Are We on the Brink of the Higgs Abyss?

One of the ambitious goals of particle physics is to elucidate the early history of the Universe and predict its distant future. Particle cosmologists examine whether the known laws of particle physics are consistent with the observed cosmological evolution and what future they might imply. Do such laws require some modifications to explain the present Universe? Do they suggest that the Universe is stable, or do they imply it is “metastable,” that is, temporarily stable on cosmological time scales but headed towards an inevitable, if distant, cataclysmic collapse? A new theoretical analysis by Vadim A. Bednyakov at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia, and co-workers connects these basic questions to the most recent discoveries obtained at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) [1]. The authors conclude that if the standard model is correct, the measured values of certain quantities, such as the mass of the Higgs boson, imply the Universe is metastable. However, they also show that stability might be more likely than previous studies indicated.