If you thought that the end of the universe is weighty and will not happen soon, then you can probably think again. Wiping out the earth can happen as easily as the click of a button, and it would destroy everything on earth immediately. Nothing would help us to understand when the end of the world is nigh.
"It is based on the principle that all systems - physical, chemical and nuclear - naturally want to shed energy to reach a stable lower state. So, raised weights want to fall, explosives want to combust and nuclear warheads want to go off - all that's needed is a trigger," explains The Sun.
Science is convinced that the universe is trying all the time to plummet to its lowest state. Particles tend to do that by releasing energy. When it reaches its lowest nadir, the particle would reach its "vacuum state" or most stable state.
The entire theory is posited by the YouTube channel Kurgzgesagt, or "In A Nutshell." He says there is a "false vacuum state" that happens with a particle looking stable. Yet it would not have reached the lowest point of energy.
According to Kurzgesagt: "The higher the energy level, the more energy that's in a system."
In fact, every particle in the universe has already touched its lowest state, apart from the Higgs Field. This Higgs Field is an energy field that exists everywhere. While particles travel through it, they are given mass or energy.
However, with the Higgs Field touching a vacuum state, its energy would be "big enough" to push space around it. This would make energy "ripple through the universe in all directions and at the speed of light, obliterating everything in its path."
"A sphere of the new stable Higgs field, or true vacuum, grows at the speed light in all directions," explains the video.
The universe would then just annihilate itself immediately. We would not even understand that it has happened.
Life, of course, would also be wiped out.
And so would you, so don't worry about it.
Perhaps this form of self-destruction has already happened in outer space, and one of the several spheres in which it has happened is racing towards us.
Still, everything we think about the universe is mere speculation, do we really know about it?
The narrator of the video says: "If you feel slightly worried now, don't be. At this point false vacuum is speculation based on our current understanding of particle physics, which might be wrong."
YouTube/Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell
