<b>The Universe Lives On and rumors of its imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated.</b>
<i>by Mike Perricone, Office of Public Affairs</i>
Poor old Earth, and indeed our whole cosmic neighborhood, has been under attack from talk shows, tabloids and Hollywood. Despite threats ranging from cosmic objects to subatomic particles, our beleaguered universe hasn’t blown its stack. Nor is it likely to, despite recent warnings on a late-night radio talk show
that turning on the Tevatron for Run II would “blow the universe to smithereens.” In a scenario described on the Art Bell show by University of Hawaii psychologist <b>Paul Dixon</b>, the energy released by proton-antiproton collisions in the Tevatron would “tear a hole in the universe,” pushing it into a phase transition, opening up a super vacuum where the laws of physics are different, and promulgating an energy bubble that would propagate at the speed of light— meaning the end of the universe as we know it. Dixon also invoked the specter of a homemade supernova cooked up in the Tevatron. However, Dixon’s doomsday predictions haven’t a scientific leg to stand on.
“We don’t have to worry about it happening,” said Fermilab and University of Chicago cosmologist Michael Turner. “Mother Nature has already done the experiment.” Every second, Mother Nature sends 100 million cosmic-ray particles raining down on Earth, creating particle collisions with energies surpassing those of Tevatron collisions. What happens? Nothing. No holes in the universe. No backyard supernova. “If we see a supernova, that means that the supernova’s energy has reached us,” said Fermilab cosmologist Rocky Kolb. “But in a phase transition, that
energy in the shock front would never dissipate. The shock 100 billion light-years away would be just as powerful as if you were standing next to it.” So if a supernova had set off a phase transition, we wouldn’t see the supernova because the shock would have blown us away when it reached us.
<b>Dixon</b>, who is a psychologist, has espoused the phase transition theory for years. He picketed Fermilab in 1995, describing it as the “home of the next supernova.” The supernova scenario also appeared recently in the tabloid, Weekly World News, attributed to Hans Estienne, who claims affiliation with the University of Bonn’s Department of Applied Physics—
apparently without basis. “Neither in the Physikalisches Institut
nor in any other physics institute of the University of Bonn is a Hans Estienne employed,” Erwin Hilger, professor of physics, Physikalisches Institut der Universitaet Bonn, replied by e-mail
to a query on Estienne.
