Warning famous physicist Stephen Hawking at risk for the entire universe of experiments at the Large Hadron Collider Higgs boson with no more than another “horror story.” This was told “RG” known theoretician academician Valery Rubakov.
What is frightening Hawking? According to him, a boson can cause the disappearance of two of the fundamental foundations of the universe – space and time. “The Higgs boson is a very dangerous potential: in the case of entering into a state of heightened instability it could lead to the collapse of the vacuum”, – said Hawking. On this he wrote in the preface to the new book “Starmus”. This is a collection of lectures by leading physicists.
At the heart of the modern concept of Hawking is the hypothesis of a quantum vacuum decay. It assumes that there are two types of vacuum with different energy levels – false and true. It is assumed that our universe is in a false vacuum. According to quantum field theory is a stable state with a certain level of energy. As for the so-called “true” vacuum, it is the least of all possible energies.
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According to Hawking, in the course of experiments with the Higgs boson it can be translated into such an unstable state, which will be a kind of tunnel between the false and true vacuum. As a result, the entire universe will go to a different physical state. Moreover, such a transition will be instantaneous. However, the cause instability of the Higgs boson, according to Hawking, is virtually impossible nowadays. For with the available scientific equipment needed accelerator size comparable to the Earth.
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Valery Rubakov, RAS:
According to the theory, in the universe can be two kinds of vacuum. False and true. This follows from the well-known Standard Model, which describes the world of elementary particles. By the way, it is considered one of the greatest scientific achievements of the XX century.
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What is the difference between these two vacuum? Only one – his energy. At false it is close to zero at all true negative, i.e. substantially less. While science knows a lot about the false vacuum, we say that this is where we live. This has been proved experimentally. But here is whether there is actually a true vacuum with its lowest energy, while scientists can not tell. The fact that we do not know the mass of many elementary particles. Hence the uncertainty in the calculations of the Standard Model. Once able to determine the mass with high accuracy, it will be clear whether it is possible the second kind of vacuum, “true”.
If – yes, if not in principle rule out the possibility, when our “false” vacuum goes into “true . ” This is reminiscent of the air bubble in a boiling kettle. In the universe somewhere randomly bubble within which the true vacuum. The bubble expands and its walls are flying at a speed of light, and finally burst. And the true vacuum fills the entire space.
But the likelihood of such a bubble, according to the Standard Model, is scanty. It will take time for many orders of magnitude greater than the lifetime of the universe. The number with a hundred zeros years. That is a theoretical possibility of false vacuum decay in true it is, but in reality it will take astronomical time. So it is nothing to fear.
By the way, all this is not a revelation, and has long been known to science. Why now it has emerged and became a sensation, it is difficult to say. May be due to the release of the book for which he wrote the foreword Hawking.
As for the assertion that the cause of the transition from the false vacuum to true can be instability of the Higgs boson, the LHC experiments caused, it generally sounds strange . This boson itself is unstable, its lifetime of 10 to the minus 22 seconds. That’s why it was so difficult to open. After all, he did not catch the Higgs boson, its existence is proved by the products of its decay, predicted by the same Standard Model.
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