Could The God Particle Lead to Our Undoing? Stephen Hawking Sure Thinks So

There's a point where fear and reason succumb to denial, when we are faced with an inevitable horrific outcome. No matter the logic, no matter the possible foreseeable future, it all blends into skepticism and conspiracy theories. But what if the world's smartest man was the one pressing the warning button? Would you listen then?

In the preface to a new book entitled "Starmus", a collection of lectures given by famous scientists and astronomers worldwide, Cambridge cosmologist and noted icon Stephen Hawking says that a recent human discovery may in fact lead to the demise of the universe itself. Questioning the safety and stability of the "God Particle", also known as the Higgs Boson particle, Hawking says that the entire universe could be at risk from a simple mishap.

Discovered in 2012 by physicists during the experiments with CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the God particle was an answer to fundamental questions in the universe, like why objects have mass. Found from the collisions of two beams of protons accelerated into one another, the resulting God particle is not well understood as of yet, however, is continuously researched in particle accelerators to find its core meaning in the makeup of the universe and ourselves. Hawking reports that this continued research may in fact be the cause of a universal catastrophe if left unchecked.

"The Higgs [Boson particle's] potential has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100bn gigaelectronvolts (GeV)" Hawking wrote in the introduction to 'Starmus'. " 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, before we engage in doomsday preparations or start seeking out distant refuge on a habitable planet, Hawking says that the theoretical situation may be far off from being a real problem. With current technology not nearly as advanced as it would need to be, Hawking thinks that the likelihood of such a cataclysmic event would be one for a far off future.

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

Though while the problem may not be one for our generation to fret, still Hawking's words serve as a warning for generations to come.