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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!gargoyle!oddjob!mrl
From: mrl@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson)
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.sci
Subject: Re: What's All This, Then (Workshop on Exploding Particle Accelerators)
Message-ID: <1159@oddjob.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Feb-86 09:44:55 EST
Article-I.D.: oddjob.1159
Posted: Thu Feb  6 09:44:55 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Feb-86 04:23:22 EST
References: <572@hounx.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrl@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson)
Organization: University of Chicago, Department of Physics
Lines: 32
Xref: watmath net.physics:3835 net.sci:516
Summary: 

In article <572@hounx.UUCP> kort@hounx.UUCP (B.KORT) writes:
>	...physicists Piet Hut and Martin J. Rees, of the Institute
>	for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, have dreamed
>	up a beauty.  They have a notion that new particle accelerators
>	may create subatomic collisions intense enough to trigger a
>	chain reaction and thus vaporize the entire Universe!
>Anybody heard about this theory?

The idea is based on the parallels that exist between cosmology/particle
physics and condensed matter physics.  The universe has gone through
several phase transitions as it has cooled from the big bang, each
transition resulting in a modification of physical laws, e.g. the
separation of electromagnetism from the weak nuclear force.  Just as in
systems such as super-cooled liquids, though, the universe may not yet
be in its lowest-energy state, but rather in a metastable state,
separated from a preferred but different set of physical laws by a small
energy barrier.  All it would take to jump the barriers is a nucleating
center, which might be provided by high energy collisions in an
accelerator.  The universe wouldn't exactly vaporize, but I doubt if
anyone would survive the transition.

I haven't seen Hut and Rees' paper, but I suspect that this is strictly
speculation, based on the above-mentioned analogy.

>Do I have time to have a little fun in life before we blow it?

You'd be better off worrying about how Reagan and Gorbachev are going
to blow it :-).
-- 

					Scott Anderson
					ihnp4!oddjob!kaos!sra