Stephen Hawking: God particle could wipe out the universe

Zee Media Bureau

London: British theoretical physicist and Professor Stephen Hawking has recently warned that the "God" particle could destroy the universe. He says that the Higgs boson could cause a ''catastrophic vacuum decay'' that undermines space-time and destroys the universe.

He has unveiled this information in the introduction to a new book of scientist lectures called Starmus . He writes, "The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100bn gigaelectronvolts (GeV)."

Hawkins further explained: "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."

The God particle, which gives shape and size to everything that exists, could undergo decay, if scientists were to put it under extreme stress.

But he also added that such an event was unlikely to occur in the near future.