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."
So, in other words.... (Score:5, Insightful)
....we just don't know.
Open vs. Closed Universe (Score:5, Insightful)
I have always felt that it was wrong to call this settled. The increased rate of expansion of the universe is explained by "Dark Energy", a completely unknown entity with unknown properties. There is no reason why the effects of Dark Energy might change (or even reverse) over time. So, is the universe expanding at an increasing rate? Apparently. Will it continue to do so? I don't think that is even close to answered.
Whenever you see something like that, (Score:3, Insightful)
A wizard did it.
Re:GOOD! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you religious people keep saying that atheism is a religion?
Because some atheists act in a religious manner.
We (I am an atheist) cannot prove the non-existance of God. We can use our observations of the world around us and logic to come to a refusal to believe the fairy tales we're taught as children, and this is all in the realm of reason. But those of us who claim to know without doubt that there is no deity have crossed into the realm of faith.
Atheists are believers ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do you religious people keep saying that atheism is a religion?
Because atheists have formed a conclusion, they have a belief, they merely have come to the opposite conclusion, the opposite belief.
One definition of religion is a group of people with a shared belief, in particular a belief that can not be proven. Given that a deity can be neither proven nor disproven, people who believe or disbelieve in a deity are both operating in a religious manner.
An agnostic is a person who has formed no conclusion, who does not know whether or not a deity exists because there is no evidence either way.
It would seem that the agnostic is the person operating on a non-religious manner.
Re:So, in other words.... (Score:4, Insightful)