Higgs Data Could Spell Trouble For Leading Big Bang Theory 259
ananyo writes "Paul Steinhardt, an astrophysicist at Princeton University in New Jersey, and colleagues have posted a controversial paper on ArXiv arguing, based on the latest Higgs data and the cosmic microwave background map from the Planck mission, that the leading theory explaining the first moments of the Big Bang ('inflation') is fatally flawed. In short, Steinhardt says that the models that best fit the Planck data — known as 'plateau models' because their potential-energy profiles level off at relatively low energies — are far less likely to occur naturally than the models that Planck ruled out. Secondly, he says, the news for these plateau models gets dramatically worse when the results are analyzed in conjunction with the latest results about the Higgs field coming from CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Particle physicists working at the LHC have calculated that the Higgs field is likely to have started out in a high-energy, 'metastable' state rather than in a stable, low-energy configuration. Steinhardt likens the odds of the Higgs field initially being perched in the precarious metastable state as to those of dropping out of the sky over the Matterhorn and conveniently landing in a 'dimple near the top,' rather than crashing down to the mountain's base."
Ambiguity in title (Score:4, Informative)
A: Other variations of the big bang theory are safe, just the 'main' version is in trouble
or....
B: The big bang theory itself is in trouble, including any of its variations. 'Leading' here would mean big bang theory over say, a steady state universe.
From what I can tell, the Slashdot title means B due to this quote in the story:
But if you take the data we’ve been given and just follow your nose, then inflation and the whole Big Bang paradigm seem to be in big trouble,” Steinhardt says.
Emphasis on "whole".
Re:"A high-energy, 'metastable' state"? (Score:5, Informative)
It's called a False Vacuum [wikipedia.org], and yes, it's quite the possible doomsday scenario.
If you read further down in TFA, you find that this Princeton professor has spent years trying to push his cyclical universe model over the inflationary Big Bang, and experimental results have not been kind to him. In fact, there's no actual mention of the Higgs data playing any part in discrediting the Big Bang here. The entire piece seems to hinge on his saying it's "unlikely" rather than any actual observations.
Re:GOOD! (Score:2, Informative)
Well said... But Carl Sagan said it best: An atheist has to know a lot more than I do. Sagan certainly didn't believe in a god, but he just treated nonexistence as the default, and was willing to listen if someone actually came up with real non-faith-based evidence that nonexistence was wrong.
Re:So, in other words.... (Score:3, Informative)
The idea of "location" with regard to the singularity is a question with no real sensical answer, unfortunately. It's a bit like asking "where is the center of the Earth's surface?". Only, you can't move around on the surface of the Earth, you can't fly over it, and so you only have what you can see, limited by the horizon, in every direction. Even then, any point you pick is completely arbitrary and usually based on some landmark. Much like we can say what our position compared to the center of the galaxy is, but asking about our position in the universe cannot really be answered. It doesn't help that spacetime itself is supposed to have inflated drastically from that singularity (i.e. the singularity *was* the Universe at t=0). In that sense, the singularity is "everywhere".
But yeah, the unfortunate side effect of the Big Bang event is that information about any state prior to the singularity is effectively lost, or scrambled to the point that it is nigh impossible to figure out. And this is something that bugs a lot of people, including scientists, precisely because it makes these other questions so much more difficult to find answers for.
Re:So, in other words.... (Score:5, Informative)
I beleive the leading guess is that the universe expands to its limit, then gravity asserts itself, causing all matter in the universe to compress into an unstable singularity.
No, current observations and theories place the energy density of the universe at below critical value, i.e. it won't re-compress and will keep expanding forever. Actually, thanks to dark energy, the expansion is accelerating (although since we don't know what dark energy is, yet, whether that will continue or even reverse is a very much open question).
Re:...not only Higgs "coincidence" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just like they "invented" the force of gravity? (Score:4, Informative)
Just like they "invented" the force of gravity to explain why the planets didn't just go flying off?
If by "they" you mean "Isaac Newton", then yes. There were certainly ideas better than "celestial spheres" before the Enlightenment, but not a useful theory that gave quantitatively correct results.
It's easy to propose the idea that "hey, what if the universe expanded really fast early on", but to invent a specific mechanism for that that describes why that happened, and why it stopped, and gives quantitatively correct results for the CMBR data is a lot of work. There have been many such hypotheses - some survived the recent, accurate CMBR data, but those make specific predictions about the Higgs field and will be further culled by the data coming from the LHC.
Re:So, in other words.... (Score:4, Informative)
I don't quite get why expanding faster makes temperatures more equalized, but I don't doubt the math works
In order to be in thermal equilibrium, two objects need to be close enough together at one point in time to, well, touch, basically (within each others light-horizon, specifically). Without inflation, parts of the microwave background far apart wouldn't be within each others horizons, so they wouldn't have been able to interact and equalize their temperatures. Inflation solves that by making it so everything was much much more dense in the very early universe, so temperature across the entire (visible) universe could equalize, then expanding very (very very) rapidly so that bits that were within thermal contact are now separated (or rather were separated at the time of microwave background emissions).