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Originally Posted by Woof
The article doesn't say that this WILL happen a googol of years from now. It COULD happen tomorrow.
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However, if it COULD happen, it's not unreasonable to ask what are the odds of it happening. Technically anyone could suggest anything and say if COULD happen. The article, which was originally written for LiveScience, also adds the following under the title "
Not all doom and gloom".
Why Stephen Hawking Thinks the 'God Particle' Could End the Universe
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Either all of space-time exists on this razor's edge between a stable and unstable universe, 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 27 percent of the universe. Discovering how dark matter interacts with the rest of the universe could reveal properties and rules physicists don't 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.
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It's also worth noting that Hawking's scenario isn't especially anything new. Hawking just included another twist by adding the Higgs field. The problem is that the Higgs field is not clearly understood. There's still a lot more to learn. It's been previously suggested that it's possible the universe could suddenly blink out of existence at any moment. On the other hand, is there any reason why such an event couldn't slowly happen, perhaps taking billions or trillions of years? What if it happened right now, billions of light years away? It'd take billions of years to reach our neck of the universe.
Further, there are a number of other possible apocalyptic scenarios about how the world and/or the universe might end, some plausible, some rather fanciful. Take your pick. Could it happen? Well, sure, maybe. Will it happen? That's part of what's unknown. If if did happen, it'd be so quick that you'd never know it. Even if you did have some advance warning, there's nothing that could be done to prevent it.
EXIT MUNDI, a collection of end of world scenarios
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