Eek! The Universe Is Going To Collapse! And Its All Higgs Fault!

[LazyGun]

Do not properly understand the math behind this claim at all, but I am making out my will as we speak :)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2523177/Could-universe-collapse-TODAY-Physicists-claim-risk-likely-started.html

Its the TODAY in capital letters from the DMs title that has me worried...

[sunny-dave]

Look - I've got £18 and 8p of credit on my phone - the world can damn well hang around until I've used it - OK?

[LazyGun]

@ Gness Ooops and LoL :) Still, anything that gives you cause to bring in more chocolate is an excellent thing, no?

[gness]

LG...not all of it was my favourite chocolate but I kind of felt obliged to do it justice.....can't say I felt that way about the sprouts in the garage though.

I will replace the chocs....with some I really like in case you spring something like this on me again before the 25th.....☺

[jomifl]

Steady on Jim, don't go digging up any of those higgy things unless it look as if the Aussies will win the ashes..

[slaney]

*casts aside Listener crossword - pours glass of wine*
Thanks LG for that perspective...

[Wharton]

Monday the 11th of August 2014 is the day you should all be worrying about.

[jomifl]

Is that the day that the Scots decide not to leave the Union? that would be worrying :o)

[Wharton]

Think and voice whatever you wish jomifl, but you'll never get 11th August 2014 out of your mind.

[jomifl]

When did you say?

[Wharton]

You've checked and made sure that the 11th of August 2014 is a Monday. haven't you?

[LazyGun]

Gotta love AB :) Not many places where discussing the Scottish independence referendum just naturally flows from a discussion about the end of the Universe as we know it :)

@Slaney Only to happy to oblige :)

[Wharton]

It wisnae me that started it LazyGun, it wis that other bampot :-)

[jomifl]

OK got it, the Justin Timberlake concert in Washington (not Tyne & Wear), why couldn't you have just said so Wharton.

[jim360]

I was thinking mainly of Dark Matter, jtp, which is surely a new particle of some kind -- even if it's as simple as a right-handed neutrino or something. Also I'm reliably informed that SUSY isn't dead yet, and there are strong theoretical reasons for believing that it exists. Likelihood is that we'll need the 14 TeV run of the LHC to rule it out at least in its full current form. But it's a hard beast to kill, is SUSY, because the parameter space you have to look at is far too huge for it to be as easily ruled out as all that (I actually think this is a weakness of SUSY but I don't work on it so...).

And anyway, aside from SUSY there are goodness knows how many other theories, all of which tend to predict new particles of one form or another, and none of which have worked yet -- but we still have some 16 orders of magnitude to go until (by most people's thinking) we've reached the end of the possible scale of new stuff.

[jomifl]

That's a big number jim any idea of a time scale.

[jim360]

I went and did that digging I said I would at last, LG, and here's the problem: I can find either papers that explain the problem in technical language, or that don't explain it at all. There doesn't seem to be anything to bridge the gap. I might try to write one myself at some point, but for now you'll have to be content with the fuzzy hand-wavy stuff the DM wrote above.

[sandyRoe]

We should all get burning brands and go and storm the Large Hadron Collider. NO good will come of all this science.

[jim360]

Except the very medium through which you were able to say that and goodness knows what else besides!

[sandyRoe]

Well, little good will come of it :-)