What is a false vacuum decay?
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The basic concept is that things want to be in the lowest energy state possible and when they are there they are stable. This applies to all of physics from a ball at the top of a hill that wants to roll down to exited and ground electron orbitals in atoms.
The second concept is that our universe is full of fields for the forces and fundamental particles. Electromagnetism has a field but so do the electrons themselves. We think that all the fundamental fields are in the lowest energy state (called the vacuum state which is where the name comes from) except for possibly 1: the Higgs field.
This is possibly not stable but metastable. It is a false vacuum (name). Like being in a ditch but still halfway up the hill. This would be fine if it stayed there but, due to quantum fluctuations it might jump out. It will then of course roll down the hill.
As it rolls it releases energy (like a ball picking up speed) and this energy will kick the balls out of their ditches all around it. Leaving analogy this will create an expanding sphere of new true vacuum with immense energy around it. This will expand at the speed of light and destroy everything it touches. Within this new area the very laws of physics are fundamentally different.
This could have already begun and we would never know until it is too late. Sweet dreams.
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