How Vacuum Decay Would Destroy The Universe

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The universe is going to end. But of all the possible ends of the universe vacuum decay would have to be the most thorough - because it could totally rewrite the laws of physics. Today I hope to help you understand exactly how terrified you should be.

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Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Matt O'Dowd
Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini, Pedro Osinski, Adriano Leal & Stephanie Faria
GFX Visualizations: Ajay Manuel
Directed by Andrew Kornhaber
Assistant Producer: Setare Gholipour
Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber

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[Summer-ofzk]

Honestly sometimes it feels like the expansion of the universe is just a safety net to stop errors from spreading too far.

[sebastian.tristan]

This is exactly why I watch PBS Space Time: the rosy, calming information that makes me sleep like a baby, without a worry in the world.

[miniverse]

It's amazing that the most energetic and concentrated events we know of in the universe apparently can't break this barrier. Makes me wonder if we really are in the true vacuum or it's impossible to engineer a decay event even if we wanted to.

[mydroid]

This is why we need "right to repair" legislation, so we can repair our decaying quantum vacuums, as my vacuum currently has a ~50% chance to excite my carpet's quantum dirt field.

[enhydralutra]

The thing I love about vacuum decay is that it could have already happened and we'd never know about it. We'd be gone in an instant and never knew what happened. That might cause existential dread in some people, but it's an event completely out of your control. You can't do anything about it, so there's no reason to even worry about it. Just live your life, enjoy your loved ones and friends.

[asbjrnskou]

Question: could we be living in a true vacuum bubble. The big bang was the vacuum decay, and the universe is expanding because it is changing the false vacuum around our universe?

[ilejovcevski]

Question: is a "failed" decay detectable? I mean, if a bubble of decayed vacuum collapses on itself, will it leave some trace the event? Something observable?

[syulis]

This sounds like the initial Big Bang. A phase transition between quantum modes. Suppose that before the big bang the universe was in a different minimum dip and as that bubble propagated across a then un expanded universe it created the this current set of physical settings

[mwbgaming]

Imagine if our universe is a vacuum decay event that is currently destroying another universe

[patrickbryant_]

Nicely explained! I work on a direct measurement of the shape of the Higgs potential by attempting to observe Higgs boson pair production at the LHC. The rate of this process is sensitive to the cubic term of the Taylor expansion of the scalar field we think is the SM Higgs at the current minimum. The plot that shows vacuum stability as a function of the Higgs boson and top quark masses assumes the Higgs potential is as described by the SM so it is important to check this assumption with experiments! It's possible by the end of the LHC's lifetime we will have made a first observation of Higgs boson pair production in a combination of decay channels but even then we will almost certainly need a bigger collider to really pin down the shape of the Higgs potential at our current minimum beyond quadratic order.

[slowercuber]

not "unstoppable", may I suggest that the runaway bubble be dubbed: "Unstoppabubble" ...

[tirex]

good to know, that the developers might not be done with updating the laws of Physics.

[Zahaqiel]

Vaccum decay is really expensive to fix - you gotta get special order parts and often it's just simpler to buy a new vacuum.

[atimholt]

I've had a thought: what if the true theory of everything dictates that nothing is stable and everything should collapse/explode instantly, but we just experience a “knife edge” reality of quantum immortality, where familiar physics is possible?

[SapientPearwood]

Idk, as far as existential threats go, I'm not that worried. Seems like there are a lot of really energetic things going on in the observable universe. The insides of neutron stars are pretty nutty, and just to jump up a few orders of magnitude of ridiculousness, sometimes supermassive black holes slam into each other, pretty violently. Seems like there has been plenty of time and opportunities for that decay to have happened if it was reasonably likely. And since it's the kind of thing that really can only happen once in an entire universe (which is a pretty big place compared to the size of that initial bubble), that it hasn't happened yet despite seemingly ample opportunity seems like a decent indicator that there is something faulty with our understanding to make us think this is plausible. Maybe that's a bit "anthropic principally" of me, but I guess it's enough to make me not worried.

[axiomatic]

"Schild's Ladder" by Greg Egan is an excellent read that deals with this issue and has some fun Science Fiction thoughts about it.

[kalosprismatic]

Thanks, Matt, for the existential dread first thing in the morning! I always look forward to learning more about our universe. 😊

[ShardCollector]

I just mentioned to my friend that quantum physics has weirder and more terrifying tales to offer than the whole Cthulhu mythos 😄 I remembered reading about false vacuum many years ago and came to looking if the theory still existed. I think my friend will appreciate this entertaining video that I just linked for him 😅 Great job as always 👍

[MoritzvonSchweinitz]

A quickly expanding bubble of spacetime filled with super high energy sounds quite big-bangy! Could there be any connection?

[johncao]

"Exactly how terrified you should be."
Low background anxiety level of terrified since there's nothing I can do if it happens. At least it's a quick death.