Scientists have discovered a kind of button that would destroy the Earth in an instant. Let’s explain that. It’s a ‘false vacuum’ located in the Higgs field, and if activated, it would trigger a quantum apocalypse. It’s called false vacuum decay, and if activated, it would not only wipe out life on Earth, but also erase the very fabric of existence.
We might not be in the most stable configuration possible
“They can stay upright unless some small disturbance topples one, and triggers all of them to fall.” This is how Professor Ian Moss, a cosmologist at Newcastle University, compared it to a row of dominoes waiting to fall. Ideally, planet Earth would be in a stable energy environment, but that’s not the case. The reality is that we live in a universe that is constantly moving and therefore changing. According to the researchers, we might not be in the most stable configuration possible; instead, we are in what’s known as a “false vacuum.”
A good analogy for a field in a false vacuum is a marble in a bowl on a stool
The vacuum state is the moment of lowest energy of an object or particle. That is, for example, a piece of wood or coal. When burned, it would immediately turn to ash. This implies that the energy and particles in its structure would be reduced to the lowest common multiple. According to Dr. Louise Hamaide, a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Naples, “A good analogy for a field in a false vacuum is a marble in a bowl on a stool. The marble can’t leave the bowl unless it is given some energy in the form of a push, and if it does, it will fall to the floor.”
The Higgs field is a quantum field that, according to a hypothesis by physicist Peter Higgs, allows particles to acquire mass due to the way they interact jointly with the Higgs boson. Particles that interact with the field have greater mass, while those that don’t interact have almost no mass at all. Ultimately, the Higgs field is essential to the fundamental structure of the universe.
“The basic idea of ​​quantum field theory is to represent reality solely with fields”
Dr. Alessandro Zenesini, a scientist at Italy’s National Institute of Optics, explained: “The basic idea of ​​quantum field theory is to represent reality solely with fields. Let’s think of a surface of water. When it’s flat, it’s an empty field. As soon as a wave arises, it can be thought of as a particle that can interact with another wave.”
According to experts, if the Higgs field is truly ‘trapped’ in this false vacuum, it would cause the entire universe to disappear, so to speak. We’ll have to continue to leave these studies to scientists until we know more details. For now on, this universe ‘boom’ is unlikely to occur in the near future. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible; it’s simply that it’s a random and spontaneous event that, in theory, could happen at any time, although the probability of doing so is extremely small.
It’s more important to go outside, breathe, laugh, and enjoy
What is clear is that human life can be snuffed out at any moment, so it’s better to focus on living it the best way we know how. Keeping informed about what’s happening around us is essential to understanding the ground we walk on every day, but it’s more important to go outside, breathe, laugh, and enjoy ourselves than to worry about the Higgs field or an apocalypse that we don’t know when will happen.
