Do we live in a universe that has always existed and will exist forever? Or do we live with you in a world that can disappear in a moment, without any warning?
Theoretical physicists almost every ten years come up with increasingly frightening horror stories for themselves and for the layman. So, in the 19th century, the theory of the so-called Thermal Death of the Universe was very popular, which predicts the cease of energy production by the stars, after which the Universe will become an infinitely huge accumulation of cold matter and ice.
Then, with the development of theoretical physics, came the Big Rip - a cosmological model, where the Universe is expanding in all directions, and this expansion has no end foreseeable by physicists. But how long is the universe able to dynamically expand? How long will physical laws last in this expanding universe? Actually, why is the universe expanding?
Dr. Frank Heile, who is a professor of physics at Stanford University, says there is actually a great scientific explanation for the Big Bang, but it's a very complex and very, very frightening mathematical model.
The new theory explaining the cause of the Big Bang is based on the so-called Higgs field, which permeates our Universe, endowing elementary particles with charge and mass, thereby providing stability to the vacuum.
Peter Ware Higgs, born in 1929, was a British theoretical physicist, professor at the University of Edinburgh and a Nobel Prize winner for his work on the theoretical underpinnings of mass in subatomic particles. In a highly simplified interpretation, his theory can be reduced to the fact that Reality, or, one might say, Nature is a low-energy and therefore infinitely stable true vacuum, in which regions of the so-called "false vacuum" can form with their specific, sometimes little understood and unpredictable laws. And one of the areas of this "false vacuum" we, by a grandiose misunderstanding, imagine our Universe.
Our Universe can be likened to a large aquarium with dull colored fish standing on a shelf, to which either a fire pump or a large, large vacuum cleaner was brought in, drawing the water in the aquarium into itself and causing it to "expand in all directions." Surely the fish in the aquarium will perceive this process as a large, large cosmic explosion, but in fact it will not be an explosion, but a large vacuum cleaner pumping out all the water.
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Physicists call this process a state of "vacuum metastability", as a result of which the Universe evaporates and bursts at the seams, and all its unfortunate inhabitants are simply drawn into another existence, unable to perceive what is happening behind the wall of the aquarium.
The event of vacuum metastability can be perceived as an epic catastrophe, which began a long time ago and which can interrupt our existence completely at any moment, however, Dr. Frank Hale urges everyone not to panic ahead of time.
The fact that the vacuum of our Universe is decaying to a more stable vacuum is no longer a secret for physicists, which is confirmed, in particular, by the experiments carried out on elementary particles at CERN, but no one knows how long this process will last, since it is impossible to say exactly how far the metastable vacuum region extends. …
Dr. Frank Hale says if the vacuum of our entire Universe were real, and not metastable, then the chances of its decay would be 0. On the other hand, if our Universe is metastable throughout, then the chances of its decay are 1. Therefore, our chances are determined no one knows the balance yet.
In other words, if the region of metastability in which we are staying is large enough, the process of our annihilation should drag on for billions and billions of years, however, if this region of metastability is astronomically observable and more or less compact, our world can disappear straight now, at any moment … But, we, like those poor fish from a large aquarium, are unlikely to have time to realize this moment.