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The Universe As We Know It May End Sooner Than Expected (hackaday.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Particle masses would change, along with all associated physics, as suddenly the lower Higgs field state means that everything has significantly more mass. To say that it would shake up the Universe would an understatement.

would this be enough extra mass to overcome dark energy expanding the universe and cause a Big Crunch? or would everything be far too spread out at that point for gravity/mass to matter at all?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Quantum field theory conserves mass-energy, so the new mass is coming from the energy in the Higgs field itself. It settles to a lower energy state and basically transfers that energy as mass to all of the particles that couple with it. Since it's mass-energy and not just mass that generates gravitational distortions, the large-scale gravitational evolution of the universe probably won't change, as this just moves things around a bit. It's not creating energy out of nothing.

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