One calculation argued that the vacuum we know and love will last about 10⁷⁹⁴ years before a bubble of 'true vacuum' forms and destroys our universe. But in June this year, a team of physicists claim to have found a small error in that calculation. Their new estimate is... drum roll, please... only 10⁷⁹⁰ years!
So we now have only 1/10,000 times as long to get stuff done. 🙃
Here's the paper:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.05180
and here is an explanation in simple terms:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/vacuum-of-space-to-decay-sooner-than-expected-but-still-not-soon-20240722/
Again, I can't stress too much that there are lots of potential sources of error in these calculations. The most obvious one is: new physics we don't know yet.
John Carlos Baez /
npub1nf…3nqe4
2024-09-12 14:58:28
in reply to nevent1q…dkws
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2024-09-12 14:58:28Event JSON
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