So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Yikes -- from The Register:

Higgs data shows alternate reality will SWALLOW UNIVERSE
That Higgs Boson we all got excited about last year because it would reveal the mysteries of the universe?

One boffin now says his analysis of the data suggests the Higgs is, in fact, an obituary for the universe.

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston yesterday, Joseph Lykken of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and a member of the LHC team delivered a talk titled �What the Latest Results on the Higgs Tell Us�.

According to Reuters, the talk had bad news for everyone and everything, and even time itself.

"It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable and at some point billions of years from now it's all going to get wiped out," Lykken told the newswire.

Here's how things will unfold in the worst case scenario:

"Many tens of billions of years from now, there'll be a catastrophe. A little bubble of what you might think of as an �alternative' universe will appear somewhere and then it will expand out and destroy us.�

Lykken is happily a little unsure of his numbers , noting that for his equations to work we need to know the mass of the Higgs to within one percent. Change an input and �you get a different end of the universe.�

Even if Lykken's maths are right, there is some upside in the fact he says this event won't happen for billions of years and will take place at the speed of light, giving those of us far away from the event some time in which to put our affairs in order.

Sheesh -- so now, in the span of a week, I have to deal with meteorite strikes, move my secret undersea lair and now this. It used to be that I just had to hibernate through the ice ages every 20K years or so. This planet is getting a bit to active for my tastes. Title of this post? Go and read (end of first paragraph) -- it ties together...