What is false vacuum decay?
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The “vacuum energy” is the lowest possible energy state there is. This isn’t zero due to quantum effects causing a system to have a minimum energy at all times.
Now the false vacuum decay is an idea that the true lowest energy is a bit lower than the one we think of right now. We’re only in a local minimum, but with enough input energy (or waittime) the true vacuum could be reached at a much lower point, I.E. a random decay happens and the system falls apart into a new state we didn’t know that it existed before.
If that was true we’d basically sit in a universe sized nuclear bomb. Because any particle could randomly fall into the true vacuum and release A LOT of energy that way wich could prompt other particles near it to also undergo that decay.
An analogy would be “what if burned ashes had some secret energy stored somewhere that makes it burnable again under the right circumstances?”. The issue is, we are the ashes.
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