Stephen Hawking: God Particle could 'destroy the universe'

The ‘God Particle’ discovered by scientists in 2012 could cause ‘catastrophic vacuum decay’ that could lead to the collapse of space and time.

16:12 08 September 2014

Physicist Stephen Hawking has said that the “God Particle” that was discovered in 2012 could well destroy the universe.

He explained that at very high energy levels the Higgs boson could become unstable, causing a “catastrophic vacuum decay” that would case space and time to collapse.

However, he admits that it is very unlikely to happen as scientists do not yet have a particle accelerator large enough to create such conditions. 

His comments appeared in a new book Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space.

"The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become megastable at energies above 100bn giga-electron-volts (GeV)," Professor Hawking writes.

"This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light.

"This could happen at any time and we wouldn't see it coming."
However, he did seem sure that it wouldn’t be any time soon due to budgetary concerns.

"A particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate," he added, sarcastically.