Douglas Adams already covered this.

Charles, this is what you're looking for. There are a lot of maybes and what-ifs to get there, but if we're going to have a doomsday, there are more shitty ways to go out than this:

False vacuum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuu…

In quantum field theory, a false vacuum is a metastable sector of space that appears to be a perturbative vacuum, but is unstable due to instanton effects that may tunnel to a lower energy state. This tunneling can be caused by quantum fluctuations or the creation of high-energy particles. Simply put, the false vacuum is a local minimum, but not the lowest energy state, even though it may remain stable for some time. This is analogous to metastability for first-order phase transitions.

A hypothetical vacuum metastability event would be theoretically possible if our universe were part of a metastable (false) vacuum in the first place, an issue that is highly theoretical and far from resolved. A false vacuum is one that appears stable, and is stable within certain limits and conditions, but is capable of being disrupted and entering a different state which is more stable. In theory and if this were the case, a bubble of lower-energy vacuum could come to exist by chance or otherwise in our universe, and catalyze the conversion of our universe to a lower energy state in a volume expanding at nearly the speed of light, destroying all that we know without forewarning. Chaotic Inflation theory suggests that the universe may be in either a false vacuum or a true vacuum state.

Some more cheerful reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativisti…

jesus would never let this happen to white people.

Will cesium 133 still decay at the same rate? Because spacetime will still exist, right?. Hydrogen would still have to form for there to be anything in a universe. Including light speed.

Uh. Oh. Who disturbed Shiva's meditation?

Luckily the universe is a big place and even if the bubble of our universe "pops" at the speed of light probability is that it will not happen immediately adjacent to us and thus still take perhaps millions or billions of years for our protons to instantly decay.

Unless, of course, it has already happened a billion years ago and t

@5 I see what you did ther

This is not something that should keep you up at night worrying. A gamma ray burst from Eta Carinae, on the other hand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae

JK. The burst axis probably isn't aimed close enough to be lethal.

That simple calculation is based on the preliminary data surrounding the "Higgs-like" particle. It will take many more LHC tests to fully confirm the exact details of the Higgs, and until then, we won't have the answer to the calculation. I'm not holding my breath.

Although it's cool to think that instead of the universe contracting into some sort of infinite point, and then exploding again in another Big Bang, that some sort of freaky alternate-universe bubble inflates from within the current one. Is that how our started? Are we a bubble inside of another, even larger, Universe? Are there many of these bubbles?

Everything keeps getting weirder the more we look. Really gives one hope!

@7 One should only worry about things that one has the capability to actually do anything about. Gamma ray bursts, universe bubbles, errant meteors leveling your city, Godzilla... not much you can do to prepare for or prevent these.
What, me worry? Nah.

@10 a universe liquefying sort of finale to things would be a sort of hilarious irony, though, for the "prepper" community. Oh, you spent the last 30 years sinking half of your life and resources into a lead lined bunker with food, water, medical supplies, and enough ammunition to survive 30 years of a nightmare The Road or The Walking Dead type scenario?

...sorry, the Earth just slipped behind the edge of a black hole's event horizon. Your entire solar system and frame of reference will be turning into spaghetti in 5... 4... 3...

We're having an interesting discussion about the Russian Meteor from an electric universe perspective over at thunderbolts.info

http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB…

Fuck this universe.

We need a new one with no gloomy Seattle winters...

Furthermore, if you're one of 'those people' who happily blather on about how much you love the rain and the gloom, fuck you too.

Now I'm going to go to the butterfly house to feel better...and then some vodka.

#15

I figured out why I love the rain.

It's because when it's sunny, I feel I have to "do something". I have to "get out and enjoy the sunshine". Those things take work, and money.

If it's gloomy, I can say, "oh, I will just stay inside. It's too gloomy today".

That picture is great. And it also happens to be an accurate depiction of what the night sky will look like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_G…

in a few billion years.