Extra-terrestrial occurrences seem to be happening with regularity lately.
Shortly after a meteor exploded over Russia and injured more than 1,000 people, one was seen in the skies over Cuba, Florida, and a rather large asteroid passed relatively close to Earth. In cosmic distances it was like a gnat flying in and out of your nostril without touching the sides.
Residents of the San Francisco Bay area reported an unusual flash of light that left many startled and thrilled. They noted it was either a meteor or a flashback from the acid trip they took during the 1969 summer of love. Either way, it was cool!
Experts say smaller meteorites hit earth five to 10 times a year but chances of a large meteor passing are much rarer. No, the thumping you may occasionally hear aren’t meteors slamming earth. It may be the Honda from down the street with a huge set of bass speakers cruising past your house.
Our problem is a little more complex than that.
Scientists say they may be able to determine the eventual fate of the cosmos by studying the properties of the Higgs boson. (‘Fate of the Cosmos’ is not a garage band from Seattle)
This next paragraph is for the much less scientifically challenged among us and I have underlined and placed in ‘bold’ the parts we all understand.
The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an elementary particle. It was predicted by a theory in physics called the Standard Model. It is one of the 17 fundamental particles in the Standard Model. The other 16 are the 6 quarks, 6 leptons, the photon, gluon, W, and Z bosons. The photon, W, Z, gluon, and Higgs particles are in a different class called bosons and are responsible for all the forces in nature except gravity. Scientists don’t yet know how to combine gravity with the Standard Model. Finding the Higgs boson could help us in finding answers like these.
Now, just to relieve the tension and give your brain a rest, here’s a Higgs boson joke; The Higgs boson walks into a church. The priest says we don’t allow Higgs bosons in here. The Higgs boson says “But without me how can you have mass?”
A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, with a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it. (Fact)
Let that sink in for a moment. It’s not like you can now drop your windstorm coverage and coast until the ‘big event that ends the world’..
Nothing to worry about right now, this could happen in billions of years. If you have trouble visualizing a billion, just think of what the government spends in 2 hours. By that time we could be so advanced that we can think of a video game and play it instantly in our head.
Researchers at the Geneva lab and at related institutions have begun to theorize on the possibility of a cyclical universe, in which every so often all of space is renewed. That could help with the reality TV situation. A lot of it is just taking up space.
This bubble will then expand at the speed of light, and “sweep everything before it” says Dr Joseph Lykken, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. “If you use all the physics we know now, it’s bad news.
Almost as bad as the sucking sound your 401K made a few years ago. The 401K is back but the universe as we know it won’t be.
It’s like permanently ‘un-friending’ our solar system and you know how painful that can be.