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The Higgs boson is delightfully stirring the mud puddle in the astrophysics community even after found! Instead of clearing everything up, now more questions have to be asked.
British cosmologists are puzzled: they predict that the universe should not have lasted for more than a second. This startling conclusion is the result of combining the latest observations of the sky with the recent discovery of the Higgs boson. Robert Hogan of King's College London (KCL) presents the new research on June 24 at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Portsmouth.
The controversy seems to be about one of the predictions of BICEP2 allegedly being observed, and if so, Robert Hogan seems to think that if they did see this effect, then the universe would not exist today, it would have went straight to 'Big Crunch' right after the 'Big Bang'.
Pop the corn, this may be a good one!
(Score: 2) by forsythe on Tuesday June 24 2014, @11:18PM
A second seems pretty long compared to several other possible scenarios I've heard of in which universal constants don't play nice with each other. Is that simply an extrapolation of an absurdly small number into layman-compatible terms, or would the universe really have lasted an appreciable amount of time under this model?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday June 24 2014, @11:29PM
Why bother fussing with the details of a now discredited theory?
Sounds like s skit out of the Big Bang Theory arguing about superheros.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2014, @11:52PM
Yeah, fuck that. A comment thread is for making pop culture references, not for having any kind of discussion about the related article.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Wednesday June 25 2014, @02:31AM
Higgs boson: "All your bang are belong to us"
(Score: 3, Funny) by Dunbal on Wednesday June 25 2014, @09:12AM
Not a discredited theory. All they have to do is invent yet another particle.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday June 25 2014, @01:48AM
One hypothesis as to the "fine tuned" nature of the universal constants that I find rather entertaining is this:
The balance of forces that emerged from the early cooling universe as the single unified force fragmented would have been influenced by the quantum mechanical state of the cosmos. If we assume that QM wave-function collapse requires an actual conscious observer (an interpretation that has lost popularity but may be inherently unfalsifiable) then that would mean that all possible cosmic wavefuntions existed in superposition, and with them all possible different fragmentations of the unified force. The entire cosmos would have then existed indefinitely as a sort of "superposition-multiverse" until such time as a conscious mind emerged in one of the infinite possible universes - at which point the wavefunction would collapse and that one, observed universe would be all that remained, blessed with a set of physical laws and constants that were optimally tuned to the speedy emergence of consciousness.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Non Sequor on Wednesday June 25 2014, @02:43AM
I can't rule out rule out that sort of thing although it's a bit froufrou. If you want mysticism you can actually get it without all of the mysticism.
The existence of laws of physics which allow the existence of life as we know it is a non-trivial mathematical result. We exist by virtue of that result. Regardless of how you frame what you believe in, you can't argue with that. It simply is.
That's my religion. I don't think it's entirely removed from other people's religion.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday June 25 2014, @05:09AM
In other words, selection bias.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 25 2014, @12:54PM
Remove the collapse by conscious observer part, and you get exactly the MWI version of the same claim: The universe still exists as a superposition of all such possible universes. And it is no surprise that the branch of that multiverse which we live in is indeed a branch which supports life.
Indeed, with the collapse by observer part, you'd have to explain why the observer did not observe one of the non-life-supporting universes, at which time the collapse would irreversibly have destroyed the very observer who caused it.