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The Higgs Boson Should Have Crushed the Universe
astroengine writes: This may seem a little far fetched, but if our understanding of the physics behind the recently-discovered Higgs boson (or, more specifically, the Higgs field — the ubiquitous field that endows all stuff with mass) is correct, our Universe shouldn't exist. That is, however, if another cosmological hypothesis is real, a hypothesis that is currently undergoing intense scrutiny in light of the BICEP2 results. "The mathematics to arise from accepted Higgs field theory suggests the universe is currently sitting comfortably in a Higgs field energy 'valley.' To get out of this valley and up the adjacent 'hill,' huge quantities of energy would need to be unleashed inside the field. But, if there were enough energy to push the universe over the hill and into the deeper energy valley next door, the universe would simply, and catastrophically, collapse.
This is where the BICEP2 results come in. If their observations are real and gravitational waves in the CMB prove cosmological inflation, the Higgs field has already been kicked by too much energy, pushing the Higgs field over the energy hill and deep into the neighboring valley’s precipice! For any wannabe universe, this is very bad news — the newborn universe would appear as a Big Bang, the Higgs field would become overloaded with an energetic inflationary period, and the whole lot would vanish in a blink of an eye."
This is where the BICEP2 results come in. If their observations are real and gravitational waves in the CMB prove cosmological inflation, the Higgs field has already been kicked by too much energy, pushing the Higgs field over the energy hill and deep into the neighboring valley’s precipice! For any wannabe universe, this is very bad news — the newborn universe would appear as a Big Bang, the Higgs field would become overloaded with an energetic inflationary period, and the whole lot would vanish in a blink of an eye."
We barely avoided this catastrophe!
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
our Universe shouldn't exist.
Maybe it doesn't
Isn't this the same as false vacuum theory?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
It doesn't seem far fetched at all that we don't fully understand the physics behind the Higgs boson. I'd rather say it's OBVIOUS that we don't understand the physics behind it.
A non-crushed universe should be proof enough that our current theories are missing something.
bickerdyke
... and me without my earmuffs, mittens, and scarf.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Later this year the CERN Collider will work for the first time at 100% power:
http://news.nationalgeographic...
Perhaps, we will meet God at last.
And then the new, 100 km in diameter, Collider will be constructed at CERN.
The logical conclusion is that, because the current universe clearly exists, there is something wrong with either the BICEP2 measurements, conclusions or the theory of the Higgs field. IMO the first 2 options seems the most likely to contain an error. This kind of measurements is extremely complicated and a lot of assumtions are made to get from the raw data to the conclusions. The Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BICEP2) already states that they are backing down a bit and investigating alternative explainations.
Hills and valleys, poetic images and wistful metaphors delivered with Shakespeareian bemusement over a cup of Earl Gray in the ready room, near the end of another episode's close shave with some Cosmic Anomaly or other. Perhaps Q is there as well, whispering: "the trial never ends, Jean Luc..."
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
I have no idea what the 'valley' represents, nor the 'hill' so this explanation tells me nothing.
What I read into this metaphor is that the Higgs field is a 'scalar field' that varies only with the distance - so one can draw a graph with distance as the X-axis and 'Higgs' as the Y-axis. This graph has a local minimum, that looks like a 'valley', and one can imagine that it would be possible to 'push reality out of the valley' to the other side of one of the nearby, local maxima. No, I'm not it makes a lot of sense either.
Also, I'm not happy with the tendency in physics to 'run to the fields' and start talking about fields and vector bosons; adding yet another field to the flock doesn't bring our understanding to a deeper level, it only allows us to perform calculations within our existing understanding, and I feel we are running against the edge here.
This is a good example of the scientific method in action, really: we have theory and a prediction (namely, that the university doesn't exist); seeing that the prediction fails, we have to conclude that there is a flaw in the theory.
Higgs Smash!
interesting things herald good science. Uncertainty and a collection of speculative theories are a good thing.
"Hmm, that is interesting" > "Eureka!"
Dammit!
If they collapse the probability wave function and it results a universe collapse, I'll be seriously depressed.. Practically crushed about it..
Okay, so a lower minumum energy exists just past that peak... But even if the early universe reached the peak between the two valleys, why couldn't the Higgs' field have simply fallen back into the current local-but-not-global minimum?
Do deeper lows actually somehow attract the evolution of the field, or did $Deity flip a coin that, fortunately for us, came out heads instead of tails?
I would not mind if it all just went away in an instant. It would sure save a lot of trouble.
OK, OK, Higgs field is quite dangerous, and right now we seem to be sitting in the just-the-right-value. And if the Higgs field gets more energy the whole universe might collapse. But the most important question is, "Is the lower Higgs field energy anthropogenetic?". Do we have any kind of plans to absorb sudden injection of high energy into Higgs field in Andromeda galaxy? I never trusted the Andromedans and we are just trusting them not to energize the Higgs field? Just bomb them just to be safe.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Gee Brain, what do you want to tonight?
The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to push the universe up the energy hill!
Egad!
Now we know where to build the restaurant!
"pushing the Higgs field over the energy hill and deep into the neighboring valleyâ(TM)s precipice!"
The mathematics to arise from accepted Higgs field theory suggests the universe is currently sitting comfortably in a Higgs field energy 'valley.' To get out of this valley and up the adjacent 'hill,' huge quantities of energy would need to be unleashed inside the field.
I have no idea what the 'valley' represents, nor the 'hill' so this explanation tells me nothing.
An article by Matt Strassler that should explain more. In particular, this pic
The story about our vacuum having two 'valleys' depends crucially on no new physics existing beyond the already known fields, which is probably false.
Some awfully nosy guy discovered exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here.
Ezekiel 23:20
Obviously, God siphoned off the excess energy.
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
Dark Star was a lot funnier than the Matrix.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
He misspelled BICEP5.
'You know how the Premiere loves surprises ... "
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The best thing is you won't feel a thing or even see it coming!
Spaghettification, fire, drowning, blunt force trauma, radiation poisoning... all rather painful even if only for a split second. This, it even prevents the electrons from being picked up and interpreted as pain!
The universe DID expand, immediately collapse into another super-massive black hole, and we're all just echoes in the subsequent Hawking radiation that's been released. The "accelerating universe" phenomenon is actually our local space/time having been slowed down by this super-massive black hole rather than distant galaxies speeding up. Make the Nobel Prize out to "Varka, of the Hill People."
Can you fly when you want to?
That depends on how this ruling against no fly lists holds up on appeal.
"I'm not overweight, that's Higgs crushing you feel!", she said
No most do not and this is a bull shit hypothesis.
we are on the way towards a "Big Crush" and we just haven't figured out the mechanics yet.
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
No one and I mean no one in the scientific community thinks the existence of the Higgs Boson means the universe should have been crushed. Morons are trying to push crack pot theory. Some jackass is trying to come up with way that something more exotic exists. There is ZERO experimental data that supports this line of thought. The Higgs Boson exists, get over it. Start reconciling gravity with the Standard Model. FYI yes the Standard Model does account for gravity, they're called gravitons. Science reporting is seriously fucked.
It should read "theory incorrect, must be modified to be compatible with real world"
Well, that's because when you're hunting for grants, it's far easier to get funding for something close to what everyone is used to than to get a grant to study something farfetched. And scientists are basically paid for by grants.
The grant committee doesn't want to hear farfetched ideas because they're subjected to a lot of them during grant applications, and without a clear path from "what we know" to "your pet theory" there's no way to tell which ones are simply the result of a creative mind and are total BS, and which ones might be legitimate science.
Even those theories we take for granted now were farfetched back then, and really only came out because the math suddenly lined up (someone is studying something, then ends up with an equation that you derived from your theory, like string theory), or an observation that just lined up with your predictions (like cosmic microwave background radiation).
Cut him some slack, he's just an undergrad. He won't find out that he doesn't know anything until later.
Required reading for internet skeptics
There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that. --Albert Camus The Myth Of Sisyphus
Required reading for internet skeptics
so to prove the power of a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick, we will have to fire up the CERN supercollider to ever higher and ever higher energies, until we can record the exact one that makes the universe go "poof."
then add 3, and there you have it.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
...is so fat, she has a Higgs Boson field that crushed the universe.
There seems to be a nerdy joke in there someplace...
"The wink of an eye" is much slower than the speed of our disappearance. When we think like a photon, time dilation and length contraction tells us that we got to where we were going instantly. All the energy and mass have long disappeared from the universe. We happen to be in the middle of the instantaneous event and, because of our frame of reference, we work in units of billions of light years. The Higgs field, I think, is simply another clue to the bigger questions we have, and does not contradict what we think we know and don't know.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The mathematics to arise from accepted Higgs field theory suggests the universe is currently sitting comfortably in a Higgs field energy 'valley.' To get out of this valley and up the adjacent 'hill,' huge quantities of energy would need to be unleashed inside the field.
I have no idea what the 'valley' represents, nor the 'hill' so this explanation tells me nothing.
That's okay. The people talking about it don't have a clue either.
reddit is over there ===>
"I read somewhere that the sun's getting hotter every year," said Tom genially. "It seems that pretty soon the earth's going to fall into the sun--or wait a minute--it's just the opposite--the sun's getting colder every year." -- The Great Gatsby
Everything he wrote is blatantly false (see previous post).