The first question on the human race’s lips today: what time is it?

The more relevant question: which way are we going? And why?

At what appears to be early morning, on what is possibly May 29 or 30, 2015, in Meyrin, Switzerland, no one has any answers to these unique questions.

Almost three hours ago, by one person’s wristwatch, the sun set in the west over this picturesque Swiss valley. Twenty minutes later, the sun appeared again, rising from the same place at which it had set. The time at that moment was 9:47 p.m., Central European Time. That same wristwatch, two hours later, showed 11:47 p.m., and it should have been dark.

But it’s not. Overhead, at 11:47 p.m., the sun was bright, in a clear, blue May sky. In Houston, the sun is settling into the late-afternoon sky. In the east, where it normally comes up, over San Jacinto Bay. This would be unbelievable, if it were not visible. It is visible, however. All over the planet, morning and evening have traded places. There is panic, authorities report, but it is stunned panic. People appear too confused to be afraid. Government leaders urge calm, but sound silly doing so. Churches, cathedrals and mosques are reported jammed. An ominous light in Notre Dame Cathedral was discovered to be the glow from thousands of cellphone screens, Googling information, the new Gospel. Widespread public disorientation is reported, and entire populations are experiencing waves of physical nausea.

What has happened? The most reasonable suspect is the largest machine ever built by humans, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, a huge circular contraption buried 328 feet beneath the earth’s surface, at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, headquartered in Meyrin, a pleasant suburb of Geneva.

Last night, whatever “last night” now means, between 9 and 10 p.m., the LHC was scheduled to bring together two streams of sub-atomic particles at speeds just two-tenths of a percent short of twice the speed of light. In the colossal explosion physicists expected, they hoped to catch positive sight, confirming encouraging 2012 hints of its presence, of a particle called the “Higgs boson.”

Instead, at 9:27 p.m. Meyrin time, the collider experienced some kind of mechanical failure and had to be shut down. This has happened before. In fact, the failures have caused a pair of highly regarded physicists to propose that the collider is sabotaging itself. The physicists say the Higgs boson must be so abhorrent to nature, when it appears, that time stops and then ripples backwards to some point before the Higgs-producing explosion where it’s safe for the machine to break down.

Looking at the sun in the sky at 11:35 p.m. that no longer sounds so strange. An hour ago, Wikipedia reported its servers had crashed under the weight of searches for “time travel.”

If time is in fact rippling backward, when is it supposed to stop? Also, why does it appear as if the human race is moving forward? In Wellesian time travel literature, when an observer is moving backward through time, events to him appear to move backward. Additionally, if time is moving backward, why are all the world’s clocks continuing to move forward?

“Actually, there is a rather simple explanation for that,” said physicist Alan Lamont, to a loud, giddy round of laughter from the 250 journalists crowded into CERN’s Media Centre Briefing Room for the first briefing since the event. Lamont joined the laughter and said, “I admit, it looked simpler when it was only equations on paper. We should not, however, focus on time as the issue. Time does not move; it only measures things that do. What we are focused on at this hour, in trying to understand what has happened, is events.”

Dr. Lamont said many of the world’s finest scientific minds were gathered at CERN, for the Higgs collision, and they remained dumbfounded by what had happened. “We had hoped that finding the boson would introduce a new dawn of physics. Of course this finding — literally, a new dawn — dwarfs those old expectations. We have much to learn, in this three-hour-old world where the known laws of physics may or may not apply. And yes, these scientists, and a network of others around the globe, are examining the equations presented by the ‘time ripple’ scientists in support of their argument. An argument which, now, of course, is antiquated.”

So far, said Dr. Lamont, no clues.

“In one important aspect of this new existence,” he said, “our confidence is growing. We are into the fourth hour of this phenomenon, causing us to believe, with some certainty, that the planet, and all of us with it, is going to survive what must have been an unprecedented shock. That is the good news. The not-so-good news, and I might as well just go ahead and say it: events appear to be moving forward, and backward, at the same time. Tomorrow and yesterday are the same. We have no equations for that.”

Asked if, therefore, today was May 29 or May 30, Dr. Lamont said, “Logically speaking, based on what we can observe, today is Saturday, May 29. Tomorrow will be Friday, May 28, in old time. In new time, this is Day One.”

The question came immediately, from several parts of the room: So when did Day One begin? At 9:47 p.m., May 29? Is 9:47 the new midnight?

Lamont, who bears a resemblance to the old character actor Charles Coburn, smiled. “Things aren’t very tidy, are they? But then, they weren’t very tidy at the Big Bang, either. The odds are very small that the Big Bang occurred at midnight. Most likely, the old midnight will remain the new midnight. Of course the old 11 p.m. becomes the new 1 a.m.” Lamont chuckled. “How ironic, this should happen in Switzerland. There is now an absolute global demand for new timepieces. Rush out and buy Rolex stock.”

A New York Times reporter stood. “Dr. Lamont, you are speaking as if this new world is a permanent reality. Is there any possibility that the time ripple, if that’s what it is, will stop, and the old direction be restored?”

“Anything is possible,” Lamont said. “As I said, at this hour, we can only rely on what we can observe. There is no mathematics, no computer program, to describe what is happening. We may never understand. We’re still trying to understand the Big Bang — that’s why we all are here at CERN, after all — and that happened almost 14 billion years ago, give or take two hundred million years.”

“Dr. Lamont,” said Nicole Morrison of the BBC, “you used the words, ‘unprecedented shock.’ Exactly what do you mean by ‘unprecedented’?”

“I mean something that has never happened before,” Lamont replied.

“Are you suggesting that a singularity has occurred?” Morrison said.

“Not at all,” Lamont said quickly. “Such a notion is utterly premature and could not be seriously discussed until specific investigative procedures had been completed.”

“All of us in this room, I imagine, are familiar with the word, ‘singularity,’ but not so familiar as to use it knowledgably in stories about this incident,” Nicole Morrison said. “I wonder if you could provide a short tutorial.”

Lamont declined, citing time pressures and saying the subject “is not within the scope of this briefing. Research it on your own, if you like.”

Okay, but what about the clocks and wristwatches, running forward? Actually, they aren’t, Dr. Lamont said. Relative to our new motion, they’re running backward.

Lamont turned his attention to a media tour of the LHC, to be conducted as soon as possible. “Now,” he said, animatedly drawing back the cuff over his wristwatch, “the present time is — oh, who knows what the time is. My watch reads 12:15. We will begin the tour at 1 a.m.”

One a.m.? Bright sun outside. Not very tidy at all.