Meet The Bubble That Will Destroy The Universe. Maybe.
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Original Article | Author: Erik Vance
Scientists say they know how the universe will end. It won't be a cosmic collapse but rather a giant cosmic bubble that devours everything in its path.
According to a recent paper, published on March 12 in the journal Physical Review D, the final moment for the universe will be triggered by a bizarre consequence of subatomic physics called an instanton. This instanton will create a tiny bubble that will expand at the speed of light, swallowing everything in its path. It's only a matter of time.
"At some point you will create one of these bubbles," study lead author Anders Andreassen, a physicist at Harvard University, told Live Science. "It will be very unpleasant."
By "unpleasant," he means the end to all life — and, indeed, chemistry — as we know it.
Very little is known about instantons, which are the solutions to equations governing the motion of tiny subatomic particles, but Andreassen loosely compared them to the phenomenon of quantum tunneling, whereby a particle seemingly defies physics to pass through an otherwise impenetrable barrier. But instead of crossing a barrier, the instanton forms a bubble within the Higgs field, the field that gives everything mass and gives rise to the Higgs boson.
Interestingly, this universe-ending bubble would never have been possible were it not for the particular mass of the Higgs boson in relation to another heavier particle, called a top quark, which comprises many atoms. If either the quark or the Higgs particle had been a little lighter, these universe-destroying bubbles couldnꞌt form.
Alas, that is not the case and so after some amount of time, a destructive bubble will form. The team calculated the shelf life of the universe as between 10 quinquadragintillion years (one with 139 zeros after it) and a mere 10 octodecillion years (one with 58 zeros after it).
"That is a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very long time," Andreassen said. "Our sun will burn up and many things will happen in our solar system before this is very likely to happen."
