Physicist Peter Higgs arrives at a seminar, July 4, 2012 at CERN, where it was announced that a new subatomic particle, said be consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson, had been discovered. (AP)

Last summer, when scientists finally cornered the elusive building block of the universe known as the Higgs boson, they apparently also discovered something else: that the universe’s days might be numbered.

“It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable,” said Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. “And at some point, billions of years from now, it’s all going to get wiped out,”

Scientists refer to last year’s discovery as a Higgs boson-like particle, since they’re still working to confirm it really is the elusive particle. The Higgs boson, also called the “God particle”, is believed to give all objects mass. But Lykken says it could also spell doom for the universe.

The Large Hadron Collider/ATLAS at CERN (Photo: CERN)

Lykken shared his conclusions at the 2013 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The scientist has also worked with CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, which helped identify the Higgs boson-like particle.”If you use all the physics that we know now and you do what you think is a straightforward calculation, it’s bad news,” said Lykken, according to the Reuters news agency.

The calculation Lykken refers to requires knowing the mass of the Higgs to within one percent, as well as the precise mass of other related subatomic particles.

According to Lykeen if any changes are made to the parameters of the Standard Model of particle physics, even by just a little bit, that you’ll get a different end of the universe.

A simulated data model of the Higgs boson  (Photo: CERN)

“This calculation tells you that many tens of billions of years from now, there’ll be a catastrophe,” Lykken told Reuters.

The Standard Model of particle physics provides an explanation for sub-nuclear physics and some aspects of cosmology in the earliest moments of the universe. In the standard model, it’s the Higgs boson that gives mass to all particles.

Lykken foresees the Armageddon scenario like this, “A little bubble of what you might think of as an ‘alternative’ universe will appear somewhere and then it will expand out and destroy us.”

He believes the cataclysmic event will take place quite quickly, at the speed of light.

The good news for planet Earth is that the end of the universe won’t occur for billions of years, long after the Sun burns out, an occurence which will destroy Earth long before the universe’s number is up.

Artist’s impression of a very distant quasar powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun. (Image: ESO/M. Kornmesser via Wikimedia Commons)

Scientists have found the largest known structure in the universe, a cluster of galactic cores so vast it would take four billion years for a spacecraft traveling at the speed of light to cross it.

The sighting challenges a theory from Einstein which suggests such a massive object shouldn’t exist in the universe.

A quasar is the compacted center of a galaxy surrounding a massive black hole from the early days of the universe.  Quasars  go through periods of extreme brightness which can last anywhere from 10 to 100 million years. They tend to band together in enormous clusters, or structures, forming large quasar groups (LQGs).

The international group of scientists led by Roger Clowes from the University of Central Lancashire’s Jeremiah Horrocks Institute, used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), a major surveying project that uses 2.5-m wide-angle optical telescope located at New Mexico’s Apache Point Observatory, to make their findings.

Clowes and his colleagues are astounded by the size of this structure, which defies the Cosmological Principal, based on Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity that assumes when you look at the universe from a sufficiently large scale; it looks the same no matter where you are observing it from.  The Cosmological Principle, according to the research team, is assumed but has never been demonstrated observationally ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’

Large quasar group (LQG) as imaged by the Big Throughput Camera at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile (Photo: Chris Haines)

“While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe,” said Clowes. “This is hugely exciting, not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the universe. The universe doesn’t seem to be as uniform as we thought.”

Clusters of galaxies can be anywhere from six to 10 million light-years across, but the LQGs can be 650 million light-years or more across. Making calculations based on the Cosmological Principle, along with the modern theory of cosmology, astrophysicists shouldn’t be able to find a structure in the universe larger than 1.2 billion light-years, much less four billion light-years across as this newly sighted structure is.

To get some additional perspective of what the astronomers found, let’s step back and give it a sense of scale.  Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is separated from its nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, by a distance of 2.5 million light-years.

Clowes points out that his team’s discovery does have a typical dimension of 1.6 billion light-years. But, because it is elongated, its longest dimension is four billion light-years, making it about 1,650 times larger than the distance from the Milky Way to Andromeda.

This small portion of a deep space image taken by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telscope Legacy Survey reveals thousands of galaxies yet to be explored. (Image: © CFHT/Coelum/Terapix/AstrOmatic)

Scientists have released the final version of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS), data gathered over six years which probes deep recesses of the Universe, including galaxies as far as nine billion light-years away.

This treasure trove of information  will allow scientists to better study dark matter; energy;  new, developing and evolving galaxies; and any solar system bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune, in a region called the Kuiper Belt.

The unique and powerful multi-color collection of astronomical images and data put together by the international team,  was gathered from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) located atop the summit of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano.

The project is led by French and Canadian astronomers who imaged and mapped an extremely large volume of the Universe using a ground-based, rather than space telescope, such as the Hubble.

The dome of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) is a world class 3.6-meter telescope that sits above the clouds atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano. (Photo: © J.-C. Cuillandre (CFHT))

“The Legacy Survey has already generated a lot of results and is the most heavily cited work from CFHT,” says Raymond Carlberg of the University of Toronto, who helped with project planning and oversight.

The high-quality images  allowed them to produce a large data bank which includes dark matter maps on the largest scale  ever  observed, according to the researchers.

The data set also contains the first high-quality light measurements which show that dark energy closely resembles the cosmological constant,  which counteracts the gravitational pull of matter, something  Albert Einstein predicted in his General Theory of Relativity and  later thought might have been his greatest mistake.

Although dark matter and dark energy dominate the universe,  they can’t be seen or identified.  However, astronomers are able to measure the effect that dark energy has on the rate of the expansion of our universe.

To help scientists gain a better understanding of dark energy, the Legacy Survey team set out to precisely measure several hundred “Type Ia” supernovae, which they say are excellent standard light measurements for measuring galaxy distances.

At the heart of the Legacy Survey was a state-of-the-art, 340-Megapixel digital camera called MegaCam, that was coupled to the 3.6-meter Canada-France-Hawaii telescope in Hawaii.  More than 15,000 individual MegaCam images were used to produce the survey.

This is image filled with a number of galaxies and other cosmological objects was taken from just a very small fraction of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (Image: ©CFHT/Coelum)

Observations began in 2003 and ended in 2009.  The scientists then took three more years to precisely calibrate the huge volume of data gathered from the images.

In the course of their work, project members were able to image and map across a combined area of the heavens which is about 800 times the surface area of the full moon as seen in the sky.

The survey revealed some 38 million celestial objects, which were mostly  distant galaxies in various stages of evolution.

The search for new solar system bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit, in a region called the Kuiper Belt, also proved successful. That area of space contains numerous chunks of material left over from when the solar system formed.

The astronomers  were able to collect what they term “an exceptional sample” of minor bodies in that region.

A new initiative, the Canada-France Ecliptic Plane Survey, has taken over that area of study. With Legacy Survey data, as well from other telescopes, those scientists have so far been able to determine the orbits of nearly 200 Kuiper Belt objects with high-precision. Other astronomers studying the formation of our solar system are also using the Legacy Survey’s information to test various scientific models.

“The legacy  will not be limited to follow-ups of the survey,” says Yannick Mellier, who leads a group of scientists  contributing to the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission – a space telescope with cameras designed to accurately measure dark energy. “MegaCam and the CFHTLS truly paved the way for the Euclid space mission both from the scientific and technical aspects.”

As shown in the above video, the supernova reaches its peak very quickly (a few days) and then slowly fades out over weeks to months. At its peak, a supernova can shine brighter than all the other stars combined in the host galaxy. The animation spans about 4 months, from pre- to post-supernova status. Credit: SNLS

The farthest-ever view of the universe. Hubble’s “extreme Deep Field (XDF) is a composite made from 2,000 images, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over a 10 year period. (Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team)

The Hubble Space Telescope has given us  the deepest view of space ever.

Called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, it’s a composite of more than 2,000 photos taken by Hubble over 10 years.

“The XDF is the deepest image of the sky ever obtained and reveals the faintest and most distant galaxies ever seen. XDF allows us to explore further back in time than ever before,” said Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz, principal investigator of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2009 (HUDF09) program.

Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and its Wide Field Camera 3 focused on a tiny spot of the southern sky, which was found in the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF), a composite created from Hubble Space Telescope data gathered from 2003 and 2004.

While the images that made up the UDF revealed thousands of near and very distant galaxies, the newly released full-color XDF image reaches much fainter galaxies.  NASA scientists say the new XDF also contains about 5,500 galaxies which were taken within a smaller field of view than the UDF.

In creating the XDF,  astronomers were able to use very deep exposures in red light  taken by Hubble’s new infrared camera, which was installed by the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2009. The data and images taken by the new camera will allow astronomers to study some of the earliest galaxies in the universe. The faintest galaxies in the XDF are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see, according to NASA.

This illustration separates the XDF into three planes showing foreground, background, and very far background galaxies. These divisions reflect different epochs in the evolving universe. (Image: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay, F. Summers (STScI))

The XDF not only provides a unique view of some of the deepest recesses of space but  also serves as a “time tunnel into the distant past.”

The universe is believed to be 13.7 billion years old, and the XDF shows galaxies that go back some 13.2 billion years, less than 500 million years after the Big Bang. The youngest galaxy found in the XDF existed just 450 million years after the birth of the universe.

The XDF will give astronomers the opportunity to view and study those ancient galaxies when they were young, small and growing.

If you would like to learn more about the eXtreme Deep Field, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which operates the science program for the Hubble Space Telescope, is inviting the public to an online seminar  Thursday, September 27, at 1700 UTC.

Three  astronomers from the XDF observing team will describe how they assembled the spectacular image and explain what it tells us about the evolving universe.  Participants can send in questions for the panel of experts. To participate, visit hubblesite.org.

This video explains how astronomers meticulously assembled mankind’s deepest view of the universe from combining Hubble Space Telescope exposures taken over the past decade. Guest scientists are Dr. Garth Illingworth and Dr. Marc Postman.  (Video: NASA, ESA, and M. Estacion and G. Bacon (STScI))

Taken from stills of a simulation of the universe’s evolution, this is a visualization of large-scale structures in the universe over time. (Photo: Habib et al./Argonne National Lab)

Since they can’t turn back time to witness the creation of the universe almost 14 billion years ago, scientists are working on the next best thing: creating a virtual universe, starting at the beginning with the Big Bang.

With the help of the world’s third^-fastest computer, physicists from the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory are developing  simulations that will take them on a trip from the origins of the universe until today.

This is a mosaic of the images covering the entire sky as observed by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).  Sky surveys such as this will be used to create simulations of the universe. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA)

Over the years, scientists have scanned the night skies with telescopes which produced maps of the universe.  With the advances in astronomical technology, more details about the cosmos have emerged from these surveys.

Taking data from the best sky surveys and running it through Argonne’s Mira Supercomputer, the team plans to produce some of the largest high-resolution simulations of the distribution of matter in the universe.

Given the improvements in technology, Salman Habib, one of the project leaders, says it makes sense to try to understand  the universe  on the biggest possible scale.

“In effect, all of science, as you know it, can be studied by looking at the evolution of the universe,” says Habib.

The planned simulation, according to Katrin Heitmann, a co-leader on the project, will include  images and movies of the universe at different times.  Scientists who use the team’s recreation of the universe for their own cosmological research will be able to gather information taken and measured from the statistics produced by the simulation.

Scientists hope the project will help shed greater light on Dark Matter, a theoretical form of matter scientists believe accounts for much of the total mass in the universe.

Habib points out that we’re used to thinking of space as something static or fixed, but as time progresses new space continues to be created. The expansion of the universe is predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but that same theory, according to Habib, also states that that expansion should slow down with time.

Albert Einstein (circa 1921) theorized  the expansion of the universe slows over time.  However, recent observations suggest the opposite might be true and that the universe is continuing to expand.  (Photo: Creative Commons/Wikipedia)

However, observations made over recent years, including work by winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011,  show the opposite is true, that in fact, the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate.

The cause of this expansion remains a mystery, according to Habib, but a number of scientists think  Dark Energy is the force behind the universe’s rapid growth.

The team also hopes to learn more about Dark Energy, the hypothetical form of energy thought to compose about 70 percent of the universe .

According to Habib, scientists are unsure exactly what Dark Energy is.

To help solve this mystery,  different models of what Dark Energy could be will be put through the simulation to allow scientists to compare the observational results of each model.

Habib and his colleagues hope their simulations will not only help scientists check various models of Dark Energy, and the properties of Dark Matter, but will also provide a kind of grand picture of the evolution of the universe.

Project leaders Habib and Heitmann join us this weekend on the radio edition of Science World to talk about creating a virtual universe.

Check out the right column for scheduled air-times or listen now to the interview below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.