@@woaken575 Personally, I'd prefer to see it coming, whatever my end is. Slow or fast, I'd prefer to have the experience of awareness of the approaching end and take one last moment to appreciate being alive.
@@kenten yeah I highly doubt you'll actually feel that though, you know, in the moment. If you're being burned alive or drowned or some other horrible death, you won't exactly take time to be introspective about it, let's be honest here.
@@arsalan2231 it's not so much that you reflect on it that as much as you feel it. And hey if your destruction happens faster than your neurons can fire then you're good
I once stumbled across a Wikipedia article titled “The Big Slurp” and it freaked me out for ages. This video basically broke down the entire concept and made it much more digestible - and, you know, less panic-inducing. Thank you.
The presumed capacity of Strange Quark matter to convert any matter it contacts to Strange Quark Matters is the scariest thing I've ever heard of. Compared to that, even Magnetars and Black Holes are positively comforting thoughts.
I bet you we will one day find that out. What's terrifying about that prospect is that a whole universe was erased to create ours if that was the case.
@@jzblue345 Maybe the last universe wasn't suitable for life, or even forming of any matter, and this cycle has happened infinitely many times, with the fields constantly going to lower states every now and then, and our exact field configuration is the only one in which life could exist
I'm not going to worry about Higgs Field stability, except for all that time I wasted on homework. But this video had a miraculous side-effect: it contained, like the excitation of some epistemological particle field, the best explanation of sub-nuclear particles and their relationships, ever to see the light of pixellated reality. Thanks, Learning Curve!
It's kind of comforting that we'd never see it coming and it'd be all over in a fraction of a second. Of course the event that spawned the expanding bubble would actually be in a super position until the sphere of influence reached us, it's only at that point the event would occur or not occur in the past. Depending on your interpretation of quantum physics we'd simply carry on in a realm where the event never took place meaning it'd never actually happen from our perspective. Things would get a little more complex if we ever developed FTL space travel though.
i don’t think humans are the only thing that can collapse a wavefunction. pretty sure that when they contain enough stuff the uncertainty is extremely negligible
@@morgan0 That is true, but to any observer, his/her/its perspective is the only one that is relevant to him/her/it. Any prior potential collapse to the wave-function is itself in a super-position until it is observed. We experience time as a one dimensional linear progression of entropy, but QM doesn't have to follow that at all. We're left with trying to make sense of it all based on our limited perception, and as soon as we apply this linear immutable time concept we invalidate it.
I have always struggled with quantum mechanics and science in general. You actually made me understand something. It's a lot more interesting when you understand it.
@Stanislav Fajfr uff i don´t want be rude or something, but no one can "clearly explained" anything about this "universe" and "beyond universe" and IF such words exists our tiny brains can surly not understand the meaning 🤣 but yes, it was an interesting video👍
So you'd need an excitation of the Higgs field sufficient to get it out of that trough and black holes haven't manage to do it yet, so that must be an incredibly stable metastable state all things considered.
Around the time of the discovery of the Higgs boson, there was some media speculation that experiments at CERN could trigger false vacuum decay, and... yeah, if the energies at CERN could have triggered vacuum decay then the universe would have destroyed itself eons ago.
Thank you for explaining these technical concepts in a communicable way, but also giving extra information for those who wish to dive deeper! I rarely see this in Cosmology/Particle Physics UA-cam.
When the last black hole has evaporated and there isn't anything to "hold up" the Higgs field in its metastable state could the collapse of the false vacuum lead to another big bang? Amazing video...
Something in a metastable state is still stable, it doesn't need anything to "hold it up". However I take comfort in knowing that with an infinite amount of time, anything that's possible becomes certain, so even if the universe becomes completely devoid of useful energy, we could still get the collapse of the Higgs field by quantum tunnelling even if it's vanishingly unlikely.
The depictions and analogies in this video are absolutely perfect. I have never seen complex ideas explained so simply and clearly. Respect. WELL done.
This is also referred to as a phase transition. Btw when you were talking about the higgs field potentially falling to its vacuum state I got a mental visual of Egon Spengler saying Don't cross the streams. It would be bad. lol
Awesome. Looking forward to the Big Rip destruction scenario next and how it is different from Vacuum Decay. The way in which we and the universe vaporize is really important! :)
I've always found this concept freaky but interesting, and you explained it really well here. The "it could be expanding from so far away we wouldn't know" thing gives me an interesting idea for a eons-spanning, high-concept sci-fi story: 1) Empires rise and fall, species evolve and die, entire stars are blown up in epic wars...in a universe _that is ALREADY DOOMED_ , but none of these people know it. (Possible ending: The vacuum-decay wave engulfs every star system, planet, galaxy, empire, ship and person ever mentioned in this story before they even see it coming and even though they tried so hard and came so far, in the end, there isn't even matter...) 2) Okay, so, if the expansion of the universe might be going fast enough to keep the part that's being vacuum-decayed constantly away from us...does that mean that "What's outside the observable universe?" doesn't matter AT ALL, because, there _isn't_ anything outside what we can see? Because vacuum decay is constantly destroying it. Like, in the time it takes someone to wonder what a galaxy far enough away to be outside our bubble of knowledge is like, that galaxy has stopped existing. (This would mean that spooky-scary dark energy would actually be saving our butts.) (Edited because I got the song lyrics for my dumb joke in the wrong order.)
Kuddos. Looking forward to more.videos from you. The understandable maths you teach are off the charts. Wish I had this channel back in my 11th grade (2013).
Thanks great video. I always enjoy your videos. It is a sign of the times that nonsense get plenty of views and knowledge does not, but we that follow you are grateful for your work.
I've seen multiple videos on vacuum decay, and none of them (including this one) explain why the lower-state bubble would spread. How could one tunneled boson suddenly cause all the others to tunnel around it? Also, if it were possible and if it does spread, then statistically wouldn't earth have been disintegrated by now?
I think the explanation for spreading is that the drop to the lower energy state releases a massive amount of energy. Enough to move all the other Higgs bozons near it up to the hump that keeps them metastable, meaning they can now drop to the lowest state. As for the statistics part: It's possible for a quantum tunnel event to be so rare that none have happened in the observable universe since the Big Bang. Like proton decay for example. We think it's possible the proton isn't stable, but it's half life is so long that noone has ever managed to observe it decaying. Like that, but at an even more ludicrous scale, where not only no human has observed it, it hasn't happened a single time in 13.8 billion years.
If the Higgs Field is metastable, do scientists know how far it would have to “fall” to be at its vacuum state? Would it matter in regards to how the Universe would react? Would a little be okay and a lot bad, or would any amount have the same result?
It's all extremely speculative, but if we assume that vacuum decay really does work like more everyday phase transitions such as boiling, then a "bubble" of false vacuum would have to reach a tipping point size before it undergoes runaway and drags the rest of the universe with it. (That classic knocking/bumping sound you hear in boiling kettles is actually microscopic bubbles that don't make it to the critical size and collapse back in on themselves.) The bigger the energy gap between the false and true vacuums, the smaller this bubble would have to be, and therefore we would expect vacuum decay to be more likely/happen sooner if this gap was bigger. In terms of what the universe would look like afterwards, sure this would depend on the gap size, but the post-decay universe would be beyond out tiny ape brains.
A fun thought is combining this with MW quantum cosmology; that all branches of quantum mechanics happens. Then a vacuum collapse just doesn't matter in a sense; it is just a boundary condition for the quantum field. In fact, you could have a really high chance of collapse everywhere at every moment, and the non-vacuum-collapsed part of the wavefunction would not notice. This non-vacuum-collapsed part of the wavefunction would be this infinitely thin membrane, but contain universes untroibled by vacuum collapse.
It's not the speed of light! I do wish people would stop referencing it as the standard bearer. It's the speed of causality. Light just happens to obey the law of the speed of causality.
I wonder, though. What if vacuum decay IS the universe? The next one after ours, like ours has been a vacuum decay of another. That chain doesn't have to have a beginning, because if in vacuum decay, all laws of nature change, this means laws of nature themselves are a field rather than static incontrovertible rules, and vacuum decay events are its excitations.
@@hereLiesThisTroper This is true given the laws of our universe, but so far nothing suggests the relation of cause and effect is an absolute law that cannot change if any other global constants change.
@@Hisu0 I respectfully disgaree. Cause and Effect transcends our universe's physical law. The reason I say this is because Cause and Effect is part of Logic and Logic transcends our physical universe. A simple proof would be: Cause and Effect could be said as = "IF A THEN B" Apply this to Math with the statement = IF One added by One THEN Two It is not necessary to have a physical object (apple or orange) to show that One plus One is Two. And in addition, Math is a product of Logic and even it seems to transcend our physical universe. So yeah, you will still need a beginning even if said beginning is not of our physical universe because of Cause and Effect.
Expansion of the universe is accelerating to faster than the speed of light while vacuum decay is limited to the speed of light. Ergo the universe will survive
1:00 those grids and numbers, they only exist because of spacetime and its expansion into the void. In my reality we are inside a singularity of a black hole, whatever was in the core went supercritical and exploded, likely 2 supermassive black holes colliding, or a fault line ripping that confined energy apart like you cant even imagine Say spacetime on a page of paper is drawn as a line, the weight of the object warping the fabric that is everything together. at the event horizon the math twists so much nothing not even light can breach the horizon (2 black holes can merge if they can lose mass or energy, one needs to slow down tho), but there is no route to source for normal mass or even light, it just gets ejected at the poles, same internally, to escape the well you need to break causality and go faster than light enough to escape the singularities gravity, inside that tiny area of space is actually infinite spacetime with little to no wiggle room, the mass of the singularity would be radiating everything back on itself heating up as all light and radiation returns to sender, the singularity so confined by spacetime that it can't even vibrate would it be hot? or cold?, those discrete packets and areas of space so twisted and smooshed they are unrecognisable, non sensical even if you numbered them in a logical order before hand. But between the singularity and the event horizon is an area of nothing, a sliver of finite area with infinite limitations, like if you can escape the singularity's gravity and travel near the speed of light you could travel forever without moving. Say the singularity explodes tho, the mass of it being forced out, spacetime being able to straighten itself out by inflating into this infinite void between universes, it could expand forever and gravity has no pull now, the event horizon still exists as information can't reach it ever it will never know what happened, so here we are in a universe inside a universe inside a universe, all bound by the speed of light, all potentially travelling at the speed of light, weightless because the whole universe is sitting in its gravity well in another universe, the laws of physics might not even condense out of spacetime at the same rates, it could be a whole different place.. But the universe is cold, like a gas that has condensed in a sealed system, why hasnt the vacuum imploded the universe already, stars radiate energy and electrons and maybe its enough to make spacetime, but we all know E=MC2, but what if it really is everything, space time mass energy electron all just the same thing in a slightly different state of energy, all trying to calm the fuck down in a universe filled with noise and violence But yeah they think we need to envision dyson spheres and wrapping stars in solar panels, rookies without vision, we need to be able to manipulate these fields that manipulate the atoms and universe, if we can change the constant, or make the weak nuclear force non existent we can make so many new elements, if we can magnify the strong force without changing the pressure to the core of a star then we can make cold fusion you can turn on and off with a switch, just change the laws of physics in a localised field, can't be any harder or dumber than trying to solar pave the solar system with solar roads
Electrons and positions are excitation in the lepton field. When they meet they cease to exist, but their combined energy moves to an excitation in the EM field. Is that right?
Considering the implication of "needs energy levels possibly only available at the beginning of the universe" and "might not happen until the literal lowest energy of the universe" I think the literal highest energy difference in the physical Universe, as a range, means that we ain't gotta worry.
Depending on how far this happens and assuming this stable state permeates through space at the speed of light, some galaxies may be so far away it would never reach them.
Possibility: Inside the decay bubble, sound is able to permeate the universe, and a bit of chiptune music plays, along with a "Game Over" screen. The universe then restarts after you press UP.
our planet had almost 5b years to create us and didn't even get interrupted by such event, so there's a possibility that it's extremely rare, but it might be common as well, we just could get lucky to not get hit by it in such a long time, but even 1 in like 10m years is very small for the scale of our civilization
As said by the video, there is a real chance that it's already happened, but the speed of the growth of the universe constantly keeps the field from growing out of control and destroying the universe
Are you trying to say it's why the Higgs boson can't decay into a lower state of energy? What would it decay into? Or are you saying the metastate/metastable is the reason matter has mass?
Question: why is it that the bubble expands? Say quantum tunneling occurs in some isolated area; energy must still be conserved. To my understanding (if wrong please correct me), tunneling "steals" energy from its surroundings, but the energy is "returned" before a meaningful amount of time has passed- thus the universe around the event simply doesn't notice any shady accounting going on with the numbers. So, that area that had the tunneling event occur now reaches its true vacuum state, why does that invoke a cascade around it? High concentration flows to low concentration, so how come the vacuum isn't restored to its false point by the much greater amount of energy present in the false vacuums around it?
2:50 Are we really splitting the atom into separate quarks? We never find single quarks existing in isolation. They always come in threes. If we take two quarks and try to pull them apart the energy required to do this spans new quarks. If I were a 2-D being living in a busy street I would see groups of objects which are not connected in any way, but they always move together either 1 pair or two pairs. So these objects are always seen either in groups of 4 or 2. If I tried to move the objects apart I would find it to be impossible. If I could make contact with the 3-D I would discover and extraordinary fact. These object are not 4 (or 2) unconnected objects, rather they are parts of a single objects. Things called "cars" and "motor cycles." I think Quarks are the same kinds of things. To the 2-D road dwellers these groups of objects are the point in the car's tire that is in contact with the road. When we see a group of quarks we are just seeing parts of a larger, single object.
I'm 42. I've studied, at least in an autodidactic sense, physics a lot over the years. Your visualizations helped me grasp the concept of fields more fundamentally than I ever have. Thank you. Edit: stupid autocorrect lol
So, could a vacuum decay event be a Big Bang scenario for a new universe? Could our Big Bang have been a vacuum decay of the previous universe? And could a change in the vacuum state of the Higgs field _change_ other fields? I don't just mean change their values. I'm talking about, say, recombining or further splitting the forces; or fundamentally altering the fields' nature, so that we end up with a different set of fields altogether.
Thought: our universe may be the result of a previous lowering of the Higgs field's local minimum. What if there is no absolute "stable" energy, but only metastable energies of this field (i.e., the absolute minimum is negative infinity, with steps in the curve where the field gets stuck)? That'd mean every universe is temporary, awaiting its death until the next step in the lowering of the Higgs field! I just blew my own mind ... and will spend the rest of my life in highly philosophical fascination.
Yes I know it's fascinating isn't it. When I was doing the research for this I was having similar thoughts. What if our universe decayed from another. Interesting stuff.
I have thoughts like that with the collapse theory, where the universe collapsing would cause a 'supernova' that creates a new universe from the ashes.
Why? The universe would just fill in the lesser vacuum until it reached equilibrium over the extent of existence. Unless a large portion of the universe drops to a lower state and breaks the equilibrium, this would have no effect. The existence of a lower vacuum state would also preclude the existence of anything except virtual particles to trigger the tunneling effect correct?
What if quantum tunneling of Higgs Bosons in the Higgs field is exactly what's going on and is what makes stuff radioactive? Example, what if the Higgs boson jumps down to the lowest energy state and the ripple has the effect that the element it just escaped from splits. It would explain why radiation is unpredictable as it's not bound to anything physical but to a field. It would also mean you could bring uranium to cern and detect Higgs Bosons without running the particle accelerator "with live ammo" for lack of better term.... so ye, maybe the scientists would have thought of this already...
I think it would be funniest if the only thing that changed after the "fixing" of the Higgs Field is that like... the rate that Black Holes dissolve into Hawking Radiation speeds up slightly, or something else that seems completely unrelated and/or relatively insignificant, like protons taking longer to decay. Just the idea that the concept of "the fundamental forces of the universe as we know it could be irrevocably altered and we can't do anything to stop it!" actually isn't as apocalyptic as it sounds like it is, or even becomes beneficial, is hilarious to me.
As someone once said, before panicking, ask yourself: "can I do something about it?" No? Then stop worrying. Yes? Then go and do it. If the universe cease to exist because some particle likes to go through barriers then oh well, it is what it is.
So the higgs will “reset” in the 0 state interior of the 0 state lightspeed expanding bubble? And the 0 state would likely change the behaviour of other fields and so we would all “die”? Yikes
Gluons actually make up most of the mass, The higgs field is only responsible for less than 10% of a particle's mass. It's doubtful that the destabilization of the higgs field would cause a COMPLETE erosion of order.
Would It be possible for the horizon of the expanding Vacuum Decay Bubble to eventually grow its acceleration faster than the speed of light?? Depending on how big the universe is??? As it would be a new Cosmic horizon which is also expanding in all directions exceeding the speed of light.
Sure, but the space between us and a vacuum bubble would also be expanding faster than light. If it is outside of the region that we can theoretically travel to, it will never reach us.
@@declandougan7243 Well only IF the Universe is infinite in size. If its not tho, then it would eventually catch up overtime as the inflation eventually hits its dead end barrier of some outer wall? Or maybe unless the infinite universe is more of a cyclical ♾ infinity. In which case the horizon of the vaccume decay would eventually meet itself on all sides.
As for Gravity forces bending “ light”. Does this mean that Stars are likely ‘ not’ where thy appear to be...? Also if this is true , axial characteristics ( only axial birthed rays..).. then would be reaching us... In the Magnatar video you said ..” the other side of the star is visable..” Meaning the Gravity bent the light so severely.......♓️ Point is this ; How can Star distance be known if it is construed on ... light generating straight line ? Is this interesting to do a video on ?
Thank you, great suggestion. I'm planning a video on how we measure the universe and how we know how far things are away from us. Hopefully that will answer some of your questions.
Super interesting. 🙂 Wavelengths, frequencies, and resonance are all key. Reflection, too. 💪😎✌️ "Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In Time, all points converge: hope's strength, resteeled. But to earn final peace at the Universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again." 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ --Diamond Dragons (series)
It probably won’t happen though. Because to measure the Higgs boson we had to BEYOND excite the relative space. All that extra energy added to detect it was what created the false Vacuum “hump” In nature we don’t “physically measure or observe” the Higgs boson/Higgs Field. Ergo in nature the Higgs field is LOWER than what we measured. Nobody seems to Compensate for added energy.
The starting point of physics is the idea of inertia, but "The knowledge of the straightness of the movement of a body left to itself does not follow from experience. On the contrary!" (Einstein). The fundamental difference between inertia forces and ordinary forces of interaction of bodies is that for inertia forces it is impossible to specify the action of which specific bodies on a material point they describe, they cannot be confused with the Dalembert force of inertia, and they are always external forces. (Newton's first law is not a special case of Newton's second law.) GR reduced gravity to inertia by generalizing the first law: the free movement of test bodies occurs along geodesic lines, but the theory did not find out anything new about the nature of the cause of inertia forces. "... the complete geometrization established by GR introduces a hierarchized cosmos on the plane, indicating indirectly the presence of an elusive source." (Tonnelat). It seems that this source of external (external) inertia forces is an "absolute vacuum" - instead of Newtonian "absolute space", which "... as a cause, does not satisfy the need for a causal explanation." (Born). Finally, the search for the root cause became possible after Friedmann spoke for the first time in a scientific way about the "creation of the world", and even then there was an opportunity to abandon the a priori nature of the law (more precisely, the axiom) of inertia, and build physics on a more reliable basis. P.S. GR was QG: docs.google.com/document/d/1PKsO3vuXu7XJUhwjgpCR-a8Bwdi24B89QkE9RsKABOU/edit?usp=drivesdk
This is the best definition of a "particle" I have ever seen. Absolutely amazing work!!
Wow, thank you so much.
Yep. True that! Best examples/analogies.
Thirded, which I'm being told is definitely a word.
@@benjerman4438 4th'd.
Out of all the ways the universe could end I would prefer this. You would never see it coming
Ah to never see it coming, it truly is the best any of us can hope for.
@@woaken575 Personally, I'd prefer to see it coming, whatever my end is. Slow or fast, I'd prefer to have the experience of awareness of the approaching end and take one last moment to appreciate being alive.
@@kenten yeah I highly doubt you'll actually feel that though, you know, in the moment. If you're being burned alive or drowned or some other horrible death, you won't exactly take time to be introspective about it, let's be honest here.
I’d rather it be fast everybody all at once rather than famine or nuclear winter etc.
@@arsalan2231 it's not so much that you reflect on it that as much as you feel it. And hey if your destruction happens faster than your neurons can fire then you're good
I once stumbled across a Wikipedia article titled “The Big Slurp” and it freaked me out for ages. This video basically broke down the entire concept and made it much more digestible - and, you know, less panic-inducing. Thank you.
"WiKi" is 100% garbage !!! 10 15 even 20-year-old encyclopedias are a better start to your understanding !!!
The presumed capacity of Strange Quark matter to convert any matter it contacts to Strange Quark Matters is the scariest thing I've ever heard of. Compared to that, even Magnetars and Black Holes are positively comforting thoughts.
I've watched and read quite a bit about vacuum decay but you explained it nice and clearly, thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I wonder if the big bang could just be the higgs field going to a more stable energy field
I bet you we will one day find that out. What's terrifying about that prospect is that a whole universe was erased to create ours if that was the case.
@@jzblue345 Maybe the last universe wasn't suitable for life, or even forming of any matter, and this cycle has happened infinitely many times, with the fields constantly going to lower states every now and then, and our exact field configuration is the only one in which life could exist
these are some of the best things youtube has ever offered... thank you for taking the time to make these!
That's so kind. I'm glad you enjoy them. It's just me with my computer and my insatiable curiosity
@@LearningCurveScience I second this comment, it's very well said. I hope you keep doing what you're doing for a long time. 😌
I'm not going to worry about Higgs Field stability, except for all that time I wasted on homework.
But this video had a miraculous side-effect: it contained, like the excitation of some epistemological particle field, the best explanation of sub-nuclear particles and their relationships, ever to see the light of pixellated reality. Thanks, Learning Curve!
It's kind of comforting that we'd never see it coming and it'd be all over in a fraction of a second. Of course the event that spawned the expanding bubble would actually be in a super position until the sphere of influence reached us, it's only at that point the event would occur or not occur in the past. Depending on your interpretation of quantum physics we'd simply carry on in a realm where the event never took place meaning it'd never actually happen from our perspective. Things would get a little more complex if we ever developed FTL space travel though.
i don’t think humans are the only thing that can collapse a wavefunction. pretty sure that when they contain enough stuff the uncertainty is extremely negligible
@@morgan0 That is true, but to any observer, his/her/its perspective is the only one that is relevant to him/her/it. Any prior potential collapse to the wave-function is itself in a super-position until it is observed. We experience time as a one dimensional linear progression of entropy, but QM doesn't have to follow that at all. We're left with trying to make sense of it all based on our limited perception, and as soon as we apply this linear immutable time concept we invalidate it.
@@spudhead169 🤣🤣👍👍
"super position" 🤓
I have always struggled with quantum mechanics and science in general. You actually made me understand something. It's a lot more interesting when you understand it.
Straight to the point and clearly explained such a complex subject - thank you!
Thank you very much.
@@LearningCurveScience I love your videos 💗 and can I have a shoutout?
Yeah... Straight up BULLSH*T!
@Stanislav Fajfr uff i don´t want be rude or something, but no one can "clearly explained" anything about this "universe" and "beyond universe" and IF such words exists our tiny brains can surly not understand the meaning 🤣
but yes, it was an interesting video👍
@@MrLince-hr4of I can pretty much guarantee that you would be fun at parties 🤣
So you'd need an excitation of the Higgs field sufficient to get it out of that trough and black holes haven't manage to do it yet, so that must be an incredibly stable metastable state all things considered.
Yes the metastability is overall very stable, that's why it is thought it will last for a very long time.
Around the time of the discovery of the Higgs boson, there was some media speculation that experiments at CERN could trigger false vacuum decay, and... yeah, if the energies at CERN could have triggered vacuum decay then the universe would have destroyed itself eons ago.
Thank you for explaining these technical concepts in a communicable way, but also giving extra information for those who wish to dive deeper! I rarely see this in Cosmology/Particle Physics UA-cam.
When the last black hole has evaporated and there isn't anything to "hold up" the Higgs field in its metastable state could the collapse of the false vacuum lead to another big bang? Amazing video...
Thank you very much
that.. i understand now
Something in a metastable state is still stable, it doesn't need anything to "hold it up".
However I take comfort in knowing that with an infinite amount of time, anything that's possible becomes certain, so even if the universe becomes completely devoid of useful energy, we could still get the collapse of the Higgs field by quantum tunnelling even if it's vanishingly unlikely.
The depictions and analogies in this video are absolutely perfect. I have never seen complex ideas explained so simply and clearly. Respect. WELL done.
This is also referred to as a phase transition. Btw when you were talking about the higgs field potentially falling to its vacuum state I got a mental visual of Egon Spengler saying Don't cross the streams. It would be bad. lol
The way you explained fields and particles in this video is the best I've ever seen!
Wow, thanks! Glad you found it helpful.
Best video I’ve ever seen explaining fields and particles. Thank you.
Thank you so much. I try my best and whilst I don't get it perfect every time, I try to make things understandable
Awesome. Looking forward to the Big Rip destruction scenario next and how it is different from Vacuum Decay. The way in which we and the universe vaporize is really important! :)
Big rip has been debunked
ua-cam.com/video/bUHZ2k9DYHY/v-deo.html
Yes, really important. You want to be prepared.
@@rubiks6 Ha ha. Exactly. If we get our bomb shelters reinforced against big rip and vacuum decay scenarios, we’ll survive just fine :)
2:00 I had a college science teacher tell me once, "If you understand field theory, you're wrong."
Very true. wave functions make my head hurt
If it happens, I am reassured none of us would ever realize anything, one moment we're there, the next we're not. Painless and silent.
So that's why photons have no mass... I've been wondering about that for ages! 🤔
Well done!
In quantum tunneling, can the particle be inside the barrier at any moment, or it goes directly from point A to point B?
I've always found this concept freaky but interesting, and you explained it really well here. The "it could be expanding from so far away we wouldn't know" thing gives me an interesting idea for a eons-spanning, high-concept sci-fi story: 1) Empires rise and fall, species evolve and die, entire stars are blown up in epic wars...in a universe _that is ALREADY DOOMED_ , but none of these people know it.
(Possible ending: The vacuum-decay wave engulfs every star system, planet, galaxy, empire, ship and person ever mentioned in this story before they even see it coming and even though they tried so hard and came so far, in the end, there isn't even matter...)
2) Okay, so, if the expansion of the universe might be going fast enough to keep the part that's being vacuum-decayed constantly away from us...does that mean that "What's outside the observable universe?" doesn't matter AT ALL, because, there _isn't_ anything outside what we can see? Because vacuum decay is constantly destroying it. Like, in the time it takes someone to wonder what a galaxy far enough away to be outside our bubble of knowledge is like, that galaxy has stopped existing. (This would mean that spooky-scary dark energy would actually be saving our butts.)
(Edited because I got the song lyrics for my dumb joke in the wrong order.)
if you are into games try outer wilds. no spoilers but it's a video game about space exploration in a doomed solar system.
Thanks for putting all that effort and information into such a stellar video! Great job!
Thank you very much
Kuddos. Looking forward to more.videos from you. The understandable maths you teach are off the charts. Wish I had this channel back in my 11th grade (2013).
Glad you like them!
Sure. Binged your entire playlist, last night. 😇
Thanks great video. I always enjoy your videos. It is a sign of the times that nonsense get plenty of views and knowledge does not, but we that follow you are grateful for your work.
Thank you, and I am grateful for everyone that enjoys my videos.
Amazing video, I've never had particles explained to me so clearly and concisely. Thanks!
Thank you so much
You say ”thank you for watching” in such a sweet way🥰
Thank you!!
Nice work.
Honestly, if everyone on earth disappears at the same time, I don't mind. But if even a single person is left alive, I do mind.
I've seen multiple videos on vacuum decay, and none of them (including this one) explain why the lower-state bubble would spread.
How could one tunneled boson suddenly cause all the others to tunnel around it?
Also, if it were possible and if it does spread, then statistically wouldn't earth have been disintegrated by now?
I think the explanation for spreading is that the drop to the lower energy state releases a massive amount of energy. Enough to move all the other Higgs bozons near it up to the hump that keeps them metastable, meaning they can now drop to the lowest state.
As for the statistics part: It's possible for a quantum tunnel event to be so rare that none have happened in the observable universe since the Big Bang. Like proton decay for example. We think it's possible the proton isn't stable, but it's half life is so long that noone has ever managed to observe it decaying. Like that, but at an even more ludicrous scale, where not only no human has observed it, it hasn't happened a single time in 13.8 billion years.
If the Higgs Field is metastable, do scientists know how far it would have to “fall” to be at its vacuum state? Would it matter in regards to how the Universe would react? Would a little be okay and a lot bad, or would any amount have the same result?
It's all extremely speculative, but if we assume that vacuum decay really does work like more everyday phase transitions such as boiling, then a "bubble" of false vacuum would have to reach a tipping point size before it undergoes runaway and drags the rest of the universe with it. (That classic knocking/bumping sound you hear in boiling kettles is actually microscopic bubbles that don't make it to the critical size and collapse back in on themselves.) The bigger the energy gap between the false and true vacuums, the smaller this bubble would have to be, and therefore we would expect vacuum decay to be more likely/happen sooner if this gap was bigger.
In terms of what the universe would look like afterwards, sure this would depend on the gap size, but the post-decay universe would be beyond out tiny ape brains.
4:30 The wave analogy I guess breaks down here since two waves would continue passing through each other.
Or I guess the waves jump to other fields not depicted here...
Would it be possible to estimate the laws of physics with different fundamental constants? If we could, we would know whether to worry or not.
A fun thought is combining this with MW quantum cosmology; that all branches of quantum mechanics happens. Then a vacuum collapse just doesn't matter in a sense; it is just a boundary condition for the quantum field. In fact, you could have a really high chance of collapse everywhere at every moment, and the non-vacuum-collapsed part of the wavefunction would not notice.
This non-vacuum-collapsed part of the wavefunction would be this infinitely thin membrane, but contain universes untroibled by vacuum collapse.
It's not the speed of light! I do wish people would stop referencing it as the standard bearer. It's the speed of causality. Light just happens to obey the law of the speed of causality.
Yes you're quite right. The Speed of causality is on my list of topics to do a video on
Request for you to make a playlist with all your videos. Love watching them in serie.
Nice idea. I think I might just do that
This is the best explanation of vacuum decay I’ve seen on UA-cam. Thanks
Glad it was helpful! 🙂
Your content is super digestible. Please keep doing what you’re doing.
I watched one of your videos and now I cannot stop. I think this channel will soon get massive traffic.
Thank you so much. I'm glad you're enjoying my videos.
I’ve just came across your videos but I have to say WOW I’m addicted.
Thank you very much
I wonder, though. What if vacuum decay IS the universe? The next one after ours, like ours has been a vacuum decay of another. That chain doesn't have to have a beginning, because if in vacuum decay, all laws of nature change, this means laws of nature themselves are a field rather than static incontrovertible rules, and vacuum decay events are its excitations.
Yes this is really fascinating stuff. I really enjoy researching new videos, especially ones like this.
Nope, you will still need a beginning. You cannot have an infinite past or you would never reach the present.
@@hereLiesThisTroper
This is true given the laws of our universe, but so far nothing suggests the relation of cause and effect is an absolute law that cannot change if any other global constants change.
@@Hisu0 I respectfully disgaree. Cause and Effect transcends our universe's physical law. The reason I say this is because Cause and Effect is part of Logic and Logic transcends our physical universe.
A simple proof would be:
Cause and Effect could be said as = "IF A THEN B"
Apply this to Math with the statement = IF One added by One THEN Two
It is not necessary to have a physical object (apple or orange) to show that One plus One is Two.
And in addition, Math is a product of Logic and even it seems to transcend our physical universe.
So yeah, you will still need a beginning even if said beginning is not of our physical universe because of Cause and Effect.
@@hereLiesThisTroper
So far, nothing suggests the transcendent nature of logic. Otherwise, no objections.
Wonderful. This Channel needs more attention.
Thank you very much. I keep growing steadily, which is what I like
👌 perfect, can you do a video about big scale ?
Yes it is on my list, thank you for the suggestion.
Congratulations 42k subscribers!
Thank you so much 😀
@@LearningCurveScience you're welcome!
Just think, if the universe is infinite, then vacuum decay is already tearing through it somewhere. Just hope we're not near it if it is.
One universe in the multiverse
Considering a truly infinite universe, such a thing is practically guaranteed to happen at some time
Expansion of the universe is accelerating to faster than the speed of light while vacuum decay is limited to the speed of light. Ergo the universe will survive
Yes that's very true, as the hole gets bigger it just gets further away.
My Hoover has already gone into vacuum decay...it makes lots of grating sounds, but doesn't suck anything up...
1:00 those grids and numbers, they only exist because of spacetime and its expansion into the void. In my reality we are inside a singularity of a black hole, whatever was in the core went supercritical and exploded, likely 2 supermassive black holes colliding, or a fault line ripping that confined energy apart like you cant even imagine
Say spacetime on a page of paper is drawn as a line, the weight of the object warping the fabric that is everything together. at the event horizon the math twists so much nothing not even light can breach the horizon (2 black holes can merge if they can lose mass or energy, one needs to slow down tho), but there is no route to source for normal mass or even light, it just gets ejected at the poles, same internally, to escape the well you need to break causality and go faster than light enough to escape the singularities gravity,
inside that tiny area of space is actually infinite spacetime with little to no wiggle room, the mass of the singularity would be radiating everything back on itself heating up as all light and radiation returns to sender, the singularity so confined by spacetime that it can't even vibrate would it be hot? or cold?, those discrete packets and areas of space so twisted and smooshed they are unrecognisable, non sensical even if you numbered them in a logical order before hand. But between the singularity and the event horizon is an area of nothing, a sliver of finite area with infinite limitations, like if you can escape the singularity's gravity and travel near the speed of light you could travel forever without moving.
Say the singularity explodes tho, the mass of it being forced out, spacetime being able to straighten itself out by inflating into this infinite void between universes, it could expand forever and gravity has no pull now, the event horizon still exists as information can't reach it ever it will never know what happened, so here we are in a universe inside a universe inside a universe, all bound by the speed of light, all potentially travelling at the speed of light, weightless because the whole universe is sitting in its gravity well in another universe, the laws of physics might not even condense out of spacetime at the same rates, it could be a whole different place.. But the universe is cold, like a gas that has condensed in a sealed system, why hasnt the vacuum imploded the universe already, stars radiate energy and electrons and maybe its enough to make spacetime, but we all know E=MC2, but what if it really is everything, space time mass energy electron all just the same thing in a slightly different state of energy, all trying to calm the fuck down in a universe filled with noise and violence
But yeah they think we need to envision dyson spheres and wrapping stars in solar panels, rookies without vision, we need to be able to manipulate these fields that manipulate the atoms and universe, if we can change the constant, or make the weak nuclear force non existent we can make so many new elements, if we can magnify the strong force without changing the pressure to the core of a star then we can make cold fusion you can turn on and off with a switch, just change the laws of physics in a localised field, can't be any harder or dumber than trying to solar pave the solar system with solar roads
Electrons and positions are excitation in the lepton field. When they meet they cease to exist, but their combined energy moves to an excitation in the EM field. Is that right?
Strong recommendation for this video. There is info here for the novice to the dedicated student of both particle physics and cosmology..
Thank you. I try to make science as accessible as I can
This video was very good.
You have one of the best
Physics channel.
Much suport 👍
Ps I hope you make more of this type of content.
Much ❤️
Thank you so much
Could a vacuum decay event explain the imbalance of matter and antimatter?
Considering the implication of "needs energy levels possibly only available at the beginning of the universe" and "might not happen until the literal lowest energy of the universe" I think the literal highest energy difference in the physical Universe, as a range, means that we ain't gotta worry.
Heat Death and False Vacuum are my two favorite ends.
Got Big or go home.
9:16 A way to recycle all matter once it all reaches zero entropy?
Maybe our home universe came into being from the vacuum decay of the one before it ... ?
"Well it seems we've gone too far into the future and everything's gone strange, so we'd best head back home." lmao love it
It was very weird out there.
Can't wait to see your take on the Big Rip...
What will happen if two bubbles collide?
Depending on how far this happens and assuming this stable state permeates through space at the speed of light, some galaxies may be so far away it would never reach them.
Possibility:
Inside the decay bubble, sound is able to permeate the universe, and a bit of chiptune music plays, along with a "Game Over" screen.
The universe then restarts after you press UP.
our planet had almost 5b years to create us and didn't even get interrupted by such event, so there's a possibility that it's extremely rare, but it might be common as well, we just could get lucky to not get hit by it in such a long time, but even 1 in like 10m years is very small for the scale of our civilization
As said by the video, there is a real chance that it's already happened, but the speed of the growth of the universe constantly keeps the field from growing out of control and destroying the universe
Are you trying to say it's why the Higgs boson can't decay into a lower state of energy? What would it decay into? Or are you saying the metastate/metastable is the reason matter has mass?
Question: why is it that the bubble expands? Say quantum tunneling occurs in some isolated area; energy must still be conserved. To my understanding (if wrong please correct me), tunneling "steals" energy from its surroundings, but the energy is "returned" before a meaningful amount of time has passed- thus the universe around the event simply doesn't notice any shady accounting going on with the numbers.
So, that area that had the tunneling event occur now reaches its true vacuum state, why does that invoke a cascade around it? High concentration flows to low concentration, so how come the vacuum isn't restored to its false point by the much greater amount of energy present in the false vacuums around it?
2:50 Are we really splitting the atom into separate quarks? We never find single quarks existing in isolation. They always come in threes. If we take two quarks and try to pull them apart the energy required to do this spans new quarks.
If I were a 2-D being living in a busy street I would see groups of objects which are not connected in any way, but they always move together either 1 pair or two pairs. So these objects are always seen either in groups of 4 or 2.
If I tried to move the objects apart I would find it to be impossible.
If I could make contact with the 3-D I would discover and extraordinary fact. These object are not 4 (or 2) unconnected objects, rather they are parts of a single objects. Things called "cars" and "motor cycles."
I think Quarks are the same kinds of things. To the 2-D road dwellers these groups of objects are the point in the car's tire that is in contact with the road.
When we see a group of quarks we are just seeing parts of a larger, single object.
From a science view we still missing few more undiscovered fundamental particles to predict Higgs particle.
Hm. I wonder would anyone calculate what would happen to e.g. black hole encountering Higgs wavefront.
I like your optimist view of this strange menace at the end.
I'm 42. I've studied, at least in an autodidactic sense, physics a lot over the years. Your visualizations helped me grasp the concept of fields more fundamentally than I ever have. Thank you.
Edit: stupid autocorrect lol
So, could a vacuum decay event be a Big Bang scenario for a new universe? Could our Big Bang have been a vacuum decay of the previous universe?
And could a change in the vacuum state of the Higgs field _change_ other fields? I don't just mean change their values. I'm talking about, say, recombining or further splitting the forces; or fundamentally altering the fields' nature, so that we end up with a different set of fields altogether.
This is great! One of my favorites so far.
Thank you very much
Great video one of your best
Thought: our universe may be the result of a previous lowering of the Higgs field's local minimum. What if there is no absolute "stable" energy, but only metastable energies of this field (i.e., the absolute minimum is negative infinity, with steps in the curve where the field gets stuck)? That'd mean every universe is temporary, awaiting its death until the next step in the lowering of the Higgs field! I just blew my own mind ... and will spend the rest of my life in highly philosophical fascination.
Yes I know it's fascinating isn't it. When I was doing the research for this I was having similar thoughts. What if our universe decayed from another. Interesting stuff.
I have thoughts like that with the collapse theory, where the universe collapsing would cause a 'supernova' that creates a new universe from the ashes.
The best video on topic.
Why? The universe would just fill in the lesser vacuum until it reached equilibrium over the extent of existence. Unless a large portion of the universe drops to a lower state and breaks the equilibrium, this would have no effect. The existence of a lower vacuum state would also preclude the existence of anything except virtual particles to trigger the tunneling effect correct?
Can we just send a bunch of giant vacuum cleaners into space to prevent this from occurring?
Can you do a video on the largest cosmic structures in the universe like the Borealis Great Wall? Or a size comparison of stars.
Watch this space
can a single occurrence of quantum tunneling create a chain reaction of more quantum tunnelings ?
U deserve way more view and subscriber sir!
Thank you. I appreciate every single subscriber I have and even though I can't make videos for everyone every time, I try my best
What if quantum tunneling of Higgs Bosons in the Higgs field is exactly what's going on and is what makes stuff radioactive? Example, what if the Higgs boson jumps down to the lowest energy state and the ripple has the effect that the element it just escaped from splits. It would explain why radiation is unpredictable as it's not bound to anything physical but to a field.
It would also mean you could bring uranium to cern and detect Higgs Bosons without running the particle accelerator "with live ammo" for lack of better term.... so ye, maybe the scientists would have thought of this already...
Fantastic explanation!
I think it would be funniest if the only thing that changed after the "fixing" of the Higgs Field is that like... the rate that Black Holes dissolve into Hawking Radiation speeds up slightly, or something else that seems completely unrelated and/or relatively insignificant, like protons taking longer to decay. Just the idea that the concept of "the fundamental forces of the universe as we know it could be irrevocably altered and we can't do anything to stop it!" actually isn't as apocalyptic as it sounds like it is, or even becomes beneficial, is hilarious to me.
As someone once said, before panicking, ask yourself: "can I do something about it?" No? Then stop worrying. Yes? Then go and do it. If the universe cease to exist because some particle likes to go through barriers then oh well, it is what it is.
Excellent explanation thanks. Scary indeed
So the higgs will “reset” in the 0 state interior of the 0 state lightspeed expanding bubble? And the 0 state would likely change the behaviour of other fields and so we would all “die”? Yikes
Gluons actually make up most of the mass, The higgs field is only responsible for less than 10% of a particle's mass. It's doubtful that the destabilization of the higgs field would cause a COMPLETE erosion of order.
Would It be possible for the horizon of the expanding Vacuum Decay Bubble to eventually grow its acceleration faster than the speed of light?? Depending on how big the universe is???
As it would be a new Cosmic horizon which is also expanding in all directions exceeding the speed of light.
Sure, but the space between us and a vacuum bubble would also be expanding faster than light. If it is outside of the region that we can theoretically travel to, it will never reach us.
@@declandougan7243 Well only IF the Universe is infinite in size. If its not tho, then it would eventually catch up overtime as the inflation eventually hits its dead end barrier of some outer wall?
Or maybe unless the infinite universe is more of a cyclical ♾ infinity. In which case the horizon of the vaccume decay would eventually meet itself on all sides.
All the fields lived in harmony… until the Higgs field attacked.
Can’t stop thinking this is what is happening in the Bootes Void
As for Gravity forces bending “ light”.
Does this mean that Stars are likely ‘ not’ where thy appear to be...?
Also if this is true , axial characteristics ( only axial birthed rays..).. then would be reaching us...
In the Magnatar video you said ..” the other side of the star is visable..”
Meaning the Gravity bent the light so severely.......♓️
Point is this ; How can Star distance be known if it is construed on ... light generating straight line ?
Is this interesting to do a video on ?
Thank you, great suggestion. I'm planning a video on how we measure the universe and how we know how far things are away from us. Hopefully that will answer some of your questions.
Super interesting. 🙂 Wavelengths, frequencies, and resonance are all key.
Reflection, too. 💪😎✌️
"Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In Time, all points converge: hope's strength, resteeled. But to earn final peace at the Universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again."
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
--Diamond Dragons (series)
It probably won’t happen though. Because to measure the Higgs boson we had to BEYOND excite the relative space.
All that extra energy added to detect it was what created the false Vacuum “hump”
In nature we don’t “physically measure or observe” the Higgs boson/Higgs Field. Ergo in nature the Higgs field is LOWER than what we measured.
Nobody seems to Compensate for added energy.
Very good explanation of a hard topic. Congratulations
Thank you! 😃
Very captivating channel.
The starting point of physics is the idea of inertia, but "The knowledge of the straightness of the movement of a body left to itself does not follow from experience. On the contrary!" (Einstein). The fundamental difference between inertia forces and ordinary forces of interaction of bodies is that for inertia forces it is impossible to specify the action of which specific bodies on a material point they describe, they cannot be confused with the Dalembert force of inertia, and they are always external forces. (Newton's first law is not a special case of Newton's second law.) GR reduced gravity to inertia by generalizing the first law: the free movement of test bodies occurs along geodesic lines, but the theory did not find out anything new about the nature of the cause of inertia forces. "... the complete geometrization established by GR introduces a hierarchized cosmos on the plane, indicating indirectly the presence of an elusive source." (Tonnelat). It seems that this source of external (external) inertia forces is an "absolute vacuum" - instead of Newtonian "absolute space", which "... as a cause, does not satisfy the need for a causal explanation." (Born). Finally, the search for the root cause became possible after Friedmann spoke for the first time in a scientific way about the "creation of the world", and even then there was an opportunity to abandon the a priori nature of the law (more precisely, the axiom) of inertia, and build physics on a more reliable basis.
P.S. GR was QG: docs.google.com/document/d/1PKsO3vuXu7XJUhwjgpCR-a8Bwdi24B89QkE9RsKABOU/edit?usp=drivesdk
To say that utter destruction would come with no warning whatsoever, so there's nothing to worry about... It's a bit of a stretch.
Man evolved to UNDERSTAND How he will be DESTROYED. Bravissimo! Laude!
Very well done, thank you!
Amazing lecture. Thank you