"God Particle" Could Wipe Out The Universe, Says Steven Hawking

Callate

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...Clearly, we need to keep the Decepticons from getting their hands on the Higgs-Boson!

(Oh, c'mon. Doesn't "could destroy all life in the universe" bring immediate images of the heroes bursting in just in time to prevent the color-coded evil green science from being wielded by someone with big shoulder pads and an evil laugh?)

Coldman42 said:
STOP CALLING IT THE "GOD PARTICLE"!!!

Literally NO ONE in the scientific community has ever referred to it as the "god particle". That was a newspaper purposely miss-quoting one of the scientists who made the discovery because they knew "god particle" would get more papers sold than calling it by its proper name of the Higgs Boson. Please stop perpetuating this stupidity.
Is the scientific community aware that you have them, in entirety, under surveillance at all times?
 

Michael Tabbut

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The only take away I'm getting from this is that the Higgs-Boson/"God Particle" can potentially end the universe with a pseudo-reverse Big Bang. Correct me if I'm wrong as science isn't really my subject but that sounds kinda like that Red Matter stuff from Star Trek 2009 on uber-steroids.
 

Smooth Operator

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Michael Tabbut said:
The only take away I'm getting from this is that the Higgs-Boson/"God Particle" can potentially end the universe with a pseudo-reverse Big Bang. Correct me if I'm wrong as science isn't really my subject but that sounds kinda like that Red Matter stuff from Star Trek 2009 on uber-steroids.
Well unless I horribly misunderstood what I read on the subject so far, Higgs-Boson is merely a particle that proves the existence of the Higgs field which is a threshold where energy gets mass and by extent allows matter to form.
And it is believed that this field is slowly decaying, which could at some point lead to a cataclysmic event where all energy and matter of the universe destabilize and collapse in on itself. So if we make a gigantic sci-fi leap from there, this could be the reason our universe seem to originate from one gigantic explosion.

Sadly this does mean Higgs-Boson is nothing like Red Matter, it actually doesn't do jack, but we could yet find ways to manipulate the Higgs field and destroy all existence... who knows what we come up with after this.
 

Me55enger

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gigastar said:
Me55enger said:
Anyone else get the feeling sometimes that Stephen Hawking just makes this stuff up?
Last I checked the man can only move one muscle in his entire body.

So that would leave a lot of time for him to think these things over before he communicates something he might regret.

Not saying hes never wrong, that's just something to keep in mind.
Was trying to be funny dude. Or at the very least highlight the power he has over the subject via the exaggeration of his pull over it.
 

Nimcha

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This is science "news" these days? :/ What a horrible article, nothing to be learned from it.
 

renegade7

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In short, no, it won't.

Hawking is concerned here about a hypothetical event called "vacuum decay" or a "vacuum metastability event". I would never have the gall to call Hawking incompetent or alarmist, but I do however think that, when provided with room for interpretation (which is in abundance at the frontiers of science and technology) he tends to take a pessimistic viewpoint.

Basically, there is no such thing as true vacuum, even space completely devoid of matter contains a small amount of vacuum potential. This vacuum potential is very important in our day-to-day lives since it informs a great deal of physics at the level of fundamental particles. If it was different, the laws of chemistry, electricity, radiation, gravity, and nuclear forces would be very different.

The hypothesis is that the universe exists at a level of vacuum energy that is not the lowest possible level, but has settled into a "false" vacuum potential state. Like a rock rolling down a hill that has caught on a ledge, it still has some potential energy, but it's being prevented from using all of it up to reach its ground state (the lowest possible potential). However, if one were to give that rock a strong enough push, it would topple over and continue rolling down.

In essence, this is what the vacuum collapse refers to. If our universe has settled into an energy state higher than its true ground potential, then enough energy at any one point could cause it to topple over the proverbial edge and continue rolling down the hill. If enough energy were to be concentrated in the right form in a region of space, it could cause that region to "fall" down to true vacuum. It's possible that there exist stable, tiny regions of true vacuum in space right now that aren't hurting anything due to either not expanding or flashing back out of existence within femtoseconds of forming, and as a future physicist myself I have to say I would really love the chance to research one, if it was somehow possible.

The concern, now, is that if an even greater amount of energy than would be sufficient to revert a tiny region of the universe to true vacuum were generated at a point, and just the right set of circumstances were true, that the region of true vacuum would not just be stable but would begin to nucleate. This would take the form of a bubble of true vacuum expanding into space at the speed of light, inside of which would be a new universe with completely different laws than our own. Needless to say, were such a bubble to consume the Earth, we would not survive the event.

However, such an occurrence is completely hypothetical at this time. Whether or not it's even possible will depend on the precise rest mass of the Higgs Boson, which is not yet known (nor is it even yet clear that the Higgs Boson exists, rather than something mostly like it), as well as the mass of the top quark. This is what's often being misreported as the LHC "Destroying the universe".

And even if it is possible, the amount of energy need to both create would be far, far higher than anything that could conceivably be produced on Earth. And the fact that it hasn't found a way to occur at any point so far in the universe's 13.7 billion year existence should give us a clue to its likelihood of happening now or in the future given that the most energetic events in the universe are, for the most part, behind us.

In fact, the odds of a vacuum decay occurring are so astronomically small as to consider such an event impossible. You are more likely to die due to every single atom in your body undergoing radioactive decay at the same instant in time (yes, it's possible) than due to a vacuum collapse.

There is also an ontological problem that it invokes, namely, that most permutations of this interpretation of the standard model hinge on the many worlds hypothesis being true, in which case we are all subject to subjective immortality and wouldn't need to worry about dying in any way, let alone vacuum collapse, anyway.

So in conclusion, in terms of things that could kill you, worry more about falling down your stairs or getting in a car accident before worrying about the consequences of quantum field theory.
 

Michael Tabbut

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Smooth Operator said:
Michael Tabbut said:
The only take away I'm getting from this is that the Higgs-Boson/"God Particle" can potentially end the universe with a pseudo-reverse Big Bang. Correct me if I'm wrong as science isn't really my subject but that sounds kinda like that Red Matter stuff from Star Trek 2009 on uber-steroids.
Well unless I horribly misunderstood what I read on the subject so far, Higgs-Boson is merely a particle that proves the existence of the Higgs field which is a threshold where energy gets mass and by extent allows matter to form.
And it is believed that this field is slowly decaying, which could at some point lead to a cataclysmic event where all energy and matter of the universe destabilize and collapse in on itself. So if we make a gigantic sci-fi leap from there, this could be the reason our universe seem to originate from one gigantic explosion.

Sadly this does mean Higgs-Boson is nothing like Red Matter, it actually doesn't do jack, but we could yet find ways to manipulate the Higgs field and destroy all existence... who knows what we come up with after this.
Thank you for the clarification. Again I'm not a science person and the way I read the article it sounded like if mucked around with it would cause some kind of super black hole. Either way it's not really something people should worry about anyway, The universe ain't ending in our generation or the next. Humanity on the other hand is another story I fear...
 

LazyAza

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Really wish people would stop calling it the god particle, scientists don't call it that and all it does is bring in religious bullshit to something incredibly scientific. Their is nothing "god like" about simply understanding physics and the universe and that's all discovering this particle will really result in is scientists being able to use and manipulate energy and devices that produce/require energy in various ways going forward. Magical wondrous sci-fi future? not gonna happen without discoveries like this one.

Hope I'm around long enough to experience some technologies take advantage of the information learned from further study of the Higgs Boson. But I also hope it doesn't end up being used for weapons research and that's what always pisses me off about so much of the best scientific discoveries, our species seems to always wanna use it to come up with new ways to kill each other or make ourselves lazier instead of making cool shit like space ships and flying cars and ways of prolonging death or curing disease etc.
 

Nimcha

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renegade7 said:
I tip my hat to you sir. I only have a very rudamentally understanding of physics but even I understood most of that. Excellent post, this should be on the front page in stead of that drivel that's there now!
 

truckspond

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Nick Fury said:
Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.
That really sums up my feeling about this theoretical event. If we can't do a damn thing about it then why should we?
 

Daverson

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Ok, let's have a look see here:
1. Uses the term "The God Particle"
2. Misquotes something said by a famous physicist
3. "End of the universe" level of Alarmism

Well, kids, I think we've found the prophecized Trifecta of sloppy science journalism here!
 

EHKOS

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...we found it? Two years ago? I thought we were still looking! I feel so dumb right now. Then again, probably my fault for not reading the news enough.
 

Vivi22

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SNCommand said:
I was just presuming since last time the Higgs Boson particle and end of the world was mentioned it was loons who thought the hadron colider would kill us all
That was people worrying over the idea that micro-black holes could form and kill us all. Which actually just demonstrated that people worrying about micro-black holes didn't know anything about what they actually are, or are capable of.
 

FalloutJack

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thaluikhain said:
Did it run over his cat or something?
The universe ran over everybody's cat...except maybe Schroedinger's.

Me55enger said:
Anyone else get the feeling sometimes that Stephen Hawking just makes this stuff up?
Naaah. Stephen Hawking isn't the sort of man who would say that without thinking there was some sort of potential to do just that. He has also been mistaken about things and readily admits them so when it comes up.

Coldman42 said:
STOP CALLING IT THE "GOD PARTICLE"!!!
LazyAza said:
Really wish people would stop calling it the god particle
It's a nickname that stuck. People aren't going to drop it. Scientists also de-named Pluto and it still gets called Pluto.

hino77 said:
Ok, cool, we finaly have a way to find out if really advanced aliens exist somewhere!, we just have to try and blow up the universe, if they stop us we know they are there, if not, we die! Or you know, it doesnt work and nothing happens.

EHKOS said:
...we found it? Two years ago? I thought we were still looking! I feel so dumb right now. Then again, probably my fault for not reading the news enough.
Found two years ago, recently confirmed. When you're hunting up something as important as that, I guess you spend two years checking your math.

OT: Putting aside what people actually think of the article, this is apparently the most important particle in physics. On its own, it probably won't destroy the universe, but uhhh...my mind harkens to the device which re-orients matter in favor of a new and somehow potentially changes it into a living planet: The so-named Genesis Device from Star Trek. So, even if the capability to do somethng harmful with it probably can't be done so patently easily, it wouldn't be too unreasonable to believe that it can do something, and that that something would be BIG.
 

snowpuppy

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1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000*0000000000 years, too short of a time!

*trillions of years would be here.
Honestly, this is kind of cool, cooler than heat death.
It also lends authority to the claim they are the God particles
 

Something Amyss

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giles said:
What is this other than click-bait at the cost of making science look retarded?
In fairness, the article in question left a few things out too. Like the fact that Hawking even says the odds are remote (As noted in the first news article I found on Google, and even The Huffington Post says it between ads for sideboob).

I think the worst thing here is that this appears to have been done without any research on the matter whatsoever.

Michael Tabbut said:
The only take away I'm getting from this is that the Higgs-Boson/"God Particle" can potentially end the universe with a pseudo-reverse Big Bang. Correct me if I'm wrong as science isn't really my subject but that sounds kinda like that Red Matter stuff from Star Trek 2009 on uber-steroids.
Well, that already bordered on space magic, so why the hell not.
 

BoogieManFL

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I always wonder why people who know what the proper name for the particle is so yet often call it by something else.

Seems silly. It is like calling the Moon the "night sun" or some other such nonsense.