Disaster very unlikely as physicists do not have large enough collider 
 
 The elusive 'God particle' discovered by scientists in 2012 has the potential to destroy the universe, Professor Stephen Hawking has warned. 
 
 At very high energy levels, the Higgs boson could cause space and time suddenly collapse - and 'we wouldn't see it coming', the former Cambridge professor of mathematics says. 
 
 The God particle, which gives shape and size to everything that exists, could cause a 'catastrophic vacuum delay' if scientists were to put it under extreme stress. 
 
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 Stephen Hawking wrote that the recently-found Higgs boson 'God particle' could destroy the universe 
 
 The God Particle could destabilise at high energy, threatening the universe, but the Cern particle accelerator is too slow to cause such a problem 
 
 A disaster like this is very unlikely for the time being as physicists do not have a particle accelerator large enough create such an experiment, but Prof Hawking's comments have excited scientists, the Sunday Times reported. 
 
 The theoretical physicist wrote his thoughts on the Higgs boson in the preface to a new book, Starmus, a collection of lectures by scientists and astronomers including Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Queen guitarist Brian May. 
 
 Prof Hawking wrote: 'The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become megastable at energies above 100bn giga-electron-volts (GeV). 
 
 '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 theoretical physicist wrote his thoughts on the Higgs boson in the preface to a new book, Starmus, which is released in early November this year 
 
 British scientist Peter Higgs predicted the God Particle in the early 1960s but it was only found in 2012 
 
 WHAT IS THE GOD PARTICLE? The Higgs boson was a key missing piece in the jigsaw for physicists in trying to understand how the universe works. Scientists believe that a fraction of a second after the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe, an invisible energy field, called the Higgs field, formed. This has been described as a kind of ‘cosmic treacle’ across the universe. As particles passed through it, they picked up mass, giving them size and shape and allowing them to form the atoms that make up you, everything around you and everything in the universe. This was the theory proposed in 1964 by former grammar school boy Professor Higgs that has now been confirmed. Without the Higgs field particles would simply whizz around space in the same way as light does. A boson is a type of sub-atomic particle. Every energy field has a specific particle that governs its interaction with what’s around it. 
 
 The professor did add sarcastically, however, that such an event is unlikely in the near future. 
 
 He said: 'A particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.' 
 
 Professor John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at Cern, said: 'One thing should be made clear. The discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) did not cause this problem, and collisions at the LHC could not trigger the instability, because their energies are far too low.' 
 
 Particle accelerators make subatomic particles travel at greater and greater speeds as they are pumped with more energy before smashing them together. 
 
 Scientists do this to try and spot tiny fragments of particles which fly off, and it is how the Higgs boson was discovered at the Cern LHC in Switzerland in 2012. 
 
 In that experiment, physicists noticed unexpected debris from the collisions that fitted with what British scientist Peter Higgs had predicted in the early 1960s. 
 
 The Higgs boson particle is thought to be part of the mechanism that gives matter its mass, but scientists do not fully understand it yet. 

 The 'God Particle' discovered by scientists in 2012 has the power to destroy the universe, Professor Stephen Hawking has warned. 
 
 The physicist said that at very high energy levels the Higgs boson could become unstable, causing a "catastrophic vacuum decay" that would cause space and time to collapse. 
 
 The possibility of this happening is extremely unlikely, he stresses, as scientists do not yet have a particle accelerator large enough to create such conditions. 
 
 He makes the comments in a new book Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space, a collection of essays by scientists and astronomers. 
 
 "The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become megastable at energies above 100bn giga-electron-volts (GeV)," Professor Hawking writes. 
 
 "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." 
 
 Accidental armageddon won't be soon 
 
 Hawking adds that this is unlikely to happen in the near future. 
 
 He said: "A particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate," he notes, sarcastically. 
 
 He said that the potential of the Higgs boson particle to destruct at high energy levels could offer important insights, as it "places important constraints on the evolution of the universe". 
 
 Particle accelerators increase the speed at which sub-atomic particles travel using magnetic and electrical fields then collide them. The most famous is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, Switzerland. 
 
 They are used so scientists can spot tiny particles which are detached in the collisions. 
 
 The Higgs boson was discovered in Cern's LHC in Switzerland in 2012. 
 
 Debris that unexpectedly appeared after particle collisions matched the predictions of British scientist Peter Higgs in the 1960s. 
 
 The Higgs bosun particle is believed to be responsible for giving matter its mass, but scientists do not yet fully understand its role.
– Stephen Hawking has already warned that aliens might wipe out the human race. Now another mild prediction: The Higgs boson or "God" particle could cause a "catastrophic vacuum delay" that undermines space-time and destroys the universe, reports the Sunday Times via CNET. How so? Well, the particle "has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100bn giga-electron-volts (GeV)," he writes in the introduction to a new book of scientist lectures called Starmus, reports Mic.com. But a particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV "would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate," Hawking adds wryly. In other words, the Higgs boson discovery at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland two years ago "did not cause this problem, and collisions at the LHC could not trigger the instability, because their energies are far too low," a physicist tells the Daily Mail. What's more, reports the IB Times, Hawking says the particle's potential to destruct can give us scientific insights, and "places important constraints on the evolution of the universe." Hawking's penchant for drama is nothing new: Scientists have long criticized him for "hyping" the facts with doomsday predictions—like a man-made virus killing off humanity in 1,000 years, or climate change raising Earth's temperature to 480 degrees Fahrenheit, notes Mic.com. (He has also theorized that there are no black holes.)