Physicist: The False Vacuum is just another item on the long list of things to worry about, that are not worth worrying about, and that nobody can do anything about. If you have any other worries, worry about those first.
In any physical system you’ll find that there’s an energy “ground state” that the system tries to approach. For example, if you pour water into a bathtub there are a lot of ways that the water could arrange itself, but it will rapidly try to assume the ground state: being as low and still as possible.
In any physical system there’s a lowest energy state called the “ground state”. If you allow the energy to drain out of a system, then it will approach its ground state.
Gravitational potential (the energy that something on a high shelf has more of, and that’s released when things fall) is the easiest example of an energetic system to picture. Being on the ground is the lowest gravitational potential a thing can have (without digging); thus the name.
But in the tub example, the water in the tub doesn’t “know” about the drain or the area around the tub. Given the chance the water would flow out of the tub and into a new, lower, ground state. In fancy-math-speak, you’d say that the water in a tub is in a “local energy minimum”. Within the tub, water definitely assumes the only ground state it can find. However, if it jumped out of the tub, or somebody pulled the plug, then it would try to find a new, lower ground state and would find that it gained a bunch of new energy in the process (what with the flowing and splashing and whatnot).
There’s no good way to find out if you’re in a local “false” ground state or a true ground state.
The idea of energy levels, and ground states, and all that, applies to pretty much everything. That includes electromagnetic fields and even particle fields. A “particle field” is the quantum mechanical way of describing particles (all smeared out, instead of being all in one point), and each field has a pretty reasonable set of energy levels. Every new particle elevates the energy level by one step, and the ground level is exactly what you’d expect: zero particles.
The vacuum is the most absolute ground state: no waves, no particles, nothing at all to elevate the energy above zero*. However, all the dynamics of the universe are governed by differences in energy level. For example, when you fill a tub it doesn’t matter if the tub is at the top of a mountain, or at the bottom of a mine, the water will behave the same way. So, the idea behind a false vacuum is that what we consider the ground state of the universe isn’t really the ground state, and it may be possible to drop into an even lower-energy state (drain the tub, so to speak). What we think is the ground state, the vacuum, may not be the true ground state. So it’s called a “false vacuum”.
The “danger” of living in a false vacuum is that, under the proper circumstances the false vacuum can drop into the true vacuum. The cause is usually described as a sufficient burst of energy to get the appropriate fields “over the hump” (picture above). If the difference in energy between the false vacuum and true vacuum is large enough, then the surrounding space can likewise be tipped into the lower state. In theory, a “false vacuum collapse” would expand at light speed (or about light speed) from the originating event, and destroy the heck out of everything in the affected, and ever-expanding, region.
It’s worth mentioning that the idea of a false vacuum is wild speculation and that there is no indication, not even a little, that the vacuum of the universe is a false vacuum and not the true ground state. There’s a long history of spectacular bursts of energy in the universe, and none of them have tripped a collapse. The ground state of the universe is kinda like a septuagenarian’s testicle; if it hasn’t dropped by now, it probably won’t.
*For subtle reasons, it turns out that you can’t quite reach zero and as a result the vacuum state has slightly more than zero energy. This tiny difference is known as the “vacuum energy” or “zero point energy”, and it’s responsible for things like the Casimir effect. By the way, there are some significant issues to work out involving a disagreement between the measured and predicted values of the vacuum energy.
Can the black-hole be called a true ‘vacuum’ ?
Nope! There’s even energy tied up in the existence of gravitational fields, which black holes have in spades.
If I remember correctly it’s actually impossible to have a true area of ‘nothing’, even if you somehow manage to remove literally everything from a section of space subatomic particles will still be popping in and out all over the place.
You’re completely right, but I wanted to keep that issue separate (in the “*” section at the bottom).
Is there any way to know if our universe is the true vaccum?
Not really.
If the vacuum state were a false vacuum state, then the universe either should have dropped to the true state, or the “barrier” between the false and true states is so insurmountable that it probably doesn’t matter.
Physicist, you have severely disappointed me by saying this event is extremely unlikely to happen! What a marvellous way to go, you wouldn’t know anything about it. No pain, no suffering, no awareness of the impending doom.
Just one small question: I was wondering if the false vacuum could just apply to the earth, or also to our solar system, or our galaxy, or to the entire universe.
^the false vacuum would have to apply to our whole universe
It’s true it’s very unlikely, for if the change from false to true had happened in our universe, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it.
If we are in the “false” vacuum, becoming a “true” vacuum would be the end of our universe as we know it
If you believe in the multiverse theory, it makes sense. Other universes could be much closer to a “true” vacuum, but it really doesn’t matter unless somehow they collided/connected, in which case it’d likely destroy them both
So if the false-vacuum-collapse expands at the speed of light from a single point…and the universe is expanding…does that mean it is possible that this event will never reach some parts of the universe if the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light?
If the false-vacuum-collapse expands at the speed of light, then is it possible that the event has already started at some point in the universe and that we don’t know about it simply because we have not observed it yet?
Which brings me to a different question? would we be able to observe it at all? My notion is that I wake up to a normal morning, have breakfast, go to office and then all of a sudden.. everything is gone. Is this right?
You’re right: If (big if) a false-vacuum-collapse were to happen, then there wouldn’t be any kind of warning.
From what I have read about false vacuum collapse (unfortunately there isn’t a great deal on the internet), you would not know anything about it. One moment you’d be going about your usual business, the next you just wouldn’t exist any more (and nor would anything else around you). There would be no warning. You just wouldn’t know anything about it and would cease to exist.
By the way Jeff, the universe can’t expand faster than the speed of light. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light. It’s a sort of cosmic speed limit 🙂
Actually space can and does expand faster than the speed of light. The cosmic speed limit only applies to objects moving through space, not to space itself, so it would seem that Jeff has a valid point.
I was wondering if the big bang might be related to the collapse of a previous false vacuum. Not sure if that makes sense though.
No jeff is kinda right but also wrong, yeah the intervening space could be expanding us away from the event faster than light from either reference frame, but the expanding event will still get to us, because it travels with the stretch.
Even considering the expansion of space, it’s still possible for such an event to not be able to reach us, it just depends on where it is. Space-Time expands with respect to how far away from something you are, not strictly to the center of the universe, which means, the farther you are, the more space-time expands, with respect to everything. As far as my knowledge goes, this effect is linear, meaning there’s a constant value that the entire universe holds to, for one given time, so that something is expanding away from you at a speed multiplied by your distance. A while ago, I did some calculus which suggests that the universe should double in size once every 654 billion years or so, assuming the rate of expansion does not change. (The rate of expansion does change, though, because the same calculus also suggests that at the same rate, 15 billion years ago, the universe would be little less than 1 billion light years shorter than what it is now, which is clearly false, so the rate is probably getting lower)
Anyway, using the fact that space-time expands in all directions, there is certainly some point so that space-time is expanding faster than the speed of light, and if this false vacuum were to exist, even moving toward us at the speed of light, at that point where space-time is expanding at the speed of light, it would still appear to be at a stand-still, from our perspective. By definition, it would have to be outside the observable universe for us to be unaffected by it, and even more, it should never enter the observable universe, only other things can exit. (Unless the expansion rate slows down)
The expansion of space-time is a little bit hard to understand, so to put it into terms, you can imagine it as if instead of everything getting far away, everything is just getting smaller, while staying in place, along with the speed of light getting lower with exact respect to the degree of which everything is getting smaller.
Dear Physicist
I come to the discussion of false vacuum tunneling through to a true vacuum via “quantum tunneling” as an explanation for the origin of the Universe(multi verse),this while trying to grasp
Hawking and Krauss declaring “Something from nothing” how the Universe created itself out of nothing. It seems to come down to the energy in a False Universe tunneling through to a TRUE vacuum and experiencing eternal inflation . All that is needed is infinite timespace and a false vacuum.How did we get the false vacuum and infinite timespace for there to be a quantum fluctuation the caused the multi verse?
So Mr. Physicist, do you think that we are now living in a universe where a vacuum collapse is currently happening given what Karthic said? Or do you think we’d have been done in by now if such were the case?
Also I wanted to know if this article takes into account the discovery that the Higg’s Boson’s mass is around 127 GeV which is the the borderline for stability. Sorry if I’m bothering anyone, I just wanted to know.
I saw a Wikipedia article saying that by the Standard Model, we could determine whether or not we are living in a false vacuum by accurately measuring the masses of the top quark and the Higgs boson.
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But when you pull the plug and the water in the tub goes to a new ground state, its still water when it gets to its new destination. I’m sure the water molecules have no idea what is going on.. Things just move. why would the universe act differently?
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What about a head-on gamma ray burst? We don’t see it coming but we’re all gone instantly.
You say it is improbable that we are in a false vacuum because previous high energy events haven’t put us over the hump. Is it possible that the hump gets smaller over time?
Also, is it possible that some other property of the universe might erode the shock (so to speak) of the false vacuum collapse, rendering it into a local event? I was wondering if it might be possible to create it with the right technology, and prove to be the great filter that explains Fermi’s Paradox without destroying the rest of the universe. Pretty speculative, I know.
There’s a great science fiction book by Greg Egan about this very subject. It’s called Schild’s Ladder. Pretty great book.
I don’t understand
Does it mean there are different energy levels and in the false vacuum the energy level is higher than the true vacuum
Why would everything in our current universe… Explode if we drop to the true vacuum?
Does it mean there is another universe in the true vacuum?
I don’t understand
Thanks :p
It would not explode…it would dissolve. The Bubble would also only expand at the speed of light, so even if it happened right now, statistically speaking, it is most likely it would take millions or billions of years to even reach us (because it would most likely start millions or billions of light years away). The reason everything would dissolve is because the laws of physics would be different inside the bubble than outside. If the laws don’t allow for the formation of atoms (as an example) then anything made of atoms could not exist inside the Bubble.
As I understand it though, the bubble could start at more than one place. So for all we know there are 2 or 5 or 10 or 100 happening right now scattered around the universe. Or zero.
I read Schild’s Ladder btw. Amazon has it (and cheap…the eBook is like $3). Awesome story. If you are not a science professional you will probably be lost…I am only a layman who is really interested in this stuff and I could only follow about 70% or 80% of it. But it is deep mind-melting stuff. Very interesting and definitely not Star Wars.
if there is any vacuume you know that can just become and expand from nothing or everything please send me a response?…
I will even give you a clue here, as the question stands. you talk about “infinity”, and that is all your responses will be, in any comprehension.
To respond to other comments: Yes, technically, the edges of the universe could outrun the vacuum change, but it wouldn’t matter at that point, because that part of the universe would become “cut off”, so to speak, in the sense that the true vacuum would be expanding and creating new laws of reality behind it, so nothing in what’s left of our old universe would really matter. It would just keep barely outrunning the vacuum until the big tear happened and it was destroyed. Or, as the rate at which the universe expands is getting lower, it would probably just be swallowed. In my opinion, this is the best evidence for the multiverse (if you believe in the false vacuum), because our old universe would be still there while a new one was being made. Also, in terms of the big bang, it is a possibility that a false vacuum caused it. The idea being that when a vacuum is changed, it pretty much wipes the universe clean, giving it different laws of reality. The other idea is that our universe started in the black hole of a previous universe. This also ties back to the multiverse/universe theories, which are widely considered to be the only two theories, but I see three. Universe- There was completely empty space, and some change in quantum laws made the big bang happen. Multiverse- Infinite universes inside of some greater plane, with each universe being different in some way, either minuscule or massive. And the one that I just thought of (only applies if false vacuum’s are real)- There are multiple universes, just one has to replace a previous one, or multiple can exist at the same time, but only when the vacuum is reforming a past universe, and the outskirts of that universe are expanding away from it.
Our universe has a finite cosmological constant now which accounts for about 72% of the energy density and is accompanied by negative pressure. Does it not imply that we live in a true vaccum? Shouldn’t the cosmological constant in a true vacuum be exactly zero?
I meant ‘false vacuum’ not ‘true vacuum’. Sorry for the slip.
@The Phycisist,
Where did space originate from?
There appears to some disagreement as to whether the expansion bubble would travel at the speed of light or just very nearly the speed of light. Let’s suppose for the sake of discussion that it is the later and “very nearly” is 99.9999% of the speed of light. In that case, could astronomers not see the doom bubble coming as it swallowed up the universe in its wake? If the bubble started a long way off, say 10 billion light years, that would give us 10,000 years to contemplate our demise, assuming astronomers noticed it right away. Even if it started in very close proximity (in cosmological terms), say a million light years, we would still have a year of watching nearby stars disappear as it approached..
I have a new question:
I read somewhere that is a bubble of true vacuum formed around a micro-black hole (maybe any black hole) that there would be no expansion. That the entire universe would convert to true vacuum instantly, with no bubble needed. Any truth to that? And if so, do you have any details?
I assumed it had something to do with the Higgs field. Basically, the Higgs field connects all points in the universe since it is basically the fabric with which all matter and energy comes from. So an alteration of the Higgs field would not be bound by the limitations of the speed of light? These are just my current assumptions and are probably partially or wholly incorrect, but I’d really like to know either way. Because I have not been able to find mention of this anywhere else. All the other references to vacuum decay I have seen on the internet talk about bubble nucleation.
Was popping by to borrow visuasl for explaining vacuum decay and upon downloading these images, I was not disappointed.
definitelythegroundstate.jpg
psych.jpg
Would somebody please address my question posed on 20/24th Feb 2016?
As a writer I am looking for a method a Type two Civilization uses to ends a war in much the same way the US ended World War II. Obviously splitting the atom to create Fat Man and Little Boy would be a common 7th grade science fair projects in a type two civilization. However a weaponized false vacuum or gravity bubble might do the trick. Problem is it controllable, No civilization would destroy the galaxy to win a war, or for that matter destroy an entire planet. But if you could do enough damage to make a point one might get the enemy to see the logic of surrender, à la world war II. Is this possible or should I look for another exotic method.
Jay – In the real world it would be unstoppable. It supercedes all laws of physics once it’s in motion. As it expands, it is literally re-writing the laws of physics inside it. As I understand it though, there is a non-zero chance that the laws it “rewrites” could be coincidentally identical (or very close) to what already exists… So you could maybe work with that.
In the book “Schild’s Ladder” a vacuum phase transition is used as a plot device. But it only expands at half the speed of light. In the real world, it would expand at very close to the the speed of light. So other writers have bent the rules before. You could do the same. Schild’s Ladder is an awesome book btw, but it’ll be too thick for most non-physicists to get (the best part IMO has nothing to do with the bubble of expanding vacuum). As a layman, I only followed about 75% of it.
Thanks Jefferson, I think I can work with your idea, sorta like a defensive end in football slow playing contain, Yeah i think I can make that work…thanks a million best Jay
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