Clickbaity title. The estimated time until Higgs field decay has been changed from 10^794^ years to 10^790^ 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.
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
83 points (85.5% liked)
Space
8876 readers
64 users here now
Share & discuss informative content on: Astrophysics, Cosmology, Space Exploration, Planetary Science and Astrobiology.
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive.
- No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Engage in constructive discussions.
- Share relevant content.
- Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
- Use appropriate language and tone.
- Report violations.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
Picture of the Day
The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula
Related Communities
๐ญ Science
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
๐ Engineering
๐ Art and Photography
Other Cool Links
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
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.
๐
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.
Itโs like if I became 10,000 times less attractive. Same thing.
Is it more than 3?
it's still a concern for biden
Its more like 0.5% difference.
Not really, the new value is 0.0001% of the old.
Just because the number has barely fewer digits doesn't mean it's barely smaller
Guess I'm not spending that Christmas with my family after all...
we'll find out who was right then
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
I was going to say it's way shorter than it should be, but then I realised Alexandrite renders it wrong and it spills under the community info tab and presumably far beyond the edge of my monitor.
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.
Donโt 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
โIn the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.โ
Time to end it! Inโฆ.how many years, you say? sigh
So... Not tomorrow then. Meh, who cares.
I do.
That could solve a lot of my problems.
reads title ... ๐ฎ
reads article
Of course, this expected time-to-decay has only shifted from 10^794^ years to 10^790^ years
เฒ _เฒ
Hooray!
Nice
eh good riddance.