“Why do we live in a universe that’s just on the edge of stability?”
“If you use all the physics that we know now, and we do what we think is a straightforward calculation, it’s bad news,” Lykken said. “It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable. At some point, billions of years from now, it’s all going to be wiped out.”
He said the parameters for our universe, including the Higgs mass value as well as the mass of another subatomic particle known as the top quark, suggest that we’re just at the edge of stability, in a “metastable” state. Physicists have been contemplating such a possibility for more than 30 years. Back in 1982, physicists Michael Turner and Frank Wilczek wrote in Nature that “without warning, a bubble of true vacuum could nucleate somewhere in the universe and move outwards at the speed of light, and before we realized what swept by us our protons would decay away.”
Lykken put it slightly differently: “The universe wants to be in a different state, so eventually to realize that, a little bubble of what you might think of as an alternate universe will appear somewhere, and it will spread out and destroy us.”
Blowback
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I blame liberalism for the instability.
backwoods conservative on February 20, 2013 at 9:51 PM
I for one blame George W. Bush.
Drained Brain on February 20, 2013 at 9:53 PM
It is as it was spoken into existence.
tom daschle concerned on February 20, 2013 at 9:54 PM
For starters, the Higgs particle the boys at CERN think they’ve identified is only one of at least six. That’s not something that is well reported. Also not well reported is the simple fact that we are a long, long, long way from understanding the fundamental nature and quality of matter, space, time, and the fundamental forms of energy.
Jumping to metaphysical conclusions is a bit unscientific, and frankly silly.
Scribbler on February 20, 2013 at 9:56 PM
Great, now the whole universe is warming. Who do we have to pay now?
What difference does it make if this is true? There isn’t a dang thing to be done about it. In fact the opposite is true. You have to be alive to observe the universe. If it becomes unstable then we won’t be here anyway. As long as there is a living human the universe will be staple.
Rocks on February 20, 2013 at 10:03 PM
” a bubble of true vacuum could nucleate”
Yea,, it sure could. I think it already has.
The eggheads that fear unlocking some hellish unknown quantam boogie man always amuse me.
wolly4321 on February 20, 2013 at 10:06 PM
Did they mention they need more funding? Oops, maybe tomorrow.
Dusty on February 20, 2013 at 10:22 PM
I blame Obama. I’ve always held that he is universally unstable.
HotAirian on February 20, 2013 at 10:25 PM
A lifetime of listening to physicists has convinced me they’re no more intelligent than a high school stoner. Most have learned to play the FUD game to gain publicity and funding. Often wrong, never in doubt.
Xavier on February 20, 2013 at 10:35 PM
Can’t be – otherwise it would be stark raving bonkers!
OldEnglish on February 20, 2013 at 10:39 PM
This isn’t metaphyics. It is a calculation straight out of the Standard Model that there could be a lower vacuum energy, and if a region of space shifted into that lower state then there would be a massive release of energy.
That doesn’t mean the universe itself would be destroyed, just that everything in a region would be blown apart by the release of energy.
This could have happened several times in every point in space already, and some of the objects that we see in the sky could have already been destroyed even though the shock wave has not arrived at our location yet.
pedestrian on February 20, 2013 at 10:52 PM
The Higgs Boson and the Higgs Field are just Turtles. As in the old classical story of the physics professor who asks a woman at one of his lectures, “What hold the Earth up? Why it rests on the back of a Turtle. And what hold up the Turtle, why it rests on the back of another Turtle. And what my Dear hods up that
Turtle… It’s no use professor, it’s Turtles all the way down”.
The Higgs Field and the Higgs Boson were invented by Higgs to explain something known as “The Cosmological Constant Conundrum”. The Cosmological Constant Conundrum basically amounts to two questions. 1) What is the Universe expanding into, and 2) Why is the Universe expanding into whatever it is expanding into.
Even more important than the fact that the “Higgs particle the boys at CERN think they’ve identified is only one of at least six” is the fact the there is also a theory out there which states that it is possible to create a particle which has all of the apparent physical characteristics of the predicted Higgs Boson, which in spite of having all of the apparent physical characteristics of the predicted Higgs Boson, would not in reality be a Higgs Boson, but would at best be an artificial Higgs Boson.
I have written a little Ridicules Gibberish on the subject which purports to explain where Higgs and company went wrong with their whole theory of Quantum Gravity. Which is not of course to suggest that I actually know anything about, well anything. Just that I wrote something suggesting that the Higgs Boson and the Higgs Field don’t actually exist.
SWalker on February 20, 2013 at 10:52 PM
When one postulates the cessation of what is and invokes the what is not, one perforce has left the realm of physics and is engaging in the metaphysical. That’s not a bad thing, so long as it is understood to be what one is doing. Every discipline has her boundaries. This approaches one beyond which Who Knows What may or may not be.
Scribbler on February 20, 2013 at 11:04 PM
There’s a counteracting mass of conservatism that’s been holding it together–so far.
backwoods conservative on February 20, 2013 at 11:21 PM
And I thought this was going to be about NBC journalists finally acknowledging their mental state.
malclave on February 20, 2013 at 11:31 PM
[malclave on February 20, 2013 at 11:31 PM]
That’s tomorrow, when we talk about over the edge, not on the edge.
Dusty on February 20, 2013 at 11:49 PM
There’s got to be a tax that can get us out of this fix.
crrr6 on February 21, 2013 at 12:25 AM
I thought all the positrons were going to disappear and cause chaos.
Man I wish these guys would get their stories straight.
Xavier on February 21, 2013 at 12:57 AM
Seems science has invented it’s own “rapture” event.
Rebar on February 21, 2013 at 1:25 AM
Just reverse polarity and eject the antimatter core and we’ll be ok. But be careful not to burn out the plasma coils.
Dongemaharu on February 21, 2013 at 1:29 AM
Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. Total protonic reversal.
That’s bad. It may also be why we don’t see anyone else in the galaxy (Fermi Paradox). Nerds start playing around with atom smashers and the vacuum energy gets unstable or something and BAMN!
a Twinkie… thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.
Bulletchaser on February 21, 2013 at 2:37 AM
Let’s add something else to the conversation. The universe at the time of the Big Bang sort of boot strapped itself by expanding faster than the speed of light. That means it is impossible for things in any given part of the universe to reach all other parts of the universe. So a “true vacuum” bubble might form. It would expand at the speed of light. And most of the universe would survive. Only that portion that was within the same relative sector of the initial expansion would vanish.
There seems to be some rethinking to be done here.
{^_^}
herself on February 21, 2013 at 3:42 AM
It’s Bush’s Fault.
kregg on February 21, 2013 at 5:23 AM
It’s not well reported because it’s not true.
Certainly there is plenty of theoretical speculation about a more elaborate Higgs sector, but there is no evidence that requires more than one Higgs boson at the moment.
The invention of the Higgs field and the Higgs boson had nothing to do with the cosmological constant, or anything else related to cosmology. The Higgs field was postulated as a mechanism to describe/explain electroweak symmetry breaking.
LagunaDave on February 21, 2013 at 7:39 AM
Dang, too bad I’m going to miss that…. *eyeroll*
GWB on February 21, 2013 at 9:37 AM
What is the Cosmological Constant Conundrum, seems you don’t actually know Dave.
The Cosmological Constant Conundrum deals with certain mathematical conflicts that exist within the Standard Model. So, while it bares the name, Cosmological Constant Conundrum, and is specifically referenced to Cosmology, it is in fact, not a Cosmological question.
The Cosmological Constant Conundrum IS Quantum Gravity(or more properly, the question, what is Gravity). The Higgs Field/Boson likewise are attempts to define and explain exactly what gravity is, and to tie it to a specific field events within the Standard Model.
Reading Wikipeadia is not going to help you understand how or why Quantum Physic’s and Cosmology have become entangled. But they hopelessly are, and the entanglement point is the electroweak force.
The whole subject is a bit more complex than can easily or quickly be explained in a blog comment. You want to continue playing anally retentive professor, knock yourself out. But you are WRONG.
SWalker on February 21, 2013 at 10:08 AM
Retired Rock Star SWalker is also a cosmologist! How incredible is that?
DarkCurrent on February 21, 2013 at 11:09 AM
Cosmologist, no. But physics and music were battling it out in me while at college. I had three years of college credit physics from high school before I went to college, and my major originally was physics, before I changed it to music in my 3rd year.
SWalker on February 21, 2013 at 3:07 PM
I should also point out that while it seems to be a fairly common assumption by the general public that if you are or ever were a professional musician that means that you must be dumber than a fence post, it isn’t reality. Being a professional musician does not preclude one also being intelligent or having interests other than sex drugs and rock and roll.
SWalker on February 21, 2013 at 3:12 PM