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n2doc

(47,953 posts)
Tue Jun 24, 2014, 10:49 AM Jun 2014

Should the Higgs boson have caused our universe to collapse? Findings puzzle cosmologists

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) will present the new research on 24 June at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Portsmouth.

After the Universe began in the Big Bang, it is thought to have gone through a short period of rapid expansion known as 'cosmic inflation'. Although the details of this process are not yet fully understood, cosmologists have been able to make predictions of how this would affect the Universe we see today.

In March 2014, researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration claimed to have detected one of these predicted effects. If true, their results are a major advance in our understanding of cosmology and a confirmation of the inflation theory, but they have proven controversial and are not yet fully accepted by cosmologists.

In the new research, scientists from KCL have investigated what the BICEP2 observations mean for the stability of the Universe. To do this, they combined the results with recent advances in particle physics. The detection of the Higgs boson by the Large Hadron Collider was announced in July 2012; since then, much has been learnt about its properties.

more
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140624093246.htm

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Should the Higgs boson have caused our universe to collapse? Findings puzzle cosmologists (Original Post) n2doc Jun 2014 OP
How do we know that the universe has not already collapsed? truedelphi Jun 2014 #1

truedelphi

(32,324 posts)
1. How do we know that the universe has not already collapsed?
Tue Jun 24, 2014, 01:58 PM
Jun 2014

With the rise of religious fundamentalists across the globe somewhat the proof?

Of course, I hold to the theory that the Creation of the universe is happening right now, and that although humans tend to see reality as a Time-and-Space-Base predicated on the idea of Past, Present and Future, that is a distortion. We see things through our particular Time/Space Base in this Dimension/reality, but this is only one of many Dimensions/Realities.

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