The Higgs Boson and the Fate of the Universe

The discovery of the Higgs boson at the CERN Large Hadron Collider poses new challenges to our understanding of basic quantum physics. Unless other new physics intervenes, we appear to live in a universe that is slightly unstable and will eventually decay catastrophically. Supersymmetry can stabilize the vacuum, but so far searches for superpartner particles at the LHC have come up empty. New ideas jettison supersymmetry, and instead connect the Higgs boson to dark matter.

Speaker: Joseph D. Lykken, Fermilab