Why some bubbles grow and others collapse ⚡ экспресс
Imagine an unstable equilibrium — like a pencil balanced on its tip. The slightest disturbance creates a 'bubble' of stability that can either expand to fill all space or collapse. In this work, researchers studied what determines the fate of such a bubble in a quantum magnet and proposed an atom-based experiment to test it. And what if our entire Universe is just such a bubble?
The universe could have been born from an unstable state — the false vacuum. It's like a glass of water cooled below freezing: the slightest shake turns it into ice. Similarly, in a false vacuum, a tiny bubble of true vacuum can grow into an entire universe. Its fate depends on its size at birth and how strongly the particles inside are bound together. A small bubble collapses, like a fragile ice cube in warm water. But a large one expands unstoppably, consuming everything around it. This very process could have triggered the Big Bang and the expansion of the Universe. A possible echo of that event is dark energy — a remnant of the false vacuum. Alan Guth was the first to propose that inflation was caused by such a bubble. Unexpected twist: calculations hint that our vacuum might also be false, and someday the universe could be reborn.
🎯 If the false vacuum were a bit more stable, the universe might have remained forever in uncertainty, never coming into existence.
🎬 In Stephen Baxter's collection 'Vacuum Diagrams', bubbles of new vacuum give birth to universes with different laws of physics.