Frontiers of Science Look at the World, Learn to Understand the Universe
Today, physicists have proposed a variety of ways to end the universe, such as the great tear, collapse, vacuum decay, etc., each of which is a "feelingless" dimensionality reduction for human civilization. Recently, the famous physicist Brian Cox has once again revealed the "instability of the universe" and believes that the end of the world can happen at any time.
The strength of the Higgs energy field, which permeates every corner of the universe, varies according to its potential energy and is always in one of two states: "true vacuum" and "false vacuum." The so-called true vacuum is energy stable, in a state of minimal energy, while the false vacuum represents that the entire universe is only stable to some extent (extremely small), but not completely stable, and this equilibrium is easily broken. The problem is that the false vacuum universe may cause a part of itself to be swallowed up by the true vacuum universe through random quantum fluctuations, which means disaster.
The Large Hadron Collider at the CERN on the French/Swiss border is the world's largest scientific instrument. Professor Cox revealed in a 2012 experiment that the universe we live in may be in a false vacuum, where the Higgs boson was discovered. The nature of the Higgs boson suggests that our universe may be in an unstable false vacuum, which opens up the possibility of instantaneous destruction of the universe with considerable uncertainty at points in time. Astrophysicist Dr. Katie Mack agrees with this view.
If the universe ends, what does it mean for humanity? According to quantum theory, there are countless bubble universes, and the universe we live in is just one of the expanding bubbles, the "multiverse." The universe outside the bubble seems to be unified, and that's because we can only see the bubble we're in. If our universe comes to an end, it will be insignificant for more bubbles outside the bubble, but it will be a dimensional-reduction blow to human beings, and we will not feel any pain in the process.
Scientists say that the time scale of vacuum decay is many times the lifespan of our universe, so it does not happen suddenly, and the universe is still a long way from ending in this way. But crucially, there is growing evidence that the universe is not as stable and eternal as we think. So this to some extent exacerbates the uncertainty of the end of the universe.
One might wonder: Can quantum mechanics save humanity? Achieving a "reboot" of parts of the universe through quantum entanglement may seem like a good approach, but today in 2020, it's more like a scheme in a science fiction movie. In any case, whether it is a big tear, exploration or vacuum decay, we still have a long time to explore the universe, and the future is still promising for humanity.
Editor-in-Charge/Zhang Hangyu Zhu
bibliography:
《'universe is unstable!' how brian cox revealed world could end 'at any moment'》
《vacuum decay: the ultimate catastrophe》