It's certainly a grim thought to get your head around, but beyond mere scientific scaremongering, the theory does encourage serious debate among experts.
This relates to the Higgs Field theory, also referred to as Higgs Boson, which is thought to permeate the entire universe. The question is whether this space is actually metastable, not stable or it's just pretending to be. This is known as a false vacuum and is where we could find that spark which could swallow the whole universe — a destructive event called "vacuum decay."
"Based on what we know about the Higgs Boson today, we cannot accurately tell whether our vacuum is stable (permanent) or metastable (temporary, albeit long-lived). For us to really understand more about the fate of the universe, people must encourage more support and funding for a super-powerful particles collider, which can go beyond the reach of even the Large Hadron Collider in Europe and extend the properties of vacuum," Alexander Kusenko, professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA in the US told Sputnik.
Described as "the ultimate ecological catastrophe: if it were to occur, in layman's terms it would basically mean we could be here one second and then completely wiped out the next — and we wouldn't even see it coming.
Here's what the Electoral Eollege would look like after reality as it know it collapses due to False Vacuum Decay: pic.twitter.com/wMpL7EB9XG
— Evan Goer (@evangoer) October 13, 2016
Could this theory relate to the demise of the dinosaurs? Not according to the experts who feel that if it were the case, then we may never have been able to exist ever too. And fossil remains would also not be found because alongside our dinosaur buddies, the entire Earth itself would have been annihilated.
Personally, I think we should build a machine that artificially causes vacuum decay. They can't run. They can't hide https://t.co/9cGxzfpfDz
— Europa Clipper (@LonelyProbe) October 27, 2016
But the good news, and there is good news… the theory is very much just a theory.
Much like the theory of robots and artificial intelligence turning sentinel, or the Simulation Hypothesis that we are all living in some kind of complex computer matrix. And just like these ideas, here's hoping none prove to be as accurate as some may believe them to be.
