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Could cosmic rays induce a vacuum decay in the future?
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I've been told that very energetic cosmic rays could cause a vacuum phase transition or vacuum decay (and even could cause a true vacuum level to go "uphill" to a false vacuum) due to their high energy levels.

I've found some references supporting this claim 1, 2, 3, 4

But also one paper arguing that vacuum decay induced by particle collisions (such as cosmic rays collisions) would be suppressed and no amount of cosmic rays collisions occurring in nature (even in the largest production sites) could trigger such phenomenon 5. But at the same time, the author speculates that in the future with powerful colliders we could cause a vacuum decay. However, I don't really get how the author says that a futuristic civilization could get enough energy to cause a vacuum phase transition while saying that even the most energetic events in the universe producing high-energy cosmic rays (like quasars and AGN) would fail to do so. I mean, I'm pretty sure there will be more energy in such natural events than in a particle collider even if we are talking about futuristic potential scenarios.

Therefore, is it possible or not that cosmic rays collisions may trigger such a vacuum decay? And if not, or if it is unclear, could it be triggered by other mechanisms (like certain types of black holes for example)?

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4 months ago