The Large Hadron Collider – the most powerful atom-smasher ever built – will be switched on in May 2008, and particle physics will hit pay-dirt. However a pair of Russian mathematicians (Irina Aref’eva and Igor Volovich) have are stating that the LHC might just turn out to be the world’s first time machine.

It is a highly speculative claim, that’s for sure. But if Aref’eva and Volovich are correct, the LHC’s debut at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, could provide a landmark in history. That’s because travelling into the past is only possible – if it is possible at all – as far back as the creation of the first time machine, and that means 2008 could become Year Zero for future time travellers, since it would only be possible to travel back as far as the first doorway in time.

• 2008: Does time travel start here? [New Scientist]
• Time Machine at the LHC [arXiv.org]
• Time Travel Russia’s In [The Sun]
• The world’s first time machine? [ The Daily Mail]
• Time Machine To Be Created Underground? [Wired Science]