stephen hawking bet gordon kane that physicists would not discover the higgs boson after losing that bet when physicists detected the particle hawking lamented the discovery saying it made physics less interesting now in the preface to a new collection of essays and lectures called starmus the famous theoretical physicist is warning that the particle could one day be responsible for the destruction of the known universe hawking is not the only scientist who thinks so the theory of a higgs boson doomsday where a quantum fluctuation creates a vacuum bubble that expands through space and wipes out the universe has existed for a while however scientists dont think it could happen anytime soon most likely it will take ten to the hundred years for this to happen so probably you shouldnt sell your house and you should continue to pay your taxes said joseph lykken a theoretical physicist at the fermi national accelerator laboratory during his lecture at the seti institute on the other hndrand it may already happened and the bubble might be on its way here now and you wont know because its going at the speed of light so theres not going to be any warning the higgs boson sometimes referred to as the god particle much to the chagrin of scientists who prefer the official name is a tiny particle that researchers long suspected existed its discovery lends strong support to the standard model of particle physics or the known rules of particle physics that scientists believe govern the basic building blocks of matter the higgs boson particle is so important to the standard model because it signals the existence of the higgs field an invisible energy field present throughout the universe that imbues other particles with mass since its discovery two years ago the particle has been making waves in the physics community now that scientists measured the particles mass last year they can make many other calculations including one that seems to spell out the end of the universe the higgs boson is about one hued twenty six billion electron volts this turns out to be the precise mass needed to keep the universe on the brink of instability but physicists say the delicate state will eventually collapse and the universe will become unstable that conclusion involves the higgs field the higgs field emerged at the birth of the universe and has acted as its own source of energy since then lykken said physicists believe the higgs field may be slowly changing as it tries to find an optimal balance of field strength and energy required to maintain that strength just like matter can exist as liquid or solid so the higgs field the substance that fills all space time could exist in two states said gian giudice a theoretical physicist at the cern lab where the higgs boson was discovered explained during a ted talk right now the higgs field is in a minimum potential energy state like a valley in a field of hills and valleys the huge amount of energy required to change into another state is like chugng up a hl if the higgs field makes it over that energy hill some physicists think the destruction of the universe is waiting on the other side but an unlucky quantum fluctuation or a change in energy could trigger a process called quantum tunneling instead of having to climb the energy hill quantum tunneling would make it possible for the higgs field to tunnel through the hill into the next even lower energy valley this quantum fluctuation will happen somewhere out in the empty vacuum of space between galaxies and will create a bubble said lykken the higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above hundred billion gigaelectronvolts 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 wouldnt see it coming the higgs field inside that bubble will be stronger and have a lower energy level than its suings even if the higgs field inside the bubble giwere sligilh stronger than it is now it could shrink atoms disintegrate atomic nuclei and make it so that hydrogen would be the only element that could exist in the universe giudice explained in his ted talk but using a calculation that involves the currently known mass of the higgs boson researchers predict this bubble would contain an ultra strong higgs field that would expand at the speed of light through space and time the expansion would be unstoppable and would wipe out everything in the existing universe said lykken more interesting to us as physicists is when you do this calculation using the standard physics we know about it turns out we are right on the edge between a stable universe and an unstable universe lykken said we are sort of right on the edge where the universe can last for a long time but eventually it should go boom there is no principle that wstae know of that would put us right on the edge not all doom and gloom either all of space time erundxists on this razor edge between a stable and unstable untlyirse or the calculation is wrong lykken said if the calculation is wrong it must come from a fundamental part of physics that scientists have not discovered yet lykken said one possibility is the existence of invisible dark matter that physicists believe makes up about twenty seven percent of the universe discovering how dark matter interacts with the rest of the universe could reveal properties and rules physicists dont know about yet the other is the idea of supersymmetry in the standard model every particle has a partner or its own anti particle but supersymmetry is a theory that suggests every particle also has a supersymmetric partner particle the existence of these other particles would help stabilize the universe lykken said we found the higgs boson which was a big deal but we are still trying to understand what it means and we are also trying to undernd all the other things that go along with it this is very much the beginning of the styro and i havore shown you some directions that story could go in bveut i think there could be surprises that no one has even thought of lykken concludes in his lecture