And That’s The End

I have mentioned before that the World, as we know it, is going to end some day. Throughout my lifetime there have been a multitude of theories of how it might happen. Some are really exciting – some not so much. There are those that take a while, while others happen in a flash – or two. One really bright guy has a relatively new idea (I have written before about the Higgs Boson, sometimes call the “God particle.”)

 Stephen Hawking seems to have turned into the man with the sandwich board that says: “The end is nigh.” Not only has he warned us that aliens  might destroy us, but he’s also been worrying that artificial intelligence might do the same. Now he’s perceiving a threat that might not merely put an end to Earth, but to the whole Universe. Hawking is worried about the “God particle.” This, discovered by physicists during experiments within CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, is a vital ingredient to explaining why things in our world have mass. However, in a preface to a new book called “Starmus,”  Hawking worried that the Higgs Boson might become unstable. He wrote: “The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100bn gigaelectronvolts (GeV).” What might this lead to? Hawkins explained: “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.” (CNET)

Now, not to worry. I have worked rather intently over the years in studying energies above 100bn gigaelectrovolts (GeV), and we are not ever going to achieve such a bubble of vacuum decay. Trust me here.

He, Dr. Hawking I mean, is right – at least about one part. The Universe will undergo a catastrophic end, but will be followed by the creation of a new one. If you look, now, in the right place, you can see it coming. You can escape that catastrophe as well! If you need more information, please let me know. I have done some studying in that area as well. I may not be quite as bright as Stephen, but I do know more about the “end” than he does.