Space vacuum that appears to be stable due to the complete absence of substance in it, is likely to be fraught with great danger. This idea about the destruction of the universe is based on the hypothesis of vacuum instability. Any system in our world has a certain amount of potential energy.
Vacuum decay is the ultimate nightmare scenario: A bubble in spacetime that grows at the speed of light and eventually destroys the universe. But, space vacuum is not as empty as it may seem to be. Vacuum in space is filled with quantum particles, which, in turn, may seek their own “stability” to annihilate the material world in its entirety during the process.
If the Higgs Field is a false vacuum, then it contains an incredible amount of potential energy that can release itself with just the tiniest, most random spark, resulting in a huge surge of energy, expanding at the speed of light, moving its way through the universe and consuming everything in its path.
To designate potentially dangerous vacuum, scientists introduced the notion of false vacuum, in which there is the Higgs field verified by CERN’s LHC in 2015 –the energy field that is thought to exist everywhere in the universe. The field is accompanied by a fundamental particle called the Higgs boson, which the field uses to continuously interact with other particles. As particles pass through the field they are “given” mass. “Prior to the Higgs, mass was completely mysterious. It seemed to have no origin. In August, particle physicists working with the Large Hadron Collider observed the Higgs boson decaying into bottom quarks for the first time.
Scientists do not know what may trigger total annihilation, but at the same time, they admit that the disaster has already started somewhere in the universe. As dark energy causes the universe to expand ever-faster, it may spur some very distant galaxies to apparently move faster than the speed of light, so there is a chance in some realms to “fly away” from the sphere of death.
Image credit: Paramount Pictures/WarnerBros./LegendaryPictures
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