🚀 go-pugleaf

bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:

>jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes:
>:sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti) wrote:
>:> Our vacuum state is not absolutely stable only meta-stable.  It is
>:> conceivable that some of our high-energy physics experiments could be
>:> dangerous by inadvertently triggering a vacuum instability.

>:This one has always struck me as a really neat gift to the jaded worrywort.
>:  ....  you can now lie awake at night sweating at
>:the thought that somebody at CERN might set off an interaction that de-
>:metastabilizes the vacuum for the entire universe.  Ice-Nine with knobs on.

>There's an anecdote about Yakov Zeldovich calculating in a frenzy
>to figure out if a CERN experiment that was coming on line could create
>a domain wall that would blow us all out of existence ... the
>answer was no, I believe.

All of this, as well, is predicated on our vacuum state in fact
being only metastable, which is by no means clear.  In the Standard
Model, for instance, the world is generally built upon the true
vacuum.  Still, it is a lovely thing to frighten yourself with.

I once opined to Eric Carlson that this was an idea that had been
insufficiently exploited in science fiction.  He pointed out to
me that "it would be a very short novel."
-- 
Matt McIrvin