Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were astonished to find that the results of two experiments conducted last month seemed to indicate that, for very short durations of the order of nanoseconds, time was moving backwards. After two weeks of analysis, when it seemed clear that the experimental results could only be interpreted to mean that time occasionally moved very slightly backwards, Michel Vadeboncoeur discovered that the surprising experimental results were caused by a computer virus that had infected the software governing the atomic clocks used in very precise measurements of time, causing them to seem to run very slightly slower during the day, and faster at night.
Thus, in contrast to the results of the OPERA experiment1, where the initial mistaken result was due to improper setup of the equipment, these results were caused by deliberate human activity.
Further investigation revealed that this virus has affected a very large number of computers, including those in many offices. It is unclear whether this virus is the product of a maleficient computer hacker, a terrorist group, or (as labor activist Julius Berg suggests) a deliberate ploy from unidentified agents within the business community is unclear at this time.
- OPERA collaboration “Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam” (July 12, 2012); Matt Strassler, “OPERA: What Went Wrong,” April 2, 2012, http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/neutrinos/neutrinos-faster-than-light/opera-what-went-wrong/ ↩