Theoretical physicists have come to the conclusion that the Creator can arrange the end of the world at any moment without violating the laws of nature
The interests of mankind are changing quite rapidly: in the last century, for example, the idea that the universe can have a beginning made a big splash. The priesthood revived, the homegrown philosophers began to murmur; even a conversation with the ladies could be unexpectedly turned off to Big Bang without risking getting in the face.
But now everything is different: a scientific article, in which the possibility of the end of the world is reasonably proven, did not make absolutely any sensation. Perhaps this is because quantum field theory (on which all this is based) is much more difficult for ladies to adapt than the theory of relativity - this is what a page from the cited article looks like.
Photo: Alexey Aleksenko / snob.ru
Or maybe the really interest in the spiritual faded away. Be that as it may, we are now trying to wake him up, but if not - sorry.
It is important to note that the end of the world, which we are talking about here, is not boring constructions about the cooling down of the Universe, or the collapsing Universe, or any other trouble with the Universe that can be predicted based on the laws of physics, notice the first signs in advance, thoroughly prepare for it … This end of the world is real, unpredictable, coming “like a thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5: 2). It may happen right now, or it may not happen, and you and I, with all our science, have no way to predict it. It is completely random. This means that a believing person has the right to decide for himself that this chance, like all accidents, is in the hands of God, and the history of the Universe will be interrupted by the will of Providence, whenever He pleases. And the unbeliever has the right to believe that this is another, final this time, manifestation of the meaninglessness of the world.
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THE END OF A LIE OR THE BEGINNING OF TRUTH
The essence of the story is this. There is such a thing - a vacuum, in which, in fact, all physics takes place (we have already written about this somehow). Vacuum is not an empty space; it can be arranged in one way or another. Well, for example, like a box of oranges. The oranges in the box can be stacked in even rows as shown on the left in the picture, or you can stack them more tightly as shown on the right.
Photo: Alexey Aleksenko / snob.ru
The second style is more profitable (more oranges will fit). If the box shown on the left is shaken, the oranges will most likely fall as shown on the right. Then, no matter how much you shake the box, they will remain so. On the left - the metastable state of the box with oranges, on the right - stable.
So in our vacuum there can be different states, more or less favorable from the point of view of energy. And how much they differ in this advantageousness and in what, in fact, the state we live in now - this is determined by a kind of curve, which is called the "Higgs potential". The same Higgs as the boson. And this is not accidental, because the shape of the curve is determined by the mass of the indicated Higgs boson (and of another particle, the t-quark). And therefore, until May 2012 - until the mass of the boson was determined - no one knew what the form of the Higgs potential was and at what point we live: whether it is the most profitable and stable or the so-so-average. Or, as physicists say, whether we have "true" vacuum or "false".
Theoretical physicist Jose Ramon Espinoza and his colleagues prepared all the tools for the calculation and sat, waiting for the boson mass (the t-quark mass had been known for a long time). And after waiting, they immediately substituted it in their formulas and immediately published an article. It follows from it that our vacuum is far from ideal. It does not correspond to the most compact arrangement of oranges. It is metastable. Here is a picture from the article: this is how the stability of our vacuum and our Universe depends on the masses of these particles.
Photo: Alexey Aleksenko / snob.ru
See what kind of thing? We managed to find ourselves in a rather narrow yellow alley of metastability. José Ramón Espinoza comments on the situation in an article for Scientific American:
“We know with a high degree of certainty that our vacuum is unstable and we can calculate its half-life.” "Half-life" is like a radioactive atom: it can decay at any time, and one can only judge about the probabilities - well, or about the time when half of a large pile of such atoms decays.
On this basis, Espinoza tried to console us: "The lifetime of the vacuum turns out to be much longer than the current age of the universe." But we have one Universe, we don't have any statistics, so the concept of probability is completely abstract here. The vacuum of our Universe can really collapse at any time. You don't even need to shake the box: quantum mechanics allows such things to happen spontaneously, without shaking.
AS IT WILL BE?
What happens when a vacuum falls apart? They say that this has already happened in history and is called "inflation". Inside the “false vacuum” a bubble of “true vacuum” appears, grows, expands at the speed of light, and wherever it reaches, there is already everything new: new particles, new fields, new time and space. Now we live in such a bubble. But it just so happened that our vacuum, as it turns out, is false. True is ahead. Where we will no longer be
Which, in fact, brings us back to the concept of the end of the world, as the holy books understand it: the end of the absolutely inevitable, but not at all predictable at a particular moment in time.
People, regardless of their confessional affiliation, generally believe in such things. I think this is because people tend to confuse their own lives to such an extent at some point that there really is no other way to settle the situation than to bring heaven to earth (fortunately, usually everything is settled much easier immediately after the funeral of a particular individual). This also happens in the history of countries. Who, for example, will judge the presumptuous scum, if the scum managed to choose among the most inveterate and appoint them as judges? Who will do an honest business if the whole business has already been divided among themselves by those who in childhood dreamed of becoming scouts, because they liked lying and pretending more than being honest? Who will replace the generation of cunning goons,if the cunning goons took seriously the education of future generations? What I mean is that we are all familiar with situations when hopelessness gives up, when we want this very end of the world as soon as possible.
But the previous concept of the end of the world was bad in that it did not rely on science in any way: well, there is no physics that would describe how the heavens roll up like a scroll and a star falling from the sky opens up a mine of abyss. And now we have physics that describes the collapse of our false vacuum, and even promises us it with the same probability at any given moment in time - today or in twelve years. Thus, the Lord of Chances has in his hands all the necessary leverage to end this story when it finally proves its dead end.
PRACTICAL ASPECT
It remains to consider two applied questions.
First: can we somehow bring the end of the world closer?
About five years ago, in a conversation with a corresponding member. RAS physicist Mikhail Vysotsky, we came to the following scheme (then nothing was known about the shape of the Higgs potential). If you do not bind yourself to the framework of a certain theory, but simply consider all the options for the end of the world in all sorts of paradigms invented by people, then the two most popular scenarios will be:
1) the end of the world due to the exhaustion of God's patience (the Judeo-Christian paradigm), 2) and the end of the world through the collapse of the "false vacuum" and the sliding of the Universe into the true minimum of the Higgs potential (the paradigm of quantum field theory).
Then, Mikhail Iosifovich suggested, if we want to speed up the process more reliably, then we should:
1) sin more, 2) and build large accelerators that give rise to particles of large masses - this can work similarly to shaking a box with oranges and generate a bubble of true vacuum that sweeps away everything in its path.
Subsequently, other physicists, with whom I spoke, questioned the second option: accelerators are unlikely to work. What remains is unbridled shamelessness, but it does not need to be spurred on, it turns out on its own.
And the second question, the most important one.
Will it hurt?
Today in a dream, preparing to write this article, I suddenly realized: it won't hurt.
Because if we were hurt, it means that we still exist, but we already know (by pain) about the approach of the growing bubble of the true vacuum. This means that information has reached us faster than the speed of light.
And physics forbids it.
So no one will notice anything. We will disappear immediately. All-good heavens took care of the anesthesia. For me, it's a pity: the event will greatly lose its instructiveness. But Heaven knows better.
Alexey Aleksenko