Physicists Accidentally Discover a Self-Destruct Button for the Entire Universe

[rangerrebew]

Physicists Accidentally Discover a Self-Destruct Button for the Entire Universe

    November 1, 2016

by Philip Perry

It sounds like a plot from a comic book or a sci-fi film, a theory that got a boost when one of the greatest discoveries in physics in the modern era, the discovery of the “God particle,”or the Higgs boson, the missing piece in the Standard Model of particle physics. In the preface to his book Starmus, Stephen Hawking warns that the Higgs Boson field could collapse, resulting in a chain reaction that would take in the whole universe with it. 

http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/physicists-accidently-discover-a-self-destruct-button-for-the-entire-universe

[driftdiver]

[The_Reader_David]

Physicists Accidentally Discover a Self-Destruct Button for the Entire Universe

. . . Stephen Hawking warns that the Higgs Boson field could collapse, resulting in a chain reaction that would take in the whole universe with it. 

...and the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll...

[GtHawk]

One persons self destruct button is another persons reset.

[Wingnut]

[dfwgator]

...and I feel fine.

[Ghost Bear]

The Higgs Field is maintaining a low energy state at the moment. But some believe it is slowly transitioning to a high energy state. When it does, it will kick off what is known as “vacuum decay.” In Hawking’s book, once the Higgs Field becomes metastable, the vacuum decay bubble will emerge. Being at a high energy state, it will quickly move to consume everything at a low energy state, or everything else around it. The vacuum bubble moves along destroying atoms, turning everything it encounters into hydrogen.

Prof. Lykken believes it will take billions of years.

... unless it started a billion years ago, in which case it could happen at any mo

[Cripplecreek]

Well don't play with it.

[Fishrrman]

"Physicists Accidentally Discover a Self-Destruct Button for the Entire Universe"

Sooner or later someone's gonna come along and press it, just to see what happens next.

Poll:
If YOU discovered it, would you press it?
I probably would, just for the heck of it... ;)

[Wingnut]

...and I feel fine.

@dfwgator
and Lenny Bruce is not afraid.

[DB]

So God put a reboot button in the fabric of the universe?

The odds of something actually existing besides God that could destroy the universe is a stretch... Something somewhere would trip it from time to time and the universe would have to be far younger if that were happening...

[Cyber Liberty]

Wasn't this in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

[Wingnut]

Wasn't this in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Either that or a Warner Bros cartoon.

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

[INVAR]

So God put a reboot button in the fabric of the universe?

The odds of something actually existing besides God that could destroy the universe is a stretch... Something somewhere would trip it from time to time and the universe would have to be far younger if that were happening...

White, Christian Americans who believe in Capitalism are obviously the trigger to the destruction of the universe.  We must immediately end the combustion engine, private property, air conditioning and meat eaters in order to save the universe!  We only have 5 years before the self-destruct sequence cannot be reversed!

[ABX]

LOL, exactly what I thought.. I finally watched it last night.

[Gefn]

Wasn't this in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

I think it was also in an episode of Futureama. And Red Dwarf has a second Big Bang

All we are is dust in the wind?