The Higgs particle may have already ended the universe: Why are we still here?

With 13.7 billion years, our universe might seem stable. However, various experiments have suggested that it is in danger.

It all comes down to the instability of one fundamental particle: the Higgs boson.

In our new research that has just been accepted for publication in the specialized journal Material letters BWe show that it is so. improbable Some models of the early universe, those involving objects called optical primordial black holes, are correct.

If they were, they would have already caused the Higgs boson to wipe out the universe.

The Higgs boson is Responsible for the mass and interactions of all particles we know of..

This mass depends on the interaction of elementary particles with a field called the Higgs field.

Since the Higgs boson exists, we know that this is the fundamental field of interaction of particles with each other, existing.

You can think of this field as a completely still water bath in which we immerse ourselves.

It has identical properties throughout the universe. This means that We observe the same masses and interactions throughout the universe..

This unification has allowed us to observe and describe the same physics over many thousands of years (astronomers often look back in time).

But the Higgs field is unlikely to be at the lowest possible energy level. This means that in theory it could change its state and drop to a lower energy state at some point.

However, if that happens, It would radically change the laws of physics..

Such a change would represent what physicists call a phase transition.

This is what happens when water turns into steam, forming bubbles in the process.

Likewise, if a phase transition occurs in the Higgs field, It would create low-energy bubbles in space containing entirely different physics..

In such a bubble, the mass of electrons changes suddenly, as do their interactions with other particles.

Protons and neutrons, which make up the atomic nucleus and are made up of quarks, will decay.

Basically, if you are experienced A change like that, there will be no one or nothing left here to tell us about.

Recent measurements of particle masses at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider suggest that such an event may be possible.

But don’t worry: it’s possible, yes, but… In a few billion billion years.

For this reason, it is often said in the corridors of particle physics departments that the universe is not unstable, but rather “invariable,” because The end of the world may come, but it won’t come soon..

For a bubble to form, the Higgs field needs a good reason.

Because of quantum mechanics, the theory that governs the microcosm of atoms and particles, the Higgs energy is always fluctuating.

It is statistically possible (though unlikely, which is why it would take so long) that the Higgs could form a bubble from time to time.

But the story is different in the presence of external energy sources, such as strong gravitational fields or hot plasma (a form of matter made up of charged particles).

The field can then borrow this energy. Form bubbles more easily..

So, although there is no reason to expect the Higgs field to form many bubbles today, the big question in the context of cosmology is whether extreme environments shortly after the Big Bang could have caused such bubbles.

However, when the universe was very hot, even though there was energy available to help form Higgs bubbles, thermal effects also stabilized the Higgs, modifying its quantum properties.

Therefore, This heat cannot lead to the end of the universe.which is probably why we’re still here.

Our new research shows that there is a heat source that would cause these bubbles to continue (without the steady thermal effects observed in the first days after the Big Bang).

The source of this heat could be primordial black holes.It is a type of black hole that hypothetically arose in the early universe as a result of the collapse of extremely dense regions of spacetime.

Unlike ordinary black holes, which form when stars collapse, primordial black holes can be very small, as light as a gram.

The existence of these faint black holes is a prediction of many theoretical models describing the evolution of the universe shortly after the Big Bang.

This includes some Inflation models, which suggest that the size of the universe increased dramatically after the Big Bang.

But proving this existence is not easy.

In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking proved that due to quantum mechanics, black holes slowly evaporate, emitting radiation across the event horizon (a point from which even light cannot escape).

Hawking proved that black holes act as sources of heat in the universe, with their temperature being inversely proportional to their mass.

This means that Light black holes are hotter and evaporate more quickly than massive black holes.

In particular, if primordial black holes lighter than a few billion grams (10 billion times smaller than the mass of the Moon) had formed in the early universe, as many models suggest, they would have evaporated by now.

In the presence of the Higgs field, these objects behave like impurities in a soft drink, helping the liquid to form gas bubbles by contributing their energy through the influence of gravity (due to the black hole’s mass) and the surrounding temperature (due to the black hole’s mass).

As primordial black holes evaporate, they heat the universe locally. Therefore, they will develop hot spots that can be hotter than the surrounding universe, but still cooler than the typical Hawking temperature.

What we show in our study, using a combination of analytical calculations and numerical simulations, is that because these hot spots exist, The Higgs field should be constantly exploding..

But we’re still here. Which means it’s highly unlikely that such things ever existed. In fact, We have to ignore all the cosmic scenarios that predict its existence..

That is, unless we find some evidence of its existence in ancient radiation or gravitational waves. If we do, it could be even more exciting.

This would suggest that there is something we don’t know about the Higgs boson, something that protects it from bubbling away in the presence of evaporating primordial black holes. It could be entirely new particles or forces.

However, it is clear that We still have much to discover about the strange universe on the smallest and largest scales..

*Lucien Hertier is currently working at King’s College London as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology Group.

This article was originally published on The Conversation and is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license. You can read the original version in English here.

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