The universe collapses and rebuilds every tens of billions of years reasearch says

[Mitchman]

BBC News - Cosmos may be 'inherently unstable'

Scientists say they may be able to determine the eventual fate of the cosmos as they probe the properties of the Higgs boson.

A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, in a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it.

It all depends on some precise numbers related to the Higgs that researchers are currently trying to pin down.

A "Higgs-like" particle was first seen at the Large Hadron Collider last year.

One idea that it throws up is the possibility of a cyclical universe, in which every so often all of space is renewed.

"It turns out there's a calculation you can do in our Standard Model of particle physics, once you know the mass of the Higgs boson," explained Dr Joseph Lykken.

"If you use all the physics we know now, and you do this straightforward calculation - it's bad news.

"What happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it," the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory theoretician told BBC News.

It was not something we need worry about, he said. The Sun and the Earth will be long gone by this time.



If the calculation on vacuum instability stands up, it will revive an old idea that the Big Bang Universe we observe today is just the latest version in a permanent cycle of events.

So yeah, apparently the universe expands till it can't no more, and then a new takes its place during the implosion of the old one. Whatever is outside of the mystical barrier of the universe is really just the remains of the old one, and probably outside of that is another one. This is all according to the Higgs Boson research. Damn you universe, you scary.

 

[Owain]

Re: The universe collapses and rebuilds every tens of billions of years reasearch say

HOLY MOLLY, I had no idea this could happen, I may not know much about the universe, just commonplace facts, but this is so incredibly shocking to me, I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't read that.

 

[Shiny Staraptor]

Re: The universe collapses and rebuilds every tens of billions of years reasearch say

So that means the Big Bounce theory is now proven to be correct? Cool! Or at least, another version of the Big Bounce.
... though this also means that humans probably aren't the first life in the Universe (it was already quite unlikely, but now it's probably something like 1/10^50).

 

[Mitchman]

Re: The universe collapses and rebuilds every tens of billions of years reasearch say

The big bounce is one of many probably outcomes according to the calculations of the theory, not the concrete end all. But its the one that would likely happen the most.

 

[TFSpock]

Re: The universe collapses and rebuilds every tens of billions of years reasearch say

Yeah I heard about this once before, I think. I think that the chance of this happening is so astronomically low that by the time it happens, even black holes will have evaporated away, and all that will be left will be subatomic particles whizzing by each other, almost never touching. By then, that's probably be a good thing.

 

[NoirGrimoir]

Re: The universe collapses and rebuilds every tens of billions of years reasearch say

They've had the theory for a long time that dark energy caused the universe to expand to a certain point before gravity caused it to begin imploding, and then it would cause another big bang, but that was dis-proven on account of the universe not having enough mass to counteract dark energy. This is sort of interesting as it's a "Big Bounce" theory that doesn't rely on gravity but on a randomly occurring quantum vacuum.

I actually kind of want it to be true, as the idea of a universe that stretches farther and farther and eventually get's cold and dies is really lonely to me.

 

[GengarEatBanana]

Re: The universe collapses and rebuilds every tens of billions of years reasearch say

That's a really cool piece of information. It makes you wonder about previous universes though. I wonder if there was an advanced lifeform like humans in a previous universe?

 

[GliscorMan]

Re: The universe collapses and rebuilds every tens of billions of years reasearch say

It's like a ripple in a lake. That's really kind of cool. It probably wouldn't be possible to evade the sweep, as the matter itself is being replaced. But that'd be interesting, nonetheless.

 

[Dorothy LaRouge]

Re: The universe collapses and rebuilds every tens of billions of years reasearch say

It's like a ripple in a lake. That's really kind of cool. It probably wouldn't be possible to evade the sweep, as the matter itself is being replaced. But that'd be interesting, nonetheless.

Just as well, since if you did you'd probably end up with a taste for planets.

 

[Infinity Mk-II]

Re: The universe collapses and rebuilds every tens of billions of years reasearch say

I actually kind of want it to be true, as the idea of a universe that stretches farther and farther and eventually get's cold and dies is really lonely to me.

But this is the complete opposite to that: The energy from the expansion and contraction because of entropy eventually turns all into useless heat, where there is no thermodynamic energy left and resulting in the heat death of the universe.