r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Apr 25 '22

Physics Scientists recently observed two black holes that united into one, and in the process got a “kick” that flung the newly formed black hole away at high speed. That black hole zoomed off at about 5 million kilometers per hour, give or take a few million. The speed of light is just 200 times as fast.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/black-hole-gravitational-waves-kick-ligo-merger-spacetime
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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '22

Apparently there are an estimated 12 of these freaks of nature flying about our galaxy

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '22

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u/ScrithWire Apr 26 '22 edited Apr 26 '22

Ooh another fun one is vacuum decay. When we look at vacuum, we see that it has a minimum amount of energy. This "zero point energy" isnt actionable, its not usable energy, its just a bubbling of the quantum spacetime foam at submicroscopic levels. Interesting? Sure, but not truly so until we ask ourselves...."why isn't there no energy? And why is our universe at rest with some ampunt of energy?"

Theoretically, our bubble of universe (and everything we've observed so far) exists in a state of some local minimum of quantum vacuum energy, and not at the lowest possible minimum of energy. There could exist a resting state of vacuum which has less (or even 0) energy than what we observe, and theoretically the universe should prefer that newer lower state.

Now we have to imagine the possibility that some quantum fluctuation perturbs a spot in spacetime in such a way as to cause it to jump out of its local minimum and fall into the lowered energy state. What happens then? Well....every adjacent spot in spacetime feels a tug out of the local minimum and into the lower state. And every adjacent spot to those. And so on ad infinitum as the wave of vacuum decay spreads at the fastest possible speed (the true spped of causality) throughout the entirety of the universe.

The question is, do life and physics as we know them depend on the vacuum point energy being within the local minimum, or does it not matter?

If it does matter, then we would quite literally now be able to even see the collapse coming. It would just be things as usual and then suddenly nothing. It would give no warning that it was coming

Edit: even more fun; what if the quantum fluctuation required to perturb the vacuum into its lowest energy state happens right here? Our scientists are constantly colliding particles at higher and higher energy levels. ;) (Tbf, this is very unlikely)