The universe might be on track to eat itself from the inside out
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/939g5p/physicists-are-studying-mysterious-bubbles-of-nothing-that-eat-spacetimeA spontaneous hole in the fabric of reality could theoretically end the universe, but don't worry: physicists are studying the idea for what it can teach us about the cosmos.
By Carly Minsky
March 5, 2020
Luckily for us, physicists studying the phenomenon, called “spacetime decayâ€, believe this is very unlikely. Still, the possibility is interesting enough to explore in mind-boggling detail, covering “bubbles of nothing†in spacetime, hidden extra dimensions, and a hypothetical observer hitching a ride on the outer surface of our universe.
The idea that in specific scenarios the universe would be entirely destroyed by an expanding bubble of nothing has been around since 1982, when theoretical physicist Edward Witten introduced the possibility of the universe eating itself in a paper in Nuclear Physics B journal. He wrote: “A hole spontaneously forms in space and rapidly expands to infinity, pushing to infinity anything it may meet.