Vacuum decay, one more existential threat to lose sleep over

22 August 2024

Tooth decay. Entropy. Heat death of the universe. These are things to worry about, and we’ve known about them for a long time. But recently scientists have identified something else to lose sleep over: vacuum decay:

Vacuum decay, a process that could end the universe as we know it, may happen 10,000 times sooner than expected. Fortunately, it still won’t happen for a very, very long time.

There’s a lot of theoretical physics (I think) involved, which is way over my head, so there’s not more I can say about vacuum decay. The good news however: vacuum decay will not bring about the end of the universe anytime soon.