Originally posted by itsamemario
Does anyone know the name of the thing where you could help make like amino acids or something? Sorry for being vague.
Is the Higgs boson a herald of the apocalypse? That's the suggestion behind a theory, developed more than 30 years ago, that is back in the headlines this week. According to physicists, the mass of the Higgs-like particle announced last summer supports the notion that our universe is teetering on the edge of stability, like a pencil balanced on its point.
"It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable," Joseph Lykken, of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, said on Monday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "At some point, billions of years from now, it's all going to be wiped out."
Physicists have been wringing their hands about this scenario since 1982, when theorists Michael Turner and Frank Wilczek published a paper about it in Nature, NBC News points out. The pair showed that the vacuum of space can be in different energy states, and it will be most stable at its lowest energy. Trouble arises if we're not there yet, and we're inhabiting a temporarily stable state that should ultimately collapse.
We think of a “vacuum” as being empty, but the trippy thing about space is that even vacuums have matter in them. The vacuum of space is filled with the Higgs field, which interacts with elementary particles, and gives rise to the Higgs particle. The vacuum of space can be in different energy states, but like all of nature, it is inclined towards the lowest energy state, where it will be the most stable. What we don’t know is which energy state our universe is in: is it high or low? What will it look like if it goes to a lower energy state?
Originally posted by Sushipunk
Now that's pretty rad.
I know. We're still probably decades away from realizing this, but it's great to see that there's some serious thought put into the possibility of a real warp drive.
Good work! I was about to post the black hole one myself. It's currently boggling my mind as to how it's rotating at that speed! And the 'warp drive' link is awesome. The idea of expanding and reducing space either side of an object is an old one, but never considered physically practical...... I hope the proof of concept research produces some positive results!
In the meantime, I'll start work on creating the United Federation of Planets.
Psyshell
Unfortunately most science stuff I've been looking into lately has been in video form.
I just finished watching
And it's amazed me. I really enjoy the style that obviously knows what it's talking about and is quick to point out the strength of the data and where the current limits of science are. Most of all it's good to understand things that affect everyone in great detail.
I found most interesting of all Sapolsky's explanation of why human beings have developed cognitive traits that lead to deliberately (for the rational humans) irrational behavior.
Here's a standalone one for anyone who's wondering whether that series is worth getting into.
