large Hadron Collider doesn't think much of the theory that the universe is sabotaging the project to prevent the discovery of the Higgs boson. Might as well say that Nature hates the Cubbies.

The Higgs boson is a theoretical particle that is predicted to exist based on current understanding of particle physics. Physicists think the Higgs particle could explain why some particles have mass and others don't.

In an interview with Scientific Computing, particle physicist Steven Nahn of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the premise that the Higgs boson is somehow sending signals back through time to sabotage its own discovery is "fairly crazy."

"Exactly in line with their argument, I could say that Nature abhors the Chicago Cubs, such that the theory which describes the evolution of our universe prescribed Steve Bartman to interfere on October 14, 2003, extending the "bad luck" of the Cubbies," he said.

Steve Bartman was the Cubs fan who reached out for a foul ball in the eighth inning of Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, disrupting an attempt by the Cubs fielder to catch it. The Cubs were leading the game and the series, but went on to lose both. The Cubs still haven't won a championship since 1908.

Nahn acknowledged that many scientific theories sound pretty crazy at first, especially in the realms of particle physics and relativity:

In special relativity, there is the famous "twin paradox," a prediction that if you take a set of twins, leave one on Earth and send one traveling through space at nearly the speed of light, when the second one returns he will be younger than the one left behind. Sounds "crazy," meaning outside of our normal experience. But, in 1972, they put some atomic clocks on planes, flew them around the world, and indeed found that the moving ones were behind relative to ones left on the ground. Experiments like these are essential to have a theory accepted into the canon of physics.

The Higgs boson "Back to the Future" theory, on the other hand, can't really be tested and seems to have been created to explain the problems at the LHC, he said.

"Seems a little circular," Nahn said.

It hasn't been a smooth ride for the Large Hadron Collider.

First, a worker was killed when a 1,200-kilogram cabinet slipped and fell on him. Next, faulty magnets caused a helium leak. And earlier this month, a worker at the site was arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist.

A 27-kilometre long circular tunnel buried under the French and Swiss border, the LHC might be the world's most elaborate science experiment.

Essentially a gigantic particle accelerator, the collider is tasked with finding the Higgs boson a mystery-shrouded theoretical particle that's believed to play a role in giving matter its mass.

Scientists believe the Higgs was present in the nanoseconds following the Big Bang. Among other tests, the LHC hopes to recreate those conditions to prove that the Higgs actually exist.

It was fired up for the first time in September 2008. When that happened, more than a few people were relieved to discover that the Earth was not immediately swallowed into a massive black hole, which was one of the more doomsday-like prophecies of what the collider might cause.

The project was halted shortly thereafter for a series of technical mishaps and it's been shuttered ever since. But as officials prepare to fire it up again, some intriguing new research suggests the project is doomed to fail no matter what preparations are made.

Two scientists have hypothesized in a series of papers that the LHC's stated aim of finding the Higgs boson might be so abhorrent to nature that mysterious forces are traveling back through time and sabotaging the experiment before it can succeed.

"The potential production of a large number of Higgs particles at a certain future time would cause a pre-arrangement such that Higgs particle production can be avoided," theoretical physicists Holger Bech Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya rather clumsily wrote in a recent research paper.

Unlike the experiment itself, reaction to the paper has been predictable. Blogger mouths were agape. The New York Times chimed in.

Despite the attention, the two aren't proposing a possible solution to the problem. Indeed, if the powers that be are bound and determined to see the LHC fail, there isn't much humanity can do about it, they concede. Their proposal was merely to implement a sort of random-number generator via card drawing into the overall LHC experiment.

If an impossibly rare sequence of numbers came up, it could be construed as proof of high-level meddling, they posited. "When the Higgs particles are to be produced, we must carry out a retest to elucidate whether there could be an influence from the future," the physicists wrote.

A science experiment being sabotaged by its own future self?

That two respected scientists would put forward a theory reminiscent of Marty McFly's journey through time to ensure his parents fall in love speaks to the collider's intrigue in the scientific community and the world at large.

In his book Angels and Demons, novelist Dan Brown wrote of a secret society stealing anti-matter form CERN, the agency that operates the collider, and using it to make a bomb to destroy the Vatican.

Confusion was widespread enough that CERN went as far as publishing an FAQ on their website establishing that, no, in fact, they are not in the midst of developing a weapon thousands of times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A looming nuclear apocalypse notwithstanding, the LHC wouldn't be the first ambitious science project to have trouble getting off the ground. The Hubble Space Telescope suffered through a number of missteps before being successfully launched in 1990. And the highway of alternative energy is littered with the carcasses of hyped developments that never panned out.

Leaving aside any nuisances that might develop from ripping a hole in the space-time continuum, perhaps there's a good side to the sudden viability of time travel.

The creator making his or her presence felt could open up a whole new branch of scientific research, for example. String Theory and its effect on the Enchantment Under The Sea dance, maybe?

I'm a fan of alternative ideas for human-computer interaction, so this video caught my attention. It shows an idea for a ten-finger touchpad interface and associated changes in the way such a computer would handle multiple windows.

Watching my two-year-old daughter moving puzzle pieces around on my wife's iPhone with very little effort speaks to the intuitiveness of touch interfaces. And I like the idea of expanding the number of points with which you can interact with the computer from one with a mouse to 10 with a multi-touch surface.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

Designer Clayton Miller says 10/GUI is just a concept for now: there's no hardware or software prototype for it.

• Previously: BumpTop, the (multitouch) slippery desktop

There's a debate going on in Canada right now over how we can get more people to sign up for broadband access. A recent industry-funded report found that 30 per cent of Canadian households still haven't signed up for it, whether it's because they can't afford it or they're simply not technically literate enough.

One possible way to spur more uptake is to make broadband a legal right, which is what Finland is reportedly doing. The Finns, who gave us vikings, Teemu Selanne and Nokia, have decided that starting next July, every person will have the legal right to a broadband connection of at least one megabit per second. What's more notable is that this is only a stepping stone toward the ultimate goal, which is the right for all to a 100-megabit connection by the end of 2015. That requirement states that no customer can be more than two kilometres from a fibre or cable network.

The Finnish government is obviously putting a very high value on high-speed internet access, given that the country already rates very well in the OECD's broadband rankings. Not only does Finland have the eighth highest number of subscribers per 100 inhabitants, slightly ahead of Canada, it has some of the most affordable services available, ranking in the top five in entry-level, medium-speed and high-speed connections. (Canada, in comparison, rated in the bottom third in all three measures.) Finland, however, rated behind Canada in a recent Cisco-funded study of broadband quality by Oxford University. Needless to say, if all Finns are guaranteed access to 100-megabit service in the next five years and it is offered at a reasonable price Finland will be leap-frogging many countries in broadband leadership.

A number of other countries are reportedly mulling the idea of making broadband access a legal right, including the U.K. There, another interesting suggestion has been put forward that real-estate listings include the highest achievable broadband speed for a domicile. It's an idea that has appeal to many tech-literate home buyers, whose numbers are certainly increasing every year. Such a move might spur owners and service providers to make sure homes are sufficiently wired.

The idea is also reminiscent of a study put out last year by Tim Wu, who coined the phrase "net neutrality," and a Google executive on the possibility of including broadband fibre connections as part of a home owner's property. The "homes with tails" report suggested that having a broadband fibre connection raised the value of a property, and ensured net neutrality by giving home owners a greater selection of service providers by moving them closer to central connection hubs.

These are all great ideas that are worth exploring in Canada. Too bad we're lost in space when it comes to thinking up a digital strategy.

The blog ReadWriteWeb is reporting that Google Maps will no longer get its U.S. map data from Tele Atlas and will instead go it alone, relying on its own data.

And where did Google get its own map data? From all those cars collecting Street View pictures, of course.

Well, that and the U.S. government. On its Lat Long Blog, Google says it will integrate census, surveying, forestry and geological data to create a more accurate map data set.

Google also added a "Report a Problem" link to Google Maps in the U.S., so updating and correcting errors in the map data is being crowd-source to some extent, as well.

This is only affecting Google Maps in the U.S., though. In Canada, the service still carries the Tele Atlas copyright notice.

It's now two weeks until D-Day for Canada's prospective fourth (almost) national cellphone carrier the CRTC has said it will rule by Oct. 23 whether Globalive meets Canadian control rules but the company is already rolling out ads. And they're funny.

A quick recap: Globalive, which are the folks behind Yak long-distance and internet service, paid a big whack of money last year to purchase airwaves across the country, except in Quebec, in a government auction. The company is backed largely by Egypt-based Orascom, which operates cellphone service in Greece and Italy, among other places.

Industry Canada, the government ministry that oversees cellphone airwaves, rubber-stamped Globalive's ownership structure as compliant with Canadian ownership laws. Existing carriers, led by Telus, complained and forced a public ownership review by the CRTC. Those hearings were held last month, Globalive has offered up some changes to its structure, and now everyone is waiting with bated breath for the outcome.

Globalive, which plans to operate under Orascom's Wind brand in Canada, is pretty confident it will pass muster. The company intends to launch service in Toronto and Calgary by the end of this year and is so confident, it has put out some video ads on YouTube. Notably, there are no animals anywhere to be found. Here's one, while others can be found here and here:

Google Street View has been live in certain Canadian cities for just over a day, and people have been busily combing the virtual streets looking for interesting sights capture by Google's camera cars.

Both BlogTO and Torontoist have collections of strange and interesting Street View captures from around Toronto.

Canadian entries make up many of most recent posts on Google Street View Gallery, a site where you can submit and vote on Street View sightings, like this fender-bender in Richmond, B.C.

Google Sightseeing has a post featuring some Canadian landmarks, such as Montreal's Olympic Stadium and the CN Tower, and more on its Twitter feed, including this one of the Calgary Tower.

Some people are pointing out errors in Google's information, such as l'avenue du Parc in Montreal being translated "Park Avenue," even though Google Maps leaves the original French intact. Other errors show problems with Google stitching together images from their camera cars.

One Street View "game" involves finding glitches in Google's face-blurring algorithm, like blurred out hubcaps, or faces on statues and billboards, like this Walmart ad in Toronto.

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Have you found anything strange on Street View? Leave links in the comments.

While cleaning out my inbox today, I came across Merrill Lynch's annual wireless matrix, a measure of cellphone revenues, prices and other statistics from around the world. Although the survey, which has near-Bible status in the wireless industry, was released in June, it's particularly pertinent given the report released today by Canada's biggest ISPs about how the country's broadband service is world-class by every measure. [UPDATE, Nov. 5: To clarify, the word "every" was used to sum up the fact that the report says Canada is a leader in all the major measures commonly used in international studies to compare broadband services among different countries - availability, user adoption, speed and price. It wasn't intended to be taken to mean literally every comparison that could possibly be made. You can read the full report, and its evaluation of a number of aspects of Canadian broadband as they compare to other services around the world, here.]

While cleaning out my inbox today, I came across Merrill Lynch's annual wireless matrix, a measure of cellphone revenues, prices and other statistics from around the world. Although the survey, which has near-Bible status in the wireless industry, was released in June, it's particularly pertinent given the report released today by Canada's biggest ISPs about how the country's broadband service is world-class by every measure. [UPDATE, Nov. 5: To clarify, the word "every" was used to sum up the fact that the report says Canada is a leader in all the major measures commonly used in international studies to compare broadband services among different countries - availability, user adoption, speed and price. It wasn't intended to be taken to mean literally every comparison that could possibly be made. You can read the full report, and its evaluation of a number of aspects of Canadian broadband as they compare to other services around the world, here.]

A few months ago, many of those same companies - Bell, Rogers, Telus - took umbrage with an OECD study that found Canadians pay some of the highest cellphone rates in the world. The OECD study found that medium users in Canada paid the third-highest rates, next to customers in the United States and Spain. Canadian carriers said the study used flawed methodology, which was based on European calling patterns. They cited Merrill Lynch's matrix as proof that prices were low - indeed, among the 22 developed countries rated by the bank, Canada had the fourth-lowest per-minute rate (about eight cents US). Canadians also have some of the highest monthly minutes of use in the study, with an average of 420 - third in the developed world, next to the United States and Hong Kong.

One thing the carriers didn't mention, though, is that Canada also scored third-highest in something called ARPU - or average revenue per user. ARPU is essentially how much monthly income a carrier earns per customer. Canada's $45.85 US rates third, next to the United States and Japan, according to Merrill Lynch. That third-highest ARPU certainly looks like the third-highest prices the OECD talked about (carriers in Germany, by comparison, earn an average of $19.81 from each customer, the lowest in Merrill Lynch's report).

Cellphone carriers have argued that high ARPU does not necessarily equal high prices - Canadians simply like to talk a lot, despite all the free calls they get on their landlines, so therefore they end up paying more for volume.

It's an argument that doesn't fly, though, when Canada is compared to countries with similarly low per-minute rates and high monthly usage, such as Hong Kong and Singapore. Both countries have comparatively low ARPU ($20.38 and $30.29, respectively). New Zealand is perhaps the best comparison to Canada. Customers there have free local calls on landlines and pay the exact same wireless rate per minute as we do - eight cents - yet only use 186 cellphone minutes per month. Monthly cellphone ARPU in New Zealand, however, is only $20.77 U.S., less than half Canada's.

What really makes the argument that high ARPU equals high prices in Canada is when gross domestic product per capita is figured in. Canada's GDP per capita, which is a general measure of a country's wealth per citizen, is $38,093 US, or nearly $10,000 lower than the U.S. or Japan, according to Merrill Lynch. In other words, while ARPU/prices in those two countries are higher than in Canada, so is the standard of living and, thereby, the disposable income.

None of this is even up for debate anymore, as the Canadian government decided our prices were indeed high nearly two years ago and moved to get new carriers to start up.

Merrill Lynch's wireless numbers are accepted by carriers while the OECD statistics are not, but ultimately they say the same thing. The ISPs are now similarly criticizing the OECD's findings on broadband. It's too bad Merrill Lynch doesn't have a broadband matrix because it'd be interesting to see if the same conclusions were reached there.

More than three years ago, when I first starting writing about tech for CBCNews.ca, I wrote about a computer interface called BumpTop, which took the desktop model to the next level, giving files shape, weight and physics.

Back then, BumpTop was using pen-based computing, but now, it's updated and incorporates the multitouch support that Microsoft added to Windows 7. The multitouch adds more gestures to the BumpTop tool kit, including scrunching groups of files into piles, nudging files around with the edge of your thumb, and zooming and cropping photos.

Anand Agarawala, who helped develop BumpTop at the Dynamic Graphics Project at the University of Toronto, has a new demo up on YouTube showing off BumpTop's new features.

Related links:

Lifehacker: BumpTop Gets Amazing-Looking Multi-Touch on Windows 7
Engadget: Windows 7 multitouch: it's a gimmick (for now)

If the size of Microsoft's annual holiday video game preview was any indication of the general health of the industry, then gamers might have cause for concern. This year's event, X'09, was certainly much smaller in terms of the number of game developers and titles present, which is not surprising given the abysmal summer the industry had.

Much of the floor space at This Is London, the Toronto club where the event was held on Tuesday, was reserved for already-released games, such as Halo ODST and Beatles Rock Band. Even the food on offer for always-hungry journalists was scanty compared to previous years (brownies and potato chips instead of pizza and sandwiches, a sure sign of recession).

But don't let the restraint of X'09 fool you the event itself might be proof that developers are taking steps to reverse the recent slide. Call it a "market correction" in the making.

For much of the video game era, game makers have become increasingly addicted to holiday game sales. Producers of all stripes typically stack their big releases for October and November in hopes of getting all those December holiday shoppers on board. The strategy usually works, but in many cases, it backfires.

Last year's holiday release schedule was so stacked with the likes of Call of Duty: World at War, Rock Band 2, Gears of War 2, Little Big Planet, Fallout 3 and Guitar Hero: World Tour, among others, that a number of really good games, such as Prince of Persia and Far Cry 2, didn't even make it onto top 10 sales lists.

This year, however, is looking a little different. There are a few big holiday releases scheduled, such as Assassin's Creed 2, Forza Motorsport 3 and Dragon Age: Origins. The biggest, no doubt, will be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which hits stores on Nov. 10 and was one of the showcased games at X'09. Call of Duty games and their addictive online multiplayer action always top year-end sales lists and this latest installment which looked and played awesome at the demo I sat in on will definitely follow the trend.

What I found reassuring was that the other big showcased game, the hotly anticipated Splinter Cell: Conviction, isn't releasing until February. This is another title, designed by Ubisoft Montreal, that looks awesome here's the latest trailer:

The Feb. 23 release date is ostensibly so that the Ubisoft team could put some finishing polish on the game, but it may also be part of a general rethink by the industry of putting all their eggs in one holiday basket. February seems to be a perfect time to release a big game it's cold out, the holiday credit card bills have generally been paid off and all those games you got for Christmas have been played out (except, of course, Call of Duty, which typically dominates the life of a hard-core gamer until around July).

A new Splinter Cell game will sell well no matter when it's released, but it's certainly encouraging to see Ubisoft deciding against following the standard industry logic. Gamers everywhere would benefit from a more staggered release schedule.

Today's the day that 100,000 invitations for the preview Google Wave go out to a lucky few. Google has quite clearly stated on its blog who will get beta invites, but that hasn't stopped everyone else from begging for their golden ticket.

Google says that invites will go to:

• Developers who have been active in the developer preview we started back in June
• The first users who signed up and offered to give feedback on wave.google.com
• Select customers of Google Apps

As well, some of these invitees will be able to nominate friends for invitations: "Google Wave is a lot more useful if your friends, family and colleagues have it too."

Of course, Google Wave is a top trending topic today on Twitter, mostly with people either asking for invitations or linking to stories about the wave of invites.

No one has any invitations yet, though. They're coming out later this evening in North America, when working hours on Thursday start in Australia, where the Wave team is based.

Mashable is reporting that a Wave invite posted on eBay (remember, they aren't out yet) was going for $157 dollars before the auction was pulled. Another Wave invite is going for $100 on eBay.

Meanwhile, development of apps and extensions for Wave continues. On the Wave Developer blog, Stephanie Hannon writes:

Alexander Dreiling flew down to visit the Wave team from [German software developer] SAP's research lab in Brisbane. He showed us a 7 min video of Gravity, a Google Wave extension that facilitates real-time, collaborative development of business processes. I never thought I'd see grown men cry over business process modelling.

Previously:

• Google Wave gives up on Internet Explorer
• Google making waves with new communication tool

Related links:

• Lifehacker: Google Wave First Look
• Smarterware: Its Google Wave Mania Day!
• TechCrunch: Google Wave: There Will Be Backlash

The European Southern Observatory has released three high-resolution images of the night sky in Chile as part of its celebration of the International Year of Astronomy.

The first image was a representation of the entire night sky as visible to the naked eye. Astrophotographers Serge Brunier and Frdric Tapissier took over 1,200 pictures over a period of several months with a Nikon D3 digital camera. The resulting composite image is an 800-megapixel, 360-degree panorama. (Interactive version on GigaGalaxyZoom.org.)

The second image is an image of the central region of the Milky Way, as seen through a 10-centimetre amateur telescope. Of course, the "amateur" telescope was being used by Stphane Guisard, an ESO optical engineer. (Interactive version on GigaGalaxyZoom.org.)

(ESO)

The third image, of the Lagoon Nebula, was obtained from the Wide Field Imager on a 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. (Interactive version on GigaGalaxyZoom.org. Full 668 MB TIFF file.)

The developers of Google Wave the tech giant's next-generation communication platform that combines email, instant messaging, wikis and file sharing seem to have thrown up their hands when it comes to supporting Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

On their blog, the developers say that Wave requires strong JavaScript performance and will use the capabilities of HTML 5 to create a web app that performs like a desktop application:

Compared with other browsers, the JavaScript performance [of Internet Explorer] is many times slower and HTML5 support is still far behind. Likewise, the many different versions of IE still in use each with its own set of [cascading style sheet] quirks and layout limitations - further complicates building rich web applications.

Users of every version of Internet Explorer, from the surprisingly not-dead IE6 to the more recent IE8, will be asked to switch to another browser (Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari or Mozilla Firefox) or to install a new plug-in: Google Chrome Frame.

Google Chrome Frame is an add-on to IE that essentially runs a fast, standards-compliant browser inside a slow, buggy one. In a test performed by Computerworld, Internet Explorer 8 with Chrome Frame running zipped through a Javascript benchmark nearly 10 times faster than IE8 on its own.

Some bloggers are seeing Google Frame as a solution for people who are stuck with IE because of corporate policies against installing their own software on work computers.

Related links:

• Smarterware: Google Wave Team Gives Up on Internet Explorer
• TechCrunch: Google Has A Solution For Internet Explorer: Turn It Into Chrome

Sony says it has seen a big bump from its PlayStation 3 video game system since dropping the price and size three weeks ago, with more than one million consoles sold worldwide in that time.

The company introduced a redesigned console that was smaller, quieter and more energy efficient at the beginning of September, and also dropped the price to $299.

The move has worked so far before the price drop and redesign, Sony was averaging about 720,000 console sales a month since its launch in November 2006.

Sony has been lagging behind competitors Nintendo and Microsoft in the current round of console wars. At the end of August, Nintendo led the pack with its Wii, with more than 50 million units sold, followed by Microsoft with 30 million Xbox 360 consoles sold. Sony, meanwhile, had only moved 24 million PS3s.

But will the new sales momentum continue? Microsoft recently sliced the price of its Xbox 360 Elite while today, Nintendo announced a $50 price cut on the Wii. Heading into this holiday season, it's pretty clear that the console wars are still on like Donkey Kong.

The CRTC kicked off a set of two-day hearings on Globalive's ownership today. The hearings will help the regulator determine whether or not Globalive will get to be Canada's fourth almost-national cellphone company. In its opening remarks, the company put forward a number of reasons why it passes muster as far as Canadian control rules are concerned, but one argument seems to sound like the Chewbacca defense.

The Chewbacca defense is, of course, the infamous defense used by a fictionalized Johnnie Cochrane on an episode of South Park. The cartoon lawyer asked jurors to question why Chewbacca, the eight-foot-tall Wookiee from the Star Wars movies, would choose to live on the forest moon of Endor with a bunch of two-foot-tall Ewoks. Not only did that not make sense, Cochrane said, neither did his bringing it up in court. Therefore, "if Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit."

Globalive's Chewbacca moment came Wednesday morning when its lawyer, Hank Intven, interpreted Canada's foreign control laws for telecommunications companies for the CRTC hearings. According to Intven's prepared statements:

The only question is whether Globalive complies with the requirement that a 'corporation is not otherwise controlled by persons who are not Canadians.' Note that the law does not say that it must be shown that a company is controlled by Canadians but that it is not controlled by non-Canadians.

Hmm. So if the company isn't controlled by non-Canadians or Canadians, who's left to control it? Perhaps Globalive and Intven will clear this up as the hearings continue, but in the meantime it sure sounds like "If the company isn't controlled by Canadians or non-Canadians, you must acquit."