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
End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg: / multidroideka
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[@Summer-of8zk]

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

[@p382742937423y4]

Clever

[@heliusuniverse7460]

@@bastadtroll8922 nice bait

[@Immashift]

Universe Quarantine. Spatial Distancing.

[@SplatterPatternExpert]

Summer Yes. In fact, had to speed it up.

[@bastadtroll8922]

@@SplatterPatternExpert bell beleived in superdterminisim.

[@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.

[@YourIdeologyIsDelusional]

You think this is bad, wait until it occurs to you that on account of a vacuum decay bubble changing the laws of physics, it might not be limited to the speed of light... Also, and related, that if there's other false vacuums in nature, they could be disrupted by the first one, like a sort of cosmic domino effect. ...There could even be fields we're _completely_ unaware of that could undergo vacuum decay, "dark" fields that don't interact with ours... _Under normal circumstances,_ anyway.

[@daviddowsett1658]

@@YourIdeologyIsDelusional Anything is possible at ant time, so why worry.

[@SplatterPatternExpert]

I prefer the sweet sweet strains of Chris Hedges, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Doom is so comforting.

[@YourIdeologyIsDelusional]

@@SplatterPatternExpert Chris Hedges is frankly more disturbing: Everything he's warning about can happen within our lifetime. The odds of vaccum decay happening through quantum tunneling is so low that I believe it's statistically unlikely to happen close enough to us to matter, at least before the heat death of the universe, let alone the expansion of our sun.

[@Drackzgull]

@@YourIdeologyIsDelusional It seems to me that, since the rewriting of the laws of physics happens only inside the bubble, a change in the speed of light, or more accurately, the speed of causality, due to the rewriting would not affect the expansion rate of the bubble, since outside of it the speed of causality remains the one we know.

[@mwbgaming28]

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

[@drac0range717]

So... we are the true vacuum? We are the n°1 roomba

[@beaupullens7782]

Vacuum decayception

[@thezone5840]

​@@beaupullens7782inception? There is no russian doll layered multiple complexity. Its a kill or be killed universe style!

[@kit2770]

Whoa

[@lacriaturadekentucky]

You’ve given me an idea for a story. Thanks, I guess.

[@asbjrnskou4858]

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?

[@1973mckenzie]

He did state that we are close to the edge of false vacuum and they really couldn't tell, which suggest your theory correct... we are the beginning of the true vacuum right on the edge of a universal correction

[@Janken_Pro]

That could also explain why the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light since the previous universe with different physical laws might allow that.

[@medexamtoolsdotcom]

You are correct about everything except the part about the universe expanding because it is changing the false vacuum around our universe. But there was a period of time called "inflation" which IS in fact believed to have been a decay of a false vacuum into the next state of vacuum. The question is just if that next state of vacuum is the FINAL one.

[@jettmthebluedragon]

Well we don’t know 😐if the Ture universe is finite or infinite also we don’t know if the Big Bang was the main cause Beacuse the Big Bang violates the law of thermodynamics 😐 their has to be a cause and effect 😐also vacuum decay is possible 😐however it can switch from one to the other 😐and if a vacuum decay all ready happed with the point of no return then why or how are we here ?😐why are galaxies the way way are ? After all we might as well be all ready dead 😑even before the earth ever formed 😑so why now?😐

[@corywaggoner7403]

I was going to ask the same question...was vacuum decay our "big bang" and are we then living in a true vacuum universe.

[@mydroid2791]

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.

[@matthewc5640]

KZbin comment of the year, IMO

[@Bassotronics]

Louis Rossmann for President!

[@qbasic16]

I love you 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@moosemaimer]

Buy a Kirby. They outlast physical constants.

[@NeverTalkToCops1]

The Rossman 4th law of thermo-god-damnits!

[@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.

[@PERTEKofficial]

That’s a good point. Even if a decay bubble has been created and it’s within the observable universe, it expands at the speed of light. You’d just instantaneously get deleted and have no awareness of the event happening, and there’d be no experience being had afterwards. Your consciousness won’t just get turned off, it’d be as if you were never conscious in the first place. Try remembering what you experienced before you were born; you can’t, because you weren’t there to experience anything. It’d be like that.

[@LuaanTi]

@@PERTEKofficial Assuming it expands at the speed of light. If it expanded slower, things could get quite interesting on the night sky :D

[@Enourmousletters]

@@TheValkyrie9001 You don't choose. The vacuum chooses. Fear the vacuum.

[@MrAlRats]

I'm not one to worry about my own demise but the possibility of the erasure of humanity as a whole and our entire legacy before we mature as a species is something I find disturbing.

[@PERTEKofficial]

@@LuaanTi I was just thinking about that lol. Imagine looking up at the night sky and stars suddenly start disappearing. That’d be some unsettling stuff

[@miniverse2002]

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.

[@taylorjuchau3603]

I commented this one the video but I feel like it's an interesting perspective and relevant to your comment: Can vacuum decay propogate from within a black hole? Maybe the universe conspires once again, this time so that the amount of energy required to be concentrated in a volume would create a black hole first, thus infallibly containing the vacuum bubble and preventing infinit propogation. This would also explain why we can't interact with anything below the event horizon, it's literally operating with different physics down there 👀

[@deandeann1541]

Miniverse - even if the energy barrier is impossibly high it is reasonable to assume a tunnelling event can occur on an extreme timescale eg there is no reason to exclude a tunneling event expected to occur once in 100 trillion years - roughly the timescale of black hole evaporation iirc.

[@bastadtroll8922]

this is all fake WAKE UP PEOPLE we live on a flaT earth proof below kzbin.info/www/bejne/lXTTapWZhZJ1nbc

[@xxportalxx.]

@@taylorjuchau3603hopefully the bubble itself generates enough energy to collapse into a black hole, then we'd be safe from random tunneling events too! Fingers crossed haha

[@despicableone4495]

@@xxportalxx. and from flat earth maniacs

[@tirex3673]

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

[@scibanana3542]

Patch 34,759,023,881: -removed "free will" bug -slowed rate of expansion to allow intergalactic travel -modified warp drive to use more fuel

[@ryanhampson673]

Some omnipotent alien kid in his mom’s basement: I’ll take the trash out in a min mom…These damn humans keep looking deeper into my code!

[@user-ux9vt5hb3s]

@@scibanana3542 -removed herobrine

[@ilejovcevski79]

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?

[@pakeshde7518]

Yes and No. Yes it would leave some telltales but since its almost the speed of light by the time we measured it, its already hit us and gone through us. That's the trouble with lightspeed once you get up to a certain point of it the information becomes useless for us to get much less decode *what* it is trying to tell us.

[@ilejovcevski79]

@@pakeshde7518 that's not what i meant though. Say a bubble forms and it spreads up to a point, but not enough to overcome the "outside" pressure and as a result collapses back to the current vacuum state. Will this temporary decay leave some signs of it's existence after it's gone? Some radiation or exotic structures left behind that would stand out in the now again "normal" space-time? And can we as external observers detect any of those?

[@pakeshde7518]

@@ilejovcevski79 I suspect it would *seal itself up* and thus remove any traces. With all the background noise of regular events tracking whatever faint and fading remains would be the mythical needle and haystack time. Probably run into the literal uncertainty issue where the moment we try and measure what we think is the remains it just fades away, would be one heck of a race to measure before it got to that point though.

[@ilejovcevski79]

@@pakeshde7518 roger that. I was wondering as to the nature of any such remnants would be and do we even have the theoretical apparatus to describe them. I.E. exotic stuff, like the magnetic monopoles that would be relicts of the early universe.

[@ilejovcevski79]

@@purran3820 yeah, good point there!

[@slowercuber7767]

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

[@miabua73]

Or unstobubble

[@deathsyth8888]

Unpoppable

[@chriswalker7632]

Probubbley the best worst comment I've read in a while. Worse than the bit in superman 4 where superman inflates like a blue whale and sucks up millions of gallons of water - though that was the best bit, and they cut it out the film.

[@channelview8854]

Best comment!

[@armel2467]

I didn't know Santa has a KZbin account 😂

[@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?

[@dazrienhaizor8624]

quantum immorality has no basis in actual science but cool thought

[@mw9297]

@@dazrienhaizor8624energy is energy. It’s all an illusion.

[@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.

[@Inside.Frame1]

The statement "only happen once in an entire universe" is not true. It can happen simultaneously at the same time in different parts of the universe. Maybe one or more already happened. We will never know, until it disintegrates us.

[@syulis77]

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

[@DannyArguetaValencia]

Its higgs dips all the way down

[@SephirothRyu]

Yeah, it does sound a lot like what inflation would potentially cause.

[@ShakesB13r]

That is exactly what I am thinking aswell. it sounds soo much like it. I am no physicist, but just speculating that maybe a higher false minimum state would have caused the matter that was there before to have a higher gravitation and be packed so tight, that it collected so much energy to kickstart a vacuum decay which is now our universe. Are there particles that would not interact with that phase change in gravity? If yes, than they would carry information from the "before" and there maybe would even be a way that those particles are tricking us into seeing dark matter, which would only be an after-shadow of the gravity fields that we had before the big bang... The possibilities are endless...

[@Dinnye01]

Maybe the faster than light expansion is the result of this... the previous universe may have allowed for faster speeds than the current ones do, and the boundary moves with that speed.

[@TeppiaxD]

Idk about that only because he said that one state is the True Vacuum, so if this did happen it would be permanent wouldn't it ? Once the true Vacuum happens the energy wouldn't tunnel because there is nowhere lower, i think ?

[@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.

[@drangus8818]

How big would the bubble have to be to propagate itself? Is there any idea of the size or any properties that could describe the scale needed?

[@ethanscott1576]

How do Higgs bosons undergo pair production if they don’t have an antimatter particle?

[@eljcd]

Always nice to hear of a profesional. If I may ask, what kind of accelerator would be better to study the Higgs field caracteristics? A (bigger) hadron collider or a electron- positron?

[@bideosgrasiososjajd]

Yes

[@patrickbryant_]

@@drangus8818 That's a good question and I'm not sure how to do the calculation. I think the answer would depend on the change in ground state energy from the transition since this would determine the "pressure" in the bubble. Since we don't know what the true ground state energy is, I think we cannot directly know the answer to this but we can probably place limits on it.

[@RME76048]

This gives new meaning and insights to my occasional pausing and staring at the coalescing and growing bubbles of dish soap as I reluctantly was the dishes whilst musing about such things as expanding Verses, etc. Unfortunately, my quantum foam hasn't, on occasion, the degreasing action I require.

[@mikk01975]

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 👍

[@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.

[@quickdudley]

Sometimes there are no special parts to order because the company that made your vacuum went out of business in the 80's and you don't want to get the Rotterdam Museum of Technology involved.

[@lightdark00]

And the damn filters are expensive, if you can find them.

[@UteChewb]

Your package will be delivered in 10^20 years.

[@thetimelords911]

@@UteChewb Thats pretty fast considering the product being ordered.

[@Jojoblurp]

Good news! Vacuum decay supplies us with a new vacuum from the get-go!

[@johncao6516]

"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.

[@alexpotts6520]

Additionally, because the destructive wave hits you at light-speed you wouldn't even be able to see it coming. Not only would it be painless, there also wouldn't be any fear or any coming to terms with your fate before it struck.

[@e8root]

Do not worry, it is much more likely we will be hit by jet of an angry quasar, or some giant asteroid... or even more likely human made nuke ;)

[@alexpotts6520]

@@e8root Gamma ray bursts are the ones to really be afraid of - a GRB could be lethal but in a very painful way, my understanding is that humanity would in some scenarios die out over the course of months or years.

[@Mandrak789]

@Zonko man you should really talk to someone

[@deusexaethera]

You should be exactly as terrified of vacuum-decay as you are of having a brain aneurysm. They would both have the exact same effect on you -- one second you're going about your normal life, the next second it's lights-out.

[@DanteKG.]

Perhaps some of the inherent quantum field fluctuations are failed vacuum decays, the ones not reaching sufficient size to continue growing. This could be happening constantly everywhere around and inside us

[@ryanhampson673]

Was just thinking that…Maybe the failed bursting bubbles are “Zero point energy” and dark energy?

[@KryogenKeeper]

I thought of the ATP/ADP energy transfer in Biology when you showed the diagram with a ball settling in one of two states. Interesting how similar concepts pop up throughout areas of study in life. The expansion scenario sounds like a big bang moment.

[@MoritzvonSchweinitz]

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

[@nicknevco215]

I read that the universe is drifting to one side so maybe the false vacuum is over there

[@Raych666]

I hope this gets answered on the next video.

[@David-id6jw]

OK, nothing more than a random bubble of speculation: High energy density at the time of the big bang is triggered by the transition between vacuum states in the Higgs field. That is, a vacuum decay started somewhere. A vacuum decay bubble expands exponentially as its growth is fueled by the false vacuum energy from the external universe collapsing into the true vacuum of the Higgs bubble. During this period, an entirely new universe is born from the absolutely phenomenal amounts of energy it consumed from the 'external' universe - all of its vacuum energy, and everything that depended on that - leaving nothing left. Eventually the internal Higgs bubble becomes oversaturated with energy, and finds a way to "dump" the excess by pushing it back into the Higgs vacuum - elevating it back to the false vacuum level. This ends the period we call "inflation" in the Big Bang model. Once this happens, the exponentially large expansion rate cuts off, and we shift to the "normal" expansion rate of the universe. In the process, we've created an entirely new universe by consuming the old one. The new one looks like it went through its own Big Bang event, though with no evidence of where all the energy came from, because the remnants of the old universe have been pushed aside by the growth of the space of the new universe.

[@bored_person]

@@David-id6jw the problem with that is that a false vacuum collapse can only propagate at the speed of light, and the universe expanded much faster than that during the Big Bang.

[@garethdean6382]

Yes, certainly. The theory of 'eternal inflation' involves a high energy vacuum that randomly decays in places, the energy producing the matter of a new universe. At the very least vacuum decay put a stop to inflation in our observable universe, the only question is if it set us to the ground state.

[@TodayInHistoryNO]

Wait, hold on. "Fills the expanding bubble with a hot soup of energetic particles" Could a vacuum decay event have been the big bang?

[@sjkirkpatrick1]

What if there are multiple false minima of about the same value? Could our universe tunnel from one to another to another and maybe back again endlessly, until eventually ending up in the true minimum? Each time, starting over as a big bang?

[@T3H455F4C3]

@@sjkirkpatrick1 What if there is no "zero"? Like approaching the light speed barrier or absolute zero. You can get closer and closer but you never get there.

[@summertilling4023]

This is exactly what happens if inflation is correct, btw, so there's a good chance. The inflationary phase is exactly one of these false vacua. Edit: I should say, though, that in inflation I think the inflaton field doesn't sit in a local minimum like shown here, but rather slowly "rolls" down a shallow gradient.

[@doncerebro3800]

I like the thought of this. Matt even talked about other fields in string theorie being in a false vacuum, whose decay could alter the laws of physics within the expanding bubble. (9:01). So every vacuum decay is the birth of a new universe with slightly altered laws of physics, and within each new universe there will eventually be another vacuum decay, further altering the laws. Given enough time, there is a patch of space with every possible configuration of laws, and we just find ourselves in one of those, that support live. sorry for my bad englisch

[@garethdean6382]

That's the basis for the theory of 'eternal inflation'!

[@kapilesh14]

The presentation style of Matt is the best! I prefer it even more than Neil Degress Tyson's Startalk. I prefer the solemn tone over the hyperactivity and desperate humor.

[@punditgi]

Another super engaging video. Who knew you could make physics so interesting and even understandable! Hurrah for Matt and his team! 😄

[@Frahamen]

Imagine the vacuum decays before Matt is able to say "space time".

[@qwertyferix]

That would be the worst way for the universe to end.

[@KatyaAbc575]

My day would be ruined.

[@devarshdave]

We’re lucky enough, but future generations might not be able to see his “space-time” videos 🤣

[@moonage_]

@@KatyaAbc575 Your day wouldn't even be a concept if we were decayed to the lowest energy state lol

[@xbolt90]

Actually, quantum mechanics forbids this.

[@cainomega]

"let's review the HORRORS that would result from(...)" You know what we like :)

[@2Sor2Fig]

This analogy helped me understand quantum field theory so much better in terms of how basic oscillations can create a larger macroscopic effect, and also why fields don't interact, since waves pass through each other and just keep on propagating. As a former science teacher (programming makes more money), I really appreciate how well Dowd explains things. It's like listening to one of Feynman's lectures.

[@MastaChafa]

This takes away some of my worries such as getting fired from my job or so. So thanks.

[@StevePlegge]

How terrified? Exactly zero. You won't see it coming, and you won't know it happened.

[@deanmccrorie3461]

People who subscribe to the materialist paradigm of consciousness will still hate it.

[@xxxggthyf]

@@deanmccrorie3461 I do and I don't. You seem to have it barse ackwards. If consciousness is materialistic in nature then my consciousness ends when the bubble arrives and I'll know nothing about it. It will be no different to any other death except being a damn sight more pleasant than some of the alternatives.

[@StevePlegge]

@@deanmccrorie3461 They won't know it.

[@BonESaw95]

I swear this terrified than death

[@drdca8263]

There is an additional assumption that you need to reach that conclusion: that we can’t non-negligibly influence the probability of it happening.

[@goartist]

i am still waiting for matt to accidentally say "space time" in the first minute and thereby ending the episode

[@drangus8818]

they should do an april fools video like this

[@mikesmits7588]

This gave me a good laugh thanks.

[@mho...]

that would be one way of destabilizing..

[@kevinbagar8814]

the phrase is a PBS vacuum decay bubble

[@ballswalls8189]

New physics kzbin.info/www/bejne/pZ60Xnptmd2kbtU

[@buddhabunnee]

Matt, I love your show. Thank you so much for bringing us all this amazing mind blowing content! ❤️

[@Waterdust2000]

Very interesting news.. bring more of this? I enjoy knowing such things. Of course the usual info is appreciated too.

[@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.

[@gentleman_muk]

for some reason i read that as "child labor". i need to sleep more

[@rstriker21]

@@gentleman_muk schild’s play

[@UteChewb]

Also, Stephen Baxter's Ultima talks about it. It is the sequel to Proxima, which I thought was better, but YMMV. I like Egan, so I'll have a look at Schild's Ladder.

[@aelolul]

I also endorse _Schild's Ladder_ . Egan is an excellent author and his hard sci-fi books are totally engrossing.

[@tehklevster]

I was about to add a comment about "Schild's Ladder" having read it a few years back myself. Egan is apparently a physicist and in his book and website postulates that the "bubble" of the vacuum decay event from its source would happen at about 1/2 light speed. But even if this even happened at the speed of light, and may have already happened beyond our visible universe then we as occupants of the current universe might not actually have to be concerned at all. Unless this happens in our visible universe. Sorry not a physicist, just throwing some thoughts out there.

[@heyrishiraj]

What if a black hole comes in the way of an expanding vacuum decay bubble?

[@Tobiasz931]

Very interesting question! I would guess that from outside perspective it would never reach the black hole (freeze at event horizon and also go around it), but from the inside perspective it would destroy the inside's contents just like everything else. I'd love to see this being answered by someone who knows what they're talking about though :)

[@michal.gawron]

I guess we need quantum gravity theory to speculate about that…

[@bns651]

I guess since spacetime stretches faster than light after the eventhorizon it would never reach the singularity

[@ozzymandius666]

The vacuum energy seems to be about 5 million proton masses/cubic meter. So, after the bubble passes you would have 5 million cold protons worth of energy/cubic meter in the new, stable vacuum. The black hole would likely remain, and get a bit bigger, bathed by hot radiation. Also, the universal horizon would recede to infinity, stars would explode as all that energy added to their already considerable energy, some of the heaviest neutron stars might collapse into black holes, others would explode as their constituent quarks became massless (but still bound by the strong force) and got heated by the new matter and radiation from the decayed Higgs field as their gravitational fields got a bit weaker. If all the energy was released as thermal photons, they would have a temperature on the order of 10^26 Kelvins, or around a millionth of the Planck temperature.

[@draegore]

It would... still be a black hole.

[@michaelgautreaux3168]

Lol....love the "Sniping" regarding Matt's where about's! 👍 Many thanx.

[@Vastin]

Pretty sure we don't have to worry about creating our own vacuum decay event for a goodly time yet. We're going to have a very hard time competing with black holes and supernovae in terms of high energy events that could kick off trouble.

[@j_smith_]

The vacuum decay bubble sounds suspiciously like the big bang, including the large release of energy. Is that a coincidence, or is there a possible connection? Are we in a vacuum decayed bubble within another, larger, universe?

[@BonESaw95]

Well.. There's no way to prove it no one's know what happens before the big bang & we don't want to test real vacum decay

[@r3dchicken]

Wow.. so maybe there is many false vacuum energy states and we are in the one that is just below the larger universe which has other physics law, and which is also a vaccum decayed bubble from another universe and so on

[@bytefu]

Even if it was true, that, sadly, would still not explain the origin of the parent universe and only made things even more complicated, than they are now, because that would mean you cannot study the parent universe at all, even in principle.

[@Ole_Rasmussen]

@@BonESaw95 I'd like to test it. For ulterior reasons.

[@df1299]

On top of that, our own universe appears destined for cold, dark, and lonely heat death. As space continues to expand in that far far future, there should be more than enough time and space for Vacuum Decay to occur, or occur again if you like.

[@NewMessage]

This should be called the Dyson Unification Theory. The place where Freeman Dyson meets James Dyson.

[@mattjackson9859]

Let's compare:- Dyson Sphere: 150,000,000 km radius, designed to capture almost all the energy from the Sun Dyson Ball: 10 cm radius, helps steer your vacuum cleaner round the furniture...

[@defenderofwisdom]

Pfft, you're just a notification icon, you don't *know* anything. Stop posting stuff and tell me when my email arrives.

[@paulpeterson4216]

So Freeman Dyson is James Dyson's anti-particle, and their meeting triggers the end of the universe?

[@djtan3313]

Mike says hi.

[@cpt_bill366]

@@mattjackson9859 Mom, can we get a Dyson Sphere? No, we have one at home...

[@EMBer3000]

It's sort of hubristic to imagine that any sort of energy density we could create in a lab has not already been exceded hugely by some quasar somewhere. Magnetic field density, particle energy, photon intensity; all of them would be quadrillions of times stronger close to a super massive black hole feeding on a bunch of stars.

[@bastadtroll8922]

this is all fake WAKE UP PEOPLE we live on a flat earth undeniable proof below kzbin.info/www/bejne/lXTTapWZhZJ1nbc

[@BPHAbishekP]

@@bastadtroll8922 first experience of coming across a stupid flat earther 🙂

[@ozzymandius666]

Not correct. The highest energy cosmic rays to hit us may have been accelerated for billions of years. Also, the highest temperatures ever observed are at the LHC, not at quasars or BHs in the ceneter of galaxies, and we can know their temp by their spectra. The coldest temperature ever observed is also here on Earth.

[@lesliejohnrichardson]

I have been waiting for this video for a long time, thanks man

[@gui6881]

Are we technically safe if we live in many worlds? I mean... can we view vacuum decay as a universe scale quantum immortality experiment?

[@thanasisathanasiou6362]

Well, since the universe has gained the ability to observe itself (us), then i'd say yes, our consciousness carrying vessel (our body), could be destroyed by vacuum decay after every second plank length of time that passes, yes given enough time, a universe with the same properties but withought the vacuum decay at that point, could reassemble your consciousness, enabling its continuation. (Not specifically your consciousness for that universe, but any consciousness; if so that means that some other universe will inhabit yours) Thus, many worlds could also been seen as past and future worlds.

[@tapksa]

I guess you can take solace in the thought, but it also means that numerous versions of use are being wiped away constantly. Pick your poison. :) From the perspective of a continous human experience, it's exactly the same as a probabilistic collapse.

[@e8root]

What do you think happened to those other worlds? We live in one which was not yet destroyed.

[@thanasisathanasiou6362]

@@e8root everything and nothing

[@kalosprismatic]

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

[@rafaelcamargourango5082]

This is seriously the most beautiful of all ends.

[@brendandonnelly8375]

Best lesson/explanation on quantum Field Theory I have ever had.

[@PeterGaunt]

Thank you Matt. As someone who has been fascinated by physics for most of the past 70 years but did biology (another fascination involving emergent properties) at university because I didn't think I had the maths I almost entirely understand what you've just explained. Splendid!

[@scottslotterbeck3796]

My father was a genius scientist and nuclear rocket engineer. I got my math skills from my mother, lol. Sadly. My cousin's son was recruited by MIT, and works on the Perseverance rover with JPL. I went to law school, lol.

[@fugslayernominee1397]

Been waiting for this video for quite a while. Always thought how vacuum decay would affect black holes, dark matter and other stuff in the universe which doesn't have anything to do with higgs field.

[@AmblesJambles]

Yeah, what happens when a vacuum decay bubble hits a black hole?!

[@bobysze]

​@@AmblesJambles That's probably where our current physics breaks down. There is no way to know how a quantum field would behave inside a black hole. Also, those local and global minima depend on the temperature/energy density. We don't know what the temperature at the center black hole is, but if we assume it's really high, then it might not even be affected by the quantum decay.

[@AmblesJambles]

@@bobysze I suppose even if vacuum decay happened inside the event horizon it wouldn't be able to leave the black hole since it expands near light speed. If a vacuum decay bubble engulfed a black hole would it actually engulf the singularity? We're taking one mind bender and using it to bash another!

[@bobysze]

@@AmblesJambles Well, the vacuum decay bubble would not be much different from space right now (aside from some particles having different or no mass, which doesn't matter for the black hole anyways). So in theory it should not really have too much of an effect on the black hole from the outside, aside from initial burst of energy, which just might make the black hole bigger than before. But once that energy is gone, then it's back to (new) normal. Though, maybe something changes inside the black hole? But QFT doesn't really work inside a black hole described by GR. The basic problem is, that QFT needs space-time as it's "stage" to work on, while GR uses that stage to describe gravity. Inside the event horizon and especially at the singularity that stage breaks down and QFT stops working. So we are trying to use two incompatible theories to try to explain something. It's like trying to use GR on fundamental point like particles. Each particle has it's own event horizon and if you bring both close enough, the force gets infinitely large. Since that doesn't happen in real life, it shows we can't use GR and QFT at the same time. We would need a theory that works with gravity at a quantum scope.

[@fugslayernominee1397]

@@AmblesJambles probably nothing, as higgs fields gives mass to elementary particles but energy don't need particles with mass to collapse into black hole, so my guess is black holes can do just fine without higgs field. Edit: typo

[@alexcunhapinto]

Wonderful episode. Well explained, up to par, and really enticing. Also props to the crew. Matt, keep it up.

[@typdingens6041]

Awesome that your channel exists. The subjects you cover are subjects that smart people avoid because they fear to get something wrong and others who have no idea about physics talk nonsense about. thus your channel is really important. Thank you for your videos!

[@bane4743]

Let's gooo! Just got done binge watching all the other episodes in the past 2 days. Favorite KZbin channel out there. Thanks Matt and the team at pbs spacetime.

[@nenmaster5218]

If you like space-time, you will like sci man dan, kurzgesagt, veritasium and neil red. Oh, and Oversimplified.

[@kevinamery5922]

This is the first treatment I've seen on vacuum decay that addresses the light horizon issue -- thanks for clearing that up!

[@dramajoe]

One of the most egregious and infuriating oversights of modern physics education is a failure to provide intuitive visualizations of fundamental concepts such as fields. Showing the beginning of this video should be required in every physics course. No joke, the biggest barrier to my understanding of physics thus far has been physics professors, by an enormous margin. I literally learn more in 10-20 minutes of watching Matt than I did in the entirety of a five month course.

[@lepidoptera9337]

Your physics professor teaches to the advanced kids, not the strugglers. Maybe you should switch to a different field? How about medieval French crochet techniques for feminists?

[@Numba003]

I love that shirt with the octopus on Jupiter. Is that a reference I’m not getting, or just a fun design? Either way, it’s a fun shirt lol. Stay well out there everybody, and God bless you friends. :)

[@dylancrespo6507]

If a really high energy state could start a vacuum decay bubble, wouldn’t it have been most likely to occur during the earliest stages of the universe? If so that gives me hope we’re in the true vacuum.

[@kamil.g.m]

This is a great question, I'd love to hear a response to this

[@antonystringfellow5152]

Yes! That doesn't mean that the Higgs field is in a true vacuum state though. What it does mean is that it's probably very difficult to kick the field into a lower state, if there is one.

[@robertstevensii4018]

Full disclosure: I am dumb Even if vacuum decay started in the earliest stages of the universe and moved at near light speed, we would be unlikely to be affected, no?

[@steelwasp9375]

Maybe it did, but it did not reach down to the lowest state. Say, expansion of the universe diffused the energy before that could happen.

[@kamil.g.m]

@@antonystringfellow5152 so assuming that we are currently in a false vacuum and that it would take a truly unfathomable amount of energy to trigger vacuum decay, how would this information be interpreted on one of those graphs as shown in the video? Could it mean there's a big peak seperating the minimums, or perhaps that the minimums are simply far apart? Because if it's the former wouldn't that mean quantum tunnelling is more likely to trigger vacuum decay as there's less of an absolute distance?

[@onebylandtwoifbysearunifby5475]

0:01 "The Universe is going to end" ... Seems timely.

[@onebylandtwoifbysearunifby5475]

@Zonko Well, you can't see it coming anyways (light can't outpace the bubble). And we will probably cause our own extinction by 2150 anyways. 5 degrees of Global warming by 2100 should do it, then 50 years to take out the stragglers through famine and disease. So relax. Everything's going to be fine. 🙃

[@onebylandtwoifbysearunifby5475]

@Zonko The Universe is very big. Have some camomile tea 🍵. Also, the Big Bang didn't provide enough energy to knock the metastable false vacuum down to a true vacuum. There are likely other factors involved that we don't know about. Plus it would take like 10^24 X the current age of the Universe to become a likely possibility. So don't worry about it, we have other problems like Big Oil and Corporate Agriculture to worry about. ... Have sone tea 🍵.

[@onebylandtwoifbysearunifby5475]

@Zonko You're welcome. Life exists against all odds, has done for billions of years. Still manages to keep chugging along though. Maybe being on the verge is a necessary component for life? Just business as usual then. - Good journey.

[@markizano]

Just liked 256 videos of PBS SpaceTime! Love this channel and all the content! Miss Gabe and the challenge questions that used to be answered in the next week's video! Matt, you've done an amazing job with SpaceTime! Thank you so much to you and the team and all the hours that go into research, writing, editing, videography, and outer world science of SpaceTime! 🤩

[@uncle-ff7jq]

Amazing content, as always .

[@ayasekaru]

It's so incredible to imagine in how many ways the universe could cease to exist. It's even more incredible when you consider that it likely already happened somewhere, but because the universe is so mind-boggingly huge, this isn't an issue for us.

[@jettmthebluedragon]

Their are so many ways the universe can be destroyed as well as it being created ether way you look at it your here 😐 their is so much stuff to learn about the cosmos 😐and as technology gets more Advanced the more we may know 🙂however that also depends on what we do on this planet as co2 emissions keep on rising the worse it’s going to get 😑more floods tornados more wild wealth ect and with humans in nature they don’t care about a situation unless it’s to late 😑anything in the past is set 😑the future is unknown but in some cases the future is also predetermined as well 😑you can’t stop our Galaxy form colliding you can’t stop the end of a universe if their even is one 😐no human could even control how life got here in the first place 😐all of that was from the universe as a whole what ever created everything will surely be it’s end 😑and that end may be permanent but looking at it deeper if the chances of us ever evolving on a planet are infinitesimal then technically speaking we were all ready indefinitely long dead even before this planet 😑 and we will be indefinitely dead long after 😑the only thing that matters is your existence possible?😐after all nature can’t create what’s not possible 😑even if someone or something is all ready dead knowing they are dead you know they have existed before 😐meaning their existence was possible😐

[@jadzzzz]

Hey I got a dumb question Theoretically, could a blackhole become both a nucleation site for a vacuum decay bubble AND its container?

[@cloudpoint0]

Black holes are collapsing spacetime while a vacuum decay bubble is expanding spacetime (that’s consuming existing spacetime). They seem far apart in nature but neither are fully understood.

[@straft5759]

It might be possible for the singularity to start a vacuum decay, but the event horizon might actually have a problem with containing the bubble. This is where the ((in)famous) Heisenberg uncertainty principle comes in. This is similar to Hawking radiation: the bubble might quantumly find it’s way out and start expanding from there. Hopefully this doesn’t happen before the black hole evaporates, but either way, all planets and stars will probably have evaporated long before any of this becomes the number one concern. P.S. I don’t know if I’m making any sense with this on the scientific side, I’m not an expert on the topic either.

[@jadzzzz]

@@cloudpoint0 The way I understood it is that if we cram enough energy into a spot in space-time it increases the likelihood of quantum tunneling, therefore increasing the chance of vacuum decay occurring there. Mass is energy, and a blackhole is made of it (you can even theoretically skip the mass and just make a blackhole with a concentration of energy/light) That being said, it seems to me like the singularity is the single most likely nucleation point in all of space-time

[@jadzzzz]

@@straft5759 it makes sense, though I don't think the vacuum bubble's surface itself can quantum tunnel over such a distance (from singularity to event horizon) Edit: I just understood what you meant: it's possible but insanely unlikely

[@michaelblacktree]

@@jadzzzz - I was going to ask the same question. The energy density in a black hole seems like the perfect place for a vacuum decay bubble to form. But if nothing can escape a black hole, does the bubble get trapped?

[@Badassmcawsome009]

Whenever I get paranoid about vacuum decay I just like to remember that it's been billions of years and Earth hasn't been swallowed yet, so there's pretty good odds it's not going to happen tomorrow.

[@medexamtoolsdotcom]

Don't worry, I'm sure we can make it happen if it won't happen on its own. We just need to build a particle accelerator from here to alpha centauri and another one just as long shooting particles in the opposite direction, and hit them into each other.

[@me-jb6ow]

M

[@jettmthebluedragon]

Well not just that but think about things a little deeper more deeper…. when ever the end of the universe may be unless the universe is already infinite or we live in a possible 1 of many multiverses or whatever 😑what matters is one thing the end of a universe means it will die possibly forever 😑however if the chances of this planet ever evolving ever again are infinitesimal that means before we were all ready very long dead 😑a long time ago 😑I don’t know how old you are but I’m 22 and ware was I before I was born ?🤔 100 years ago? 1,000 years ago? 500 MYA 14.6 billion years ago? A possible infinite time ago ?😐 what ever the case you are here 😐so is earth and the universe 😐if the universe would end forever you might as well not even be alive in the first place 😑 and yet here we are 😐on a planet that ( SOMEHOW ) made carbon life possible even those who are extinct what matters is not about dying 😐what matters is, is your existence possible ? 😐after all nature can’t create what can’t evolved 😑to change the corse of history is to do the impossible 😑and what we see is a universe 😐what we live on is a planet if it were going to forever end we would all ready be long dead 😑even before this universe and this planet came to be 😑and yet here we are 😐

[@kiyan5340]

I live in constant fear of vacuum decay. Just instant *poof* everything is gone/rewritten. The only thing that brings me solace is that even though I'm sure it's happening, its moving away faster than light.

[@brandonijames2784]

How are you sure it's happening. I'm fairly confident no one knows for certain that this is even possible. It's a very new field of science in it's infancy. Why worry

[@nilotec]

I remember hearing this theory ages ago and could never remember the name when I wanted to research it and learn more. PBS Spacetime to the rescue!

[@tuneboyz5634]

om nom nom nom im gonna eat u ooooooo run lil buddy :)

[@NewMessage]

Sadly, well defined terror sounds like a step up from the more generalized, amorphous terror that surrounds us lately.

[@nenmaster5218]

If you like space-time, you will like sci man dan, kurzgesagt, veritasium and neil red. Oh, and Oversimplified.

[@DeAlpineBro]

Science has always been a fun thing for me. My best Christmas gift ever was the microscope and chemistry set I received @ 9. My Nun-high school science/chemistry/physics teacher was one of the funniest people I've ever met. She loved to pull "sciency" practical jokes. My Navy life consisted of dealing with officers with 4.0 or better engineering degrees. About half were fun to be around. At university, The funniest guy was a Doctor who taught Structural Engineering. He had a wit so dry the Atacama Desert is a rain forest by comparison. I enjoy the "humorous instability" of Science. The Universe is a peculiar and comical place. It's absurd!

[@KillaQ1996]

I have to say, the way it's explained I can't help but notice some similarities between the vacuum decay and the big bang

[@nenmaster5218]

If you like space-time, you will like sci man dan, kurzgesagt, veritasium and neil red. Oh, and Oversimplified.

[@joshbauer203]

If I understand correctly, many worlds interpretation says that there are plenty of branches where vacuum decay has already happened-we’re just on the branches where it hasn’t (anthropic principle). Comfortingly-there will always be branches where it hasn’t.

[@WhyneedanAlias]

And because of quantum immortality (idk if that's the actual namoe or if it has an official name, i think not) we always will be in a universe where it has not happened yet... (As long as it has not happened to all of the presumably infinite parallel universes)

[@bytefu]

@@WhyneedanAlias Why do you think it's not the official name? If "Big Bang" is an official term, surely we can have "quantum immortality", even if it sounds too deepakchoprey, so to speak :)

[@Frankly7]

@@WhyneedanAlias Not exactly. "We" is just a collection of individuals, some of whom exist in a universe that will decay. So if you or I are one of those people, we won't survive. Others will.

[@rpetti]

@@WhyneedanAlias I've heard it called "quantum suicide", but I like "quantum immortality" better.

[@Ni999]

*Anthropic principle. Anthropoid principle would say that the universe looks like a human.

[@pmlito1]

great and confy episode, how large would that vacuum buble need to be to overcome the pressure? could this be the reason for the big bang to occur? i mean, maybe the phase transition from the true state to the false vacuum lead to it?

[@kreynolds1123]

I would propose that maybe inflation was the quasi metastable false vacuum energy state, and that currently we're in the true vacuum, lowest energy state. That maybe our measurement of the higs boson temporarily creates and we measure the short lived vacuum state resulting in measurements suggesting both a low energy state, the one we live in, and the short lived meta stable state.

[@valkyrie321]

@@kreynolds1123 I’ve heard suggestions that the Big Bang itself may have been a vacuum state decay itself, although closer inspection of the idea seems vapid, at least when considerations hyper-inflation are taken into account. It just doesn’t seem to jell with what we observe from things like the CMB. That being said, it’s a great way for a universe to reset itself, creating all sorts of new physics. But what do I know, I’m just an amateur at physics.

[@ballswalls8189]

New physics kzbin.info/www/bejne/pZ60Xnptmd2kbtU

[@gregfelice1969]

Absolutely the best description of false vacuum on KZbin. Thank you!!!!

[@vladsnape6408]

11:43 "In an infinitely, or even sufficiently large universe then vacuum decay has definitely started somewhere" - surely this is only the case if the Higgs field has more than one mininum, and our universe is in the false vaccum state, and we currently don't know if this is actually the case, so therefore it is incorrect to say "then vacuum decay has definitely started somewhere".

[@janpietercornet9364]

The biggest question is: where would you place a restaurant that overlooks this end of the universe, and how can we reach it?

[@simonkamau32]

I think the best place would be somewhere near the elephant, but not too close to the turtles. I seem to remember there should be a trumpet playing quite some distance away...

[@del7896]

Getting there is nearly infinitely impossible, so not even worth trying really.

[@HermanVonPetri]

@@del7896 Seems like a problem a finite improbability drive could handle for you. If not, just program the finite improbability drive to summon up an infinite improbability drive. That should get the job done.

[@immortalsofar5314]

There is another theory that says this has already happened...

[@scotthammond3230]

Surfing the bubble obviously

[@miikalehtimaki1136]

The author names are misspelled in the 9:52 graph reference... It's supposed to be Markkanen and Rajantie. (They looked Finnish so I had to check out) Maybe a and b got pasted from some kind of list?

[@tapksa]

Yeah the a's and b's were probably superscripts for affiliated institutions.

[@sylviapapp8812]

Thank you Matt !I love you !

[@DeDean16]

Thanks Matt!

[@waynet1022]

Maybe vacuum decay already happened inside the extreme environment of black holes, but the event horizon stops it from escaping.

[@pat5star]

i was thinking the same and was going to post something similar but you beat me to it. On the surface this theory seems to explain black holes very well.

[@Mandrak789]

it's more likely that it happened right after the big bang when universe was incredibly energetic

[@cloudpoint0]

I’m guessing that any bubble nucleating inside a black hole would be short-lived. Matt says the bubbles are very fragile initially, until they gain tremendous size and light speed expansion, “until they get going”. See 6:43 and 7:02 . Since fields are all twisted around inside the space of a black hole it’s hard to say if bubble nucleation is even possible in this strange environment.

[@juzoli]

@@Mandrak789 Maybe that’s when it went up from true vacuum to false vacuum.

[@ballswalls8189]

New physics kzbin.info/www/bejne/pZ60Xnptmd2kbtU

[@MB-bt9km]

there's a fantastic book about this subject called Schild's Ladder, by Greg Egan. fascinating story

[@limtbk]

Yep, I wrote the same :)

[@walterschwarz29]

Glad to hear somebody enjoyed that book as much as I did. Is it hard science fiction, not for everybody. In my opinion it's one of the best.

[@ballswalls8189]

New physics kzbin.info/www/bejne/pZ60Xnptmd2kbtU

[@marishkagrayson]

Loved the beautiful graphics of the ring-like quantum structures! Those pulses were like a visual symphony. This metastable universe gives the Higgs field the "right" false vacuum energy level to create matter, so I'm convinced that nucleation causes most universes to probably decay pretty quickly and we're lucky we live in a metastable universe. :0)

[@conniestone6251]

WoW Matt, this is one of the few space time videos of which I did Not understand a word 😵‍💫

[@jogandsp]

Great video as always! Could you please explain how the masses of the Higgs particle and top quark allow us to predict which vacuum state we're in? What I mean is: how can we determine which mass values would allow the Higgs field to be most stable?

[@garethdean6382]

Very roughly the strength of th Higgs field relates directly to the mass of particles in it. If you decreased it most particles would become lighter. In a mirror effect this produces a Higgs particle that has mass. The effect is greatest for the heaiest particles, the top quark and the Higgs itself, so we can focus on those to pin down the exact strength of the field. We have a pretty good idea currently, but being so heavy the particles are also massively unstable and decay messily, so we're still pinning their values down.

[@justuseodysee7348]

Is it possible that vacuum decay happened already in a distant past? The growing bubble with hot particles inside sounds kinda big bangy...

[@bytefu]

I guess this is not considered as the reason for Big Bang, because the energy difference between Higgs field states is not enough to account for energy of our universe.

[@sandramiller7972]

One unproven theory is that a fifth(or higher) dimension(s) froze out of the Bulk n dimensional space releasing the big bang energy. This is different from the Higgs field changing state. F. Miller

[@cloudpoint0]

The Big Bang universe would have been in an extremely cold state during its light speed expansion phase. All energy was stored as potential energy in a quantum field and no particles existed yet. This was followed by a hot big bang event when expansion largely stopped and particles were created from the accumulated field energy.

[@ballswalls8189]

New physics kzbin.info/www/bejne/pZ60Xnptmd2kbtU

[@NirielWinx]

If that happens beyond the observable universe, we're safe, aren't we? Even at the speed of light it will not reach us. Unless the bubble affects space dilation somehow

[@tres-2b299]

One of the only PBS spacetime videos i could actually understand..

[@junofall]

Honestly instant non-existence that you'll never see coming sounds like the best way to go lol

[@MarsJenkar]

Let's face it, if it's happening, there's nothing we can do about it anyway. It's not worth the trouble to worry about it. Worry about those things we *can* control, even a little bit... like, say, limiting our effect on global climate.

[@Endymion4242]

That or one too many Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters...

[@Nikki-rq2qg]

So... vacuum decay + Great Filter leads to, "Oh! I know how to find out for _sure_ if this is the false vacuum state! Let's just flip this switch to start the experiment...."

[@tirex3673]

Vacuum decay can't be the great filter, because it wouldn't just swallow the civilisation. The Bubble would destroy everyone, who the civilisation would have contacted, if it hadn't cause vacuum decay.

[@ManyHeavens42]

This Guy's Kool like me !so just like teleportation if you don't reach your destination you return back to point .0 Good job bubble Boy !

[@williamarcor251]

I love the existential dread generated @12:26

[@Tucnace]

Could vacuum decay "start" a new universe? If all of the energy is released, could it be like a new big bang or something? Therefore, could our universe be an aftermath of a previous vacuum decay?

[@alakani]

Every single time. I miss the laws of physics from 3 universes ago, where love was a real thing

[@twonnaz1230]

What if we are in the true vacuum but the transition was the big bang, would answer a lot of questions we have, truthfully though we will never know if are true vacuum state (if so) is false or true as we do not know how many false vacuum states there are. Sure we can see which vacuum we are in compared to the other but that could be the difference between 1 and 2 and ultimately we could be on an infinite downward roll to a infinitely far state of vacuum, creating new universes every time and new things. It’s so sick because it answers everything to do with the start of the universe but obviously is unprovable

[@Asiliea]

@@twonnaz1230 I wonder if it's possible the big bang was the _opposite_ reaction. Spontaneously jumping from the _true_ vacuum energy to a false one in the Higgs field, essentially "creating" mass and sparking a bunch of mass-energy conversion.

[@garethdean6382]

In theories of inflationn this is exactly what has happened, the fire that birthed our universe being a result of energy release from the decay of inflating space. So if the theory holds up, then yes. This has happened before.

[@antonioamosanchez4912]

I think there is a hole in that possibility (pun intended). If such vacuum decay were possible, shouldn't it have happened during the Big Bang? It was the event with the most energetic density in the whole history of the Universe. If the decay didn't happen then, why should it happen now when there is no such concentration of energy in any point of space and never again will be? Energy that is required for surpassing the required energy barrier. Even in quantum tunneling, the probability of happening is lower the higher the barrier. Also with an event of such magnitude of energy (the transition to real vacuum), couldn't a black hole instantly form due to so much energy release and prevent it from growing, trapping the bubble inside? Maybe that's the cause of primigenic black holes.

[@smallint5565]

This can be anwsered with the following supposition: "Our" Big Bang is the result of a previous vacuum decay. And therefor yes, primordial black holes could happen as they previously did. Also Energy helps the vacuum decay to occur Faster, as it is a mathematical probability that it would happens, As Matt said: "If it can happen at any time, it will happen eventually".

[@randomrandom8544]

Douglas Adams gave me nightmares as a child and PBS Space Time gives me nightmares as an adult!

[@gabrielsimpson9919]

One of your best videos

[@jmanj3917]

The difference in Higgs field energy levels of one Planck area is not enough to "drag all of spacetime with it". The collective "pull" on that Planck area by all of its neighbors would be enough energy to return the individual, lower energy field value back to its higher, metastable condition. Problem solved. Sleep well. You're welcome.

[@dexio85]

OK. That was one of those Space Time episodes I shouldn't have watched before going to sleep :P

[@xxxggthyf]

And now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the quantum fields to keep.

[@FairbrookWingates]

Ah, the things I first heard of and learned about thanks to science fiction. Thank you, Spider Robinson. Callahan's Key for those who are interested.

[@BloodPlusPwn]

Vacuum decay was always a weird one to me. I feel like the concept is just one of those mathematical quirks that are technically possible within our current models like Boltzmann Brains. Very interesting, especially since if it turned out to be a truly accurate assessment, some crazy Boltzmann Brain could work on some universe destroying mechanism far away from civilization and no one would know lol. If it IS possible, just throwing enough black holes into each other should eventually get the job done, so it wouldn't even be a particularly high tech undertaking, relatively speaking. Thanks for the video.

[@DeadToTheWorld92]

How do we know the number of these minima of the Higgs field? Does it have to be 2 or can it be more or even just 1? (Though I guess a transition to any lower state would be equally deadly for our life, the universe and everything.)

[@inertnet]

Obviously the answer is 42.

[@mjrmls]

That's what I'm curious about. Why are we even assuming there are multiple minima?

[@MrPicklock]

+1, I hope the explanation can be put into words rather then in 8 pages of Math 😂

[@eljcd]

@@mjrmls That's ideal, the more minimal " exist", the more papers can be churned out explaining them...

[@scottslotterbeck3796]

Yes. Only a true minimum would save ys. But we know rhe universe is finite.

[@Val_Chillmer]

Dyson: Introducing the first vacuum that won't decay

[@boyanbogdanov1854]

That death bubble sounds like a Big Bang for someone else.....

[@quitequiet5281]

21 seconds into video... YES! Totally terrified of vacuum decay...

[@martanoconghaile]

Hi Matt. Can you do a video explaining the mechanisms by which protons and neutrons arrange themselves in the nucleus and whether it is similar to that of electrons in terms of shells and energy states?

[@_general_error]

That is actually a good question. Are the nucleons even arranged in a particular way, or are they all occupying the same space, or is there yet another leading theory? And most importantly, is it possible for nucleons to have stable arrangements to create a nuclear-chemistry as described in Robert L. Forward's novela Dragon's Egg? Upvoted!

[@vampyricon7026]

Yes it is. However, it's much more complex. Electrons exist in a central potential provided by the nucleus, but the nuclear potential itself is being constructed by the protons and neutrons, which respond to the nuclear potential. They do have energy states and shells and closed shells. The closed shells are called "magic numbers" and are spherical. Otherwise they have different shapes. The order the shells are filled in is different too.

[@vampyricon7026]

Oh, I should add that the potential used to model nuclei is usually a Woods-Saxon potential, which is a smoother square well potential. However, I'm not sure what exactly people use these days. It's probably all simulations.

[@LemmingOfEvil]

Whats the difference in the amount of energy that it takes to be be dumped at one point of space to initiate vacuum decay versus the amount at which a kugelblitz is formed? I have a bunch of questions about this that I'm just not sure how to properly put to words.

[@millhouse782]

I have no clue, but I imagine a kugelblitz would require much less energy. I don’t think that the destruction of the higgs field would even care about the presence of the kugelblitz, as it may not obey the unknown laws of physics in that region. If the energy in the region changed, then space time in that region would also change, meaning the kugelblitz may have never existed in our idea of time. Again I completely made this up in 30 seconds but it “feels” right

[@garethdean6382]

It depends on exactly the difference between the two vacuum states. As the video notes, it was considered possible by some thatthe LHC could provide enough energy (And while this can't be mathematically disproven, the fact that we're still here given cosmic rays with 10'000 times the LHC's energy keep hitting us is pretty strong evidence this isn't the case.) And of course 'Kugelblitz energy density' varies too; smaller black holes are more energy-dense than larger ones. The most massive black holes we know of are comparable in energy\mass density to Earth. In terms of atom-scale events a Kugelblitz requires far far FAR more energy To make one the size of a proton you'd need to take a mountain's worth of mass and convert it to light and focus it.

[@DoryenChin]

i love Matt's delivery, it makes me feel like i'm listening to Hitchhiker's Guide

[@queenoftheharpeez936]

I don’t understand exactly what you are talking about because I’m me, but I know what I like. Octopuses. Octopi? Your shirt is cool.