5mo ago

The Universe As We Know It May End Sooner Than Expected

hackaday.com The Universe As We Know It May End Sooner Than Expected

One of the exciting aspects of some fields of physics is that they involve calculating the expected time until the Universe ends or experiences fundamental shifts that would render most if not all …

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Clickbaity title. The estimated time until Higgs field decay has been changed from 10⁷⁹⁴ years to 10⁷⁹⁰ years. Presumably there's some tiny chance of it happening today, but practically we can just continue worrying about all the regular stuff that is about to kill us all.
- Also, from what I understand, we wouldn't see it coming (as the decay would be spreading at the speed of light), and everything would be over before our senses could ever detect anything out of the ordinary.
  
  😍
  
  So, if I'm reading it right, everything would just rip apart at the speed of light due to a change in mass because of the Higgs field transitioning to a lower state?
- ugh i was hoping it would be before this election
- That's a huge difference, the estimate became 10,000 times smaller.
  
  It is, but there are still quite a lot of zeros left.
  
  Its more like 0.5% difference.
- we'll find out who was right then
- Guess I'm not spending that Christmas with my family after all...

Thank god
10^790 years
Dang
- To write that out in full: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. Which looks like I just held ctrl+v until it seemed suitably silly.
  
  the question is whether you actually did that but i can't be fucked to check it
- So close yet so far
- Well, I guess we'll still end first
  
  Vermin doesn't end. Even if you exterminate it, they'll just come back with a vengeance

Kurzgesagt has a nice video on vacuum decay for anyone interested
I'm a bit curious as to what time span exactly they're measuring here? Because it's not like the whole universe would die all at once. Heck, vacuum decay could have already begun somewhere. If so, it would propagate outward at the speed of light, which is quite slow compared to the size of the universe. If it's far enough away, it may never reach us at all due to the space between expanding.
In any case, this is all theoretical and may not be an actual thing that could happen at all.

There is a theory which states that if ever ~~anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for~~ the false vacuum state collapses, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Don’t threaten me with a good time, like the universe ending tomorrow. God, this timeline sucks so much.

God I can't wait.

Particle masses would change, along with all associated physics, as suddenly the lower Higgs field state means that everything has significantly more mass. To say that it would shake up the Universe would an understatement.
would this be enough extra mass to overcome dark energy expanding the universe and cause a Big Crunch? or would everything be far too spread out at that point for gravity/mass to matter at all?
- Quantum field theory conserves mass-energy, so the new mass is coming from the energy in the Higgs field itself. It settles to a lower energy state and basically transfers that energy as mass to all of the particles that couple with it. Since it's mass-energy and not just mass that generates gravitational distortions, the large-scale gravitational evolution of the universe probably won't change, as this just moves things around a bit. It's not creating energy out of nothing.
- maybe its what Hawking describes as epic sheets of force bigger then the universe slapping together to create the big bang and how it is probably not the first big bang

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
Time to end it! In….how many years, you say? sigh