[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21499765]Linky[/url] [quote]A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, in a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it. It all depends on some precise numbers related to the Higgs that researchers are currently trying to pin down. A "Higgs-like" particle was first seen at the Large Hadron Collider last year. Since detecting the particle in their accelerator experiments, researchers at the Geneva lab and at related institutions around the world have begun to theorise on the Higgs' implications for physics. One idea that it throws up is the possibility of a cyclical universe, in which every so often all of space is renewed. "What happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it," the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory theoretician told BBC News. It was not something we need worry about, he said. The Sun and the Earth will be long gone by this time.[/quote] Thoughts?