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Our universe may end the same way it was created: with a big, sudden bang. That's according to new research from a group of Harvard physicists, who found that the destabilization of the Higgs boson — a tiny quantum particle that gives other particles mass — could lead to an explosion of energy that would consume everything in the known universe and upend the laws of physics and chemistry.
As part of their study, published last month in the journal Physical Review D [open, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.97.056006] [DX], the researchers calculated when our universe could end. It's nothing to worry about just yet. They settled on a date 10139 years from now, or 10 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years in the future. And they're at least 95% sure — a statistical measure of certainty — that the universe will last at least another 1058 years.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday April 06 2018, @01:22AM (1 child)
IIRC there are already three other ways that the universe might end suddenly and without warning. E.g. the branes that (perhaps) collided to get things started off could collide again. The false vacuum could collapse. I forget the details of the other one. Most of them don't have estimated times, however.
The thing is, they all depend on physics that is not now widely accepted. None of them are really considered impossible, or unreasonable, it's just they depend on things that there is insufficient evidence for. E.g., there's insufficient evidence that things were set in motion by the collision of two branes. I know of no reason to believe that *isn't* what set things off, but that's not a good reason to believe it *is* what set things off.
Similarly, there are hypotheses that the mass of the Higgs boson is metastable for one reason or another, but there's no evidence that this is correct.
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(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday April 06 2018, @04:26PM
If its just one Higgs boson doing all that, it'll have to happen somewhere. It could be that point expands into a universe; prehaps it never takes much space in this one though. Space would just dilate locally.
And it to were to take space from the world we live in, the disruption would be limited by the speed of light. Not even QM gets around that, no matter how people try to interpret entanglement. The speed of light is subtle limit in the presence of superposition and uncertainty, but a real one.