What is false vacuum decay?
In: 70
So first, definition. Empty space isn’t empty. Vacuum has an energy. We currently hypothesise, and dearly hope, that this is a true energy floor. The lowest level possible.
But it’s theoretically possible that, like an excited electron emitting a photon, the universe can suddenly drop to a lower energy level.
Imagine that one day a sinkhole opens, but it just keeps growing, until all ground crumbles, we all fall in and all we ever knew is gone.
And it turns out that underneath isn’t more ground, but that earth is completely made of gas or something. Thoroughly different than what we’re used to and completely uninhabitable to us.
That’s sort of what false vacuum would be for our universe. Our universe rewriting itself to fit whatever new physics govern it t that new energy level.
The… Good? news is that this collapse would happen at the speed of light, so we wouldn’t feel anything. We’d be gone faster than we can notice.
The Bad news is that thos collapse would happen at the speed of light, so there is no physical way to see it coming and we’d be gone before we can notice.
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