Stephen Hawking: God Particle Could Wipe Out the Universe

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

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Stephen Hawking has become somewhat of a fatalist of late predicting doom and gloom. In his latest book, Hawking expresses his concerns over the total destruction of our Universe by an unstable Higgs Boson, otherwise known as the God Particle.

This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light. This could happen at any time and we wouldn't see it coming.
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good god that article is a huge load of horseshit that was just trying to squeeze the sensationalism to new levels.

AFAIK, the whole "issue" with the Higgs has been known for a while, but hey Stephen Hawking is putting out a new book so it must be true and it's time to worry now!

I also have this sneaking suspicion that his brain main be following his body, and he's used more as a symbol than a real source of this info. I mean it's not exactly uncommon that a grad student figured something out and his/her grad advisor submits it in their name as a "Co-author"
 
I think someone has been watching too much Star Trek, and is thinking of the "Omega molecule" (or Particle 010 as the Borg refer to it) which is a highly unstable molecule believed to be the most powerful substance known to exist.

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Little does anyone know was that the Higgs Boson has already destroyed our universe, many times, possibly several times in what we know as a our span of time called a seven day week. Somehow the universe has a mechanism to reconstruct itself to the moment it self destructed. Little do we realize the repeated lapse in our consciousness (more accurately the implantation of memories upon new bodies which correspond to memories from our prior 'selves'). It's been happening more frequently since the Large Hadron Collider has been running.


@sfsuphysics you're wrong. He's smarter than you, so everything he says is gospel. It is impossible for you to find a fault with your inferior intellect.
 
News at 11 : "Shock Headlines Sell Books"

Hes been doing it so much hes starting to sound like a crackpot.
 
I like the idea that the universe is still undergoing phase transitions. The time scale makes it uninteresting for us though: what happens (or not) in billions of years isn't vitally important. lol
 
i wish "journalists" would stop using the term "god particle" for click baiting and use it's proper name "higgs boson".
 
"A particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate."
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So there's nothing to worry about because it's impossible.
 
"A particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate."
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niconx said:
So there's nothing to worry about because it's impossible.
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So if our current economic climate improves, we are screwed? Maybe Washington and the tyrants in the east indeed have our best interests in mind. ;)
 
It already is.. But seeing as there are infinite copies of the universe that are slightly different, and that this destruction also destroys all of time, we must be living in one of the universes that it never happens in, therefore we're safe.
 
Parmenides said:
Little does anyone know was that the Higgs Boson has already destroyed our universe, many times, possibly several times in what we know as a our span of time called a seven day week. Somehow the universe has a mechanism to reconstruct itself to the moment it self destructed. Little do we realize the repeated lapse in our consciousness (more accurately the implantation of memories upon new bodies which correspond to memories from our prior 'selves'). It's been happening more frequently since the Large Hadron Collider has been running.
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So the LHC is improving the universe's refresh rate (7Hz?). Cool.
 
Paul Ed said:
Is this a "New Name" for "Anti-Matter", which has been around foe eons?
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No.

Wikipedia said:
A hypothetical vacuum metastability event would be theoretically possible if our universe were part of a metastable (false) vacuum in the first place, an issue that was highly theoretical and far from resolved in 1982.[2] A false vacuum is one that appears stable, and is stable within certain limits and conditions, but is capable of being disrupted and entering a different state which is more stable. If this were the case, a bubble of lower-energy vacuum could come to exist by chance or otherwise in our universe, and catalyze the conversion of our universe to a lower energy state in a volume expanding at nearly the speed of light, destroying all that we know without forewarning.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum
 
Speed of light, huh. Well, even if this started at the center of our universe, our species would likely be long gone before it took out our planet.
 
Ruoh said:
Speed of light, huh. Well, even if this started at the center of our universe, our species would likely be long gone before it took out our planet.
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Except from our perspective we are the center of the Universe!!! :eek:
 
sfsuphysics said:
Except from our perspective we are the center of the Universe!!! :eek:
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Technically, every point in the universe is the center of the universe. It's why Einstein's theories of Relativity are so elegant.
 
No more likely than before we understood this. I mean we're realistically perched on the head of a pin in several ways so this is just one more we now understand.
 
Being destroyed by a higgs boson is the least of our worries. Besides, the energy needed to make it happen would be nearly impossible to have on earth in the first place.

Non-story.
 
The rise and fall of civilizations. Blow up Higgs, rinse repeat after a few billion years. Maybe Hawkins inadvertantly discovered the underlying cause for the 'repeated big bang' theory. :)
 
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