Is Stephen Hawking Serious About the 'God Particle' Destroying the Universe?

One thing we can say about Stephen Hawking: He's never at a loss to come up with a new way to scare the bejeezus out of complacent humans. Just three years ago he warned of an invasion of advanced aliens that would likely imitate the arrival of the European conquistadors who decimated native peoples in the New World in the 15th-16th centuries. Only this time modern humans would occupy the place of those technologically unsophisticated groups and become fodder for the aliens. It got many people to start thinking that we may have to worry a bit more when we send powerful signals into space - either intentionally or unintentionally.


Most recently, Prof. Hawking has warned that the Higgs boson — or so-called God particle — has the potential to destroy the universe, as reported by the Sunday Times .  This seems even more terrifying than the alien threat because the latter was localized for our own species and corner of the cosmos- as opposed to snuffing the whole 'enchilada'. But when one reads between the lines one quickly realizes Hawking is stretching the bounds of practical scientific prowess and feasibility.

The putative basis of his warning is actually highlighted in more detail in the foreword to the book Starmus, 50 Years of Man in Space.   Therein, the theoretical physicist wrote that if accelerated to high energy levels, the Higgs boson could cause space and time to collapse — and we’d be caught unawares. From the preface:

“The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become megastable at energies above 100bn giga-electron-volts (GeV). This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light. This could happen at any time and we wouldn’t see it coming.”

However, Hawking is gracious (and sympathetic of human feelings) enough to go on to aver he does not believe that this event will happen in the near future. Gee, thanks a heap, Stevie! But I'd have guessed it anyway given the magnitude of the energy needed from an accelerator (100b GeV) to make that happen. (Let us also bear in mind that the energy scale driving vacuum inflation was last seen just after the Big Bang- whereby the initial cosmos expanded from the size of an atom (about 1 fm in diameter) to several times the radius of the solar system.)

Anyway, Hawking explains for our benefit:

 “A particle accelerator that reaches 100 billion  GeV would be larger than Earth and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.”

Hmmmmmm........"larger than the Earth"...... or more than 8,000 miles long! Yeppers, I believe that would take roughly all the money that's ever been spent on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems - or about 14 trillion dollars (at minimum). So, I don't believe there's anything to fret over, since the energy demands of our population are actually increasing as the reserves are diminishing. (Frackers want you to believe they have the exception but this is mere 'snake oil' to use the parlance of Richard Heinberg)

In point of fact, such energy mastery would be more typical of the Type I Civilization once proposed by Russian cosmologist I.S. Kardashev. By his definition such a civilization would be able to wield and develop energy scales equal to an entire planet's output. (By his reckoning Earth wasn't even at Type 0.1).

(The Higgs boson was theorized by Dr. Peter Higgs in 1964. In 2012, evidence of Higgs boson was discovered by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. )

All of this interjects the question of what Hawking's next scare is likely to be: a possible collision with a mini-black hole (or one created in the CERN machine?) Or, Earth being blasted by the intense radiation of a gamma burst supernova? I am sure Vegas books will soon be taking bets!

'God Particle' Theorists Get Nobel Prize in Physics - But Pieces of Higgs Puzzle May Still Be Missing

The announcement yesterday of the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics created quite a media storm. Half a century after he formulated the theory that would change the world, Peter Higgs,  84, of Edinborough University, shared the 8 million Swedish kronor (£775,000) prize with François Englert at the Free University of Brussels.

The pair received the prize for showing how fundamental particles get their masses. Before the theory, the answer to this basic question was unknown After all, they had postulated the existence of the "God Particle" - otherwise known as the Higgs boson. It can be thought as the "glue" which holds particles of mass together.


In the parlance of The Royal Swedish Academy, the prize was awarded  for "the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the Atlas and CMS experiments at Cern's Large Hadron Collider."

What is the background here? It basically began when the two theorists produced a series of papers in 1964 that described how an invisible field that lurks in the vacuum of space interacts with elementary particles and gives some of them mass.  Now, this was still before Arno Penzias and  Robert Wilson's detection of the 2.7 K isotropic radiation subsequently traced to the "Big Bang". And hence, before the cohering process that resulted in what's been called the Standard Model.

Elaborating a bit: this so-called 'Standard Model' is generally defined as the symmetry:

SU(3) x SU(2) X U(1)

where each of the above denotes a specific matrix, or more exactly a group. See, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/04/looking-at-groups.html

In the case of SU(2) we describe it as the "special unitary group" which has the form:

S =

(a.........-b*)
(b..........a*)

where a*, b* are complex conjugates and we have (aa* + b*b) = 1. Thus the elements of SU(2) are the unitary 2 x 2 matrices with DET (determinant) = 1. These groups thus define the behavior of a specific class of subatomic particles. Spontaneous symmetry breaking would therefore resolve this combination into constituent parts, e.g.: SU(3) associated with the 'color force' of quarks:

 SU(2) x U(1)

associated with the electro-weak force.

One possible symmetry breaking (quark -boson format) is:

SU(3) x SU(2) X U(1) -> SU(3) + SU(2) x U(1)

which would occur at a particular ambient temperature (T_qb) for the universe at some epoch (E_qb) in the past. In the foregoing, the synthesis of SU(2) and U(1) into the locally gauge invariant electro-weak theory requires a mechanism which confers mass to three vector bosons while leaving the photon massless. This 'mass-giving' mechanism is called the Higgs Field or Higgs mechanism, and it demands the existence of one or more massive, spin-0 bosons otherwise called Higgs bosons.

Last year, theory evidently transmuted into reality when the discovery (thanks to the large hadron collider)  was announced at CERN. As I noted (in a July 4 blog post), Dr. Rolf Heuer, director general of CERN, while referring to the new discovery as "a historic milestone"  nevertheless cautioned that it was too soon to know for sure if the new particle (coming in at 125 billion electron volts) is actually the long sought particle. (Also, was it a unique Higgs, or just one of several?)

The problem? The culmination of analyses of over 800 trillion proton-proton collisions over the 2 years leading up to the announcement generated a quandary. When buttonholed,  the physicists admitted they  actually knew little. The CERN results were mostly based on measurements of two or three of the dozen different ways, or “channels,” by which a Higgs boson could be produced and then decay. Worse, there were hints that some of the channels were overproducing the Higgs while others might have been underproducing. In either case, false positives or false negatives, one had to look askance at the initial results.

The upshot? There may not have been a real Higgs discovered but a spurious 'mirage' imitating some of its properties but more a confection of the data than based in reality. Also, assuming a genuine signal or find, it may not have been unique but only ONE of two or three different Higgs bosons. Much like the case of the neutrino, which was once believed to be one entity only, but we now know is THREE: the electron neutrino, the tau neutrino and the muon neutrino, see e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/06/solving-neutrino-puzzleand-matter.html


By March 15 of this year the issue appeared settled, to the extent that at least that ONE Higgs had indeed been  found,  when CERN's brain trust stopped dithering and announced that the particle described in July 2012 was, in fact, a Higgs Boson. Spokesman Joe Incandela said in a statement issued March 15 :

“The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is,”

 To make this final determination, the dataset was analyzed to see if the quantum properties of the boson discovered in July matched the properties that are currently predicted by physics. After tests in two different detectors, it was confirmed that the particle possessed those properties

Ben Allanach, a theoretical physicist at Cambridge University, said:

"This is the recognition of a triumph for fundamental physics that will stay in the history books for millennia to come. I am thrilled about the prize, and Englert and Higgs both deserve it well. I cannot over-stress the importance of the discovery. The mass mechanism that the Higgs boson is a signal for has had a huge impact on particle physics over the last 50 years. I think many of us felt that it had to be correct, although we were willing to let data dissuade us."

Maybe. But it would still be nice to finally also settle the issue of whether the putative discovery is unique, or if other Higgs bosons may be lurking in the vacuum. To that end further experiments using an upgraded Large Hadron Collider may be called for. Unfortunately,  the LHC is  currently closed down for repairs. But the team is working on making it faster and more powerful. By then, the final questions may be settled at last and we can then know the extent to which the Standard Model needs to be revised.

"The God Particle": How Big a Deal?

Well, the latest news (e.g. WSJ, today, 'Physicists Close in on a Universal Puzzle', p. A6) is that the particle colliders at CERN (using the LHC or 'large hadron collider;') are "closing in" on the fulsome-named "God particle" (actually the Higgs boson). This is based on claims that the last few weeks have seen "an excess of events around 125 GeV" - that is, giga-electron volts of energy where 1 eV = 1.6 x 10^-19 J so that 1 GeV = 10^9(1.6 x 10^-19 eV) = 1.6 x 10^-10 J.

But when all is said and done, how big a deal is finally detecting the Higgs, really? Well, we are told that the Higgs us the only particle that the Standard Model of cosmology (and indeed, physics) says should be there ..as in exist...because it "ties together all others" and describes (or would using the Standard Model basis) how all other particle interact.

Elaborating - this so-called 'Standard Model' is generally defined as the symmetry:

SU(3) x SU(2) X U(1)

where each of the above denotes a specific matrix, or more exactly a group. See, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/04/looking-at-groups.html

In the case of SU(2) we describe it as the "special unitary group" which has the form:

S =

(a.........-b*)
(b.........a*)

where a*, b* are complex conjugates and we have (aa* + b*b) = 1. Thus the elements of SU(2) are the unitary 2 x 2 matrices with DET (determinant) = 1. These groups thus define the behavior of a specific class of subatomic particles.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking would therefore resolve this combination into constituent parts, e.g.: SU(3) associated with the 'color force' of quarks, SU(2) x U(1) associated with the electro-weak force.

One possible symmetry breaking (quark -boson format) is:

SU(3) x SU(2) X U(1) -> SU(3) + SU(2) x U(1)

which would occur at a particular ambient temperature (T_qb) for the universe at some epoch (E_qb) in the past. In the foregoing, the synthesis of SU(2) and U(1) into the locally gauge invariant electro-weak theory requires a mechanism which confers mass to three vector bosons while leaving the photon massless. This 'mass-giving' mechanism is called the Higgs Field or Higgs mechanism, and it demands the existence of one or more massive, spin-0 bosons otherwise called Higgs bosons.

The problem is, of course, that the Higgs boson remains hypothetical until formally detected (and confirmed!). Because it is hypothetical only, the Standard Model cannot be said to be complete. Therein lies the hype and the hoopla. Obviously also, since no one knows a priori what the mass of the Higgs might be, it must be hunted indirectly with ginormous collision machines such as the LHC.

But to show how commentators and even physicists can be led astray, one need only read from the WSJ piece (in synch with the earlier noted "mechanism" to leave the photon massless, that if the Higgs was found it would:

"help explain why some objects in the universe - such as the quark- have mass,.....while other objects - such as photons, the constituent of light, have only energy."

But is this really true? Consider that from very early in the last century the phenomenon of "radiation pressure" was known to exist, and it had to arise as a result of some finite (albeit tiny) mass of the individual photons. The very first experiment to detect radiation pressure was performed by the Russian physicist P. Lebedev in 1901, but the real effect was smothered by the '"radiometer effect". (This is the one associated with toy radiometers which possess one side of their rotating vanes black, which absorbs incident radiation and thereby experiences a slight push from the adjacent air-gas.) Unless a vacuum is quite good, it can swamp the real radiation pressure effect. Moreover, such specious radiometers always revolve the wrong way from what a genuine radiation force would produce.

By 1923, Gerlach and Golsen ('Zeitschrift fur Physik', Vol. 15, pp. 1-7) produced the first "clean" measurement of radiation pressure using a vacuum better than 10^-6 torr (where 1 torr = 1mm of mercury at 0 Celsius, and standard atmospheric pressure is 760mm of Hg). Their experiment was basically a test of the relationship:

c = W(1 + rho)/ F

where c was the (already established speed of light, or c = 2.998 x 10^8 m/s, W is the incident power in hundredths of a watt, rho is the reflection coefficient for the material used for the vanes (e.g. rho = 0.60 for platinum, 0.43 for nickel, 0.81 for aluminum), and F is the measured force on the vanes in 10^-10 newtons.

Gerlach and Golsen in five trials obtained an average for c of 2.98 x 10^8 m/s and to produce this generated incident power ranging from 2.78 to 6.39 x 10^-2 watts, and a measured force from 1.74 x 10^10 N to 3.14 x 10^-10 N. These results directly led to the momentum relation for photons of E = pc, where p is the momentum. Hence, if the photon has momentum - and it must to produce the force for radiation pressure, then it must have mass.

How much? Fortunately, many more refinements of differing measurement methods have enabled us to at least put a good estimate on the photon mass.

In the reference 'Gravitation and Spacetime', 2nd ed., Ruffini and O'Hanian give the UPPER limit of the photon's mass as:

m_ph < 10^-59 g

This is based on possible deviations from Maxwell's equations. Readers can see other limits - derived from experimental and galactic magnetic data here:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/photonMass.html

The limit of (7 x 10^-17 eV) cited in one experiment (by Roderic Lakes in 1998) is actually about 7 orders of magnitude larger than the limit set by Ruffini and O'Hanian. However, it is much smaller than the 3 x 10^-27 eV limit..So it seems that the Ruffini & O'Hanian value is probably a reasonable limit from a number of perspectives.

Given this, we hope the CERN collision specialists appreciate the context here. And also, are able to address the question: what constraints are to be placed on the Higgs if the photon is not absolutely massless? The words of one physicist, Dr. Soldner-Rembold of the University of Manchester, echo loudly here (ibid.):

"It would perhaps be even more exciting if it (Higgs) isn't where it's supposed to be. Then we'd have to come up with something else."