You mention the Higgs Potential... I remember reading somewhere that the field was actually in a metastable state, i.e. that its potential was not at its strict minimum.
And as for any potential, it has to be minimized to understand how nature works.
So should we expect that at any second, this potential could collapse further? What event could act as activation energy (is the potential of the Higgs field actually modifiable by an event)?
(apologies for the very approximate representation - I think sometimes too much as a solid state chemist ;-))
I am not really worried actually, because if this happened, we wouldn't even realize what is going on: the spreading of this new phase of space would be at the speed of light. It would definitely change how the universe looks like (imagine a different set of values for the mass of particles... what a mess that would cause! ).
What do you think about that?
Is it possible that locally the Higgs field could fall to another state of less energy, hence spreading out at the speed of light, and transforming the universe and its physics' constants? Could an event trigger this? If yes, what type of event?
Maybe. There are error bars, and the calculations have been done in the Standard Model only. If we have new particles somewhere, then the results do not hold.
Now let's go back to the rest of your comment. The results of the Standard Model stability calculation can be found here. The 1-2-3 sigma areas are obtained from the measurement of the Higgs boson and top quark masses. It indeed points towards metastability. But having no new phenomena between the Standard Model and the Planck scale is a super strong assumption.
Let us assume this is the case, then we can calculate the time necessary for tunneling from one vacuum to the next one. We are save, as I have written here.
[Funnily enough, your comments make me resurrecting old articles I wrote here. I like that/ Ylu also make me often thinking. I like it too ;) ]
Wow, super interessant cet article!
So a 40% variation of a parameter of the Higgs self interaction leads to a prediction for the life of the universe from inferior to atosecons to 10241 years! lol!
Well, at least, we know it has been around for about a 1010 years... so the chances it collapses during the few million years of humanity's lifetime are small enough to not be worried...
These calculations involves a tunelling process.
Actually my question has a more classical touch to it: no tunelling, but just an event which could act as activation from one minima to the other.. Do you think that such an event would be possible?
Or would it require so much energy localised in a small region of space, that a black hole would form immediately. Black holes would be saving our universe by confining a zone with a different Higgs field potential.
Funny idea don't you think? :-)
I don't think this would be possible, but this goes slightly borderline with respect to my expertise (so that I may be wrong).