[ExI] Collapse of the universe is closer than ever before

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Fri Dec 13 20:07:48 UTC 2013


Maybe it happens tomorrow. Maybe in a billion years. Physicists have
long predicted that the universe may one day collapse, and that
everything in it will be compressed to a small hard ball. New
calculations from physicists at the University of Southern Denmark now
confirm this prediction – and they also conclude that the risk of a
collapse is even greater than previously thought.

<http://sdu.dk/en/Om_SDU/Fakulteterne/Naturvidenskab/Nyheder/2013_12_12_collapsing_universe>

Sooner or later a radical shift in the forces of the universe will
cause every little particle in it to become extremely heavy.
Everything - every grain of sand on Earth, every planet in the solar
system and every galaxy – will become millions of billions times
heavier than it is now, and this will have disastrous consequences:
The new weight will squeeze all material into a small, super hot and
super heavy ball, and the universe as we know it will cease to exist.

This violent process is called a phase transition and is very similar
to what happens when, for example water turns to steam or a magnet
heats up and loses its magnetization. The phase transition in the
universe will happen if a bubble is created where the Higgs-field
associated with the Higgs-particle reaches a different value than the
rest of the universe. If this new value results in lower energy and if
the bubble is large enough, the bubble will expand at the speed of
light in all directions. All elementary particles inside the bubble
will reach a mass, that is much heavier than if they were outside the
bubble, and thus they will be pulled together and form supermassive
centers.

----------------------------


Then they spoil it by saying that it might not happen after all.

So maybe Anders doesn't need to add it to his list of possible disasters.   ;)


BillK




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