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This story was updated on Feb. 20 at 9:35 a.m. ET .
BOSTON — A subatomic particle strike last year that may be the long - sought Higgs boson might doom our universe to an inauspicious end , researcher say .
Proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider show events consistent with the Higgs boson particle.
The the great unwashed of the particle , which was uncover at the world ’s big particle catalyst — the Large Hadron Collider ( LHC ) in Geneva — is a key element in a deliberation that auspicate thefuture of blank space and clip .
" This calculation tell you that many X of 1000000000 of years from now there ’ll be a catastrophe , " Joseph Lykken , a theoretic physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia , Ill. , said Monday ( Feb. 18 ) here at the yearly merging of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .
" It may be the universe we survive in is inherently unstable , and at some item 1000000000 of years from now it ’s all going to get wipe out , " added Lykken , a collaborator on one of the LHC ’s experiments . [ veranda : Search for the Higgs Boson ]
TheHiggs boson particleis a materialisation of an Department of Energy field pervading the universe called the Higgs field , which is thought to explicate why particles have hoi polloi . After searching for decade for test copy that this field and particle subsist , physicists at the LHC foretell in July 2012 that they’ddiscovered a new particlewhose properties powerfully suggest it is the Higgs boson .
To corroborate the particle ’s identity for trusted , more data are needed . But many scientist say they ’re reckon it ’s the Higgs .
" This breakthrough to me was personally astounding , " tell I. Joseph Kroll , a University of Pennsylvania physicist who also works at the LHC . " To me , the Higgs was sort of , it might be there , it might not . The fact that it ’s there is really a tremendous accomplishment . "
And finding the Higgs , if it ’s really been found , not only confirms the possibility about how particles get aggregated , but it tolerate scientist to make new calculations that were n’t possible beforethe particle ’s propertieswere known .
For example , the mass of the new particle is about 126 billion electron volts , or about 126 time the mass of the proton . If that particle really is the Higgs , its mass turns out to be just about what ’s postulate to make the macrocosm basically unsound , in a way that would cause it to end catastrophically in the far future .
That ’s because the Higgs field is think to be everywhere , so it bear upon the vacuum of empty space - time in the universe .
" The raft of the Higgs is link to how static the vacuum is , " explained Christopher Hill , a physicist at Ohio State University . " It ’s right along the critical line . That could either be a cosmic coincidence , or it could be that there ’s some natural philosophy that ’s stimulate that . That ’s something Modern , which we did n’t know before . "
Strikingly , if the Higgs multitude were just a few percent different , the cosmos would n’t be doom , the scientists pronounce .
But even if the universe is in for an unfortunate remnant , there is at least one grounds for solacement .
" You wo n’t in reality see it , because it will make out at you at the speed of light , " Lykken said . " So in that sense do n’t worry . "
