I find this interesting. Our vacuum, the most empty part of space or a jar with all the atoms sucked out of it, is still full of energy. It is the lowest quantum state for our universe. In quantum physics there is the idea of a true vacuum which is the lowest possible quantum state. This is lower energy that the quantum state of our universe. We know that our universe is not at the lowest quantum state because that is where particles come from. Have you ever stopped and wondered why, when we smash atoms with an atom smasher, the particles we create are much more massive than the parts of the atom? A Higgs Boson is much more massive than a proton. How can that be? The answer is that we are adding energy to the Higgs Field and the result is that the extra energy combines with the energy that was already there and provides enough energy so that it can become a particle for an instant. That would not work unless the energy was there in the first place. What Hawkings is talking about here is the possibility that a vacuum could exist with lower or even no energy. Were such a vacuum to touch our vacuum it would suck the energy out of our vacuum and the energy would be converted to mass. This would radiate out from the point where they touched at the speed of light. To say it would destroy things is kind of lightweight. The universe as we know it would eventually cease to exist. There would be no scorched earth, ... there would be nothing. It is hard to see how things would stay apart. We would probably collapse back to a singularity. On the plus side, it would be instantaneous and in a fraction of a microsecond you would have no nervous system to feel it. rawstory/rs/2014/09/07/stephen-hawking-research-on-the-god-particle-could-cause-space-time-to-collapse/
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 18:19:39 +0000
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