Your Daily Dose of Existential Dread: The Universe Could Collapse on the Way Down the Quantum Roller-Coaster

While the very concept of the fabric of space and time may seem like the only stable constant left in our modern lives, a recent study has confirmed that the energy state of the very vacuum that spans the cosmos may collapse at any moment, restructuring the very nature of the universe in ways that we might not want to imagine.

This new study involved the simulation of the concept of the universe being filled with what is called a “false vacuum”, a theory positing that the local quantum state exists at the lowest possible energy, but only temporarily. Despite the vacuum of space appearing to be completely empty, it is filled with quantum fields—this is where the energy from zero-point energy is supposed to come from—but instead of the energy states of these fields being stable, they exist in a temporary “metastable” state.

In time, the metastable state in one region of the universe could decay, causing the quantum fields in that area to drop to a lower, more stable state. This event could trigger the neighboring regions to also collapse to lower, more stable energy states in a chain reaction not unlike the cascade of bubbles popping across the foam of a carbonated drink, in a process appropriately called “bubble nucleation”.

“We’re talking about a process by which the universe would completely change its structure,” explained lead author Zlatko Papic, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Leeds. “The fundamental constants could instantaneously change and the world as we know it would collapse like a house of cards.”

These quantum fields are responsible for how virtually all functions of the emergent universe that we experience operate, and a change in their energy states would have serious ramifications for everyday effects that we take for granted, from the transmission of an electrical current along a wire to the very functioning of the biological processes of life.

If our local universe is indeed in one of these low-energy, metastable states, described as being “comparable to a rollercoaster that has several valleys along its trajectory but only one ‘true’ lowest state” by study co-author Jean-Yves Desaules at Austria’s Institute of Science and Technology, it may, over the course of millions, or perhaps even billions of years, collapse.

Such an event would plunge the cosmos to the bottom of this quantum rollercoaster, something that would “allow the universe to eventually tunnel to the lowest energy state or the ‘true’ vacuum and that process would result in a cataclysmic global event,” Desaules added.

While the concept of a false vacuum and the possibility of the collapse of its energy state is not new, this study is the first to simulate the complex process using a 5564-qubit quantum annealer, a type of quantum computer, modeling the interactions of the bubbles during a bubble nucleation event. While we would have no control over such a cataclysm—or probably even any awareness of it happening—understanding the dynamics of the individual bubbles and their interaction with one-another could help develop more practical concepts, such as correcting errors across the notoriously fickle qubits of a quantum computer.