The concept of world end has been perplexing scientists for years, and they believe that a cataclysmic event that could happen in the universe could destroy the life that harbors on earth. Now, researchers have suggested a new way by which the world could end, and it is called vacuum decay.
The concept of false vacuum and the inflationary multiverse
Some physicists believe that the universe is sitting in a false vacuum which means it is unstable or metastable in nature. If this false vacuum once gets swallowed by a true vacuum that is stable, it could result in the end of the universe.
"What if inflation doesn't stop all at once, but just in patches? Our Big Bang would just be a little event in an ever-inflating space. There would be other patches stopping and starting and you get another universe and that process could go on forever. So although our universe dies, other universes are constantly being created. This is called the inflationary multiverse," said physicist Brian Cox in his two-part film Life of a Universe.
Brian Cox also talked about the possibility of the universe sitting in a false vacuum, and if it is real, then the world end could happen instantly without any signs. He added that Higgs Boson particle suggests that the universe could be in an unstable false vacuum state.
"Physicists refer to each different possibility as a different vacuum. This opens up the chance that we could be instantly annihilated," revealed Cox, Express.co.uk reports. However, Cox also made it clear that the end of the world due to vacuum decay will not happen anytime soon, as the time-scale for vacuum decay is many times the age of our universe.
World end due to the death of the sun?
Solar physics professor Paul Cally suggested that a probable increase in sun's brightness in the future could cause the end of the world. Cally claimed that the sun will be brighter by ten percent than it is now in the next 1.1 billion years, and it will cause a drastic rise in the global temperature. In another 3.5 billion years, the sun's luminosity will be increased by 1.4 times, and it could result in the evaporation of ocean water which will turn the earth to a barren land.
