I What Triggers the Universe's Most Powerful Collisions?

[jtlz]

What object in the universe (neutron star, supernova, black holes, pulsars) can cause the most powerful collision and what energy is the plasma produced? I'd like to know how many GeV of plasma it can make as the minimum.

 

[Orodruin]

You need to be more specific about what you mean by "most powerful collision".

 

[berkeman]

What object in the universe (neutron star, supernova, black holes, pulsars) can cause the most powerful collision

Owie! That's going to leave a mark!

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9d/e6/27/9de627af6b722c9c88c7b570518a9ffc.jpg

 

[kimbyd]

What object in the universe (neutron star, supernova, black holes, pulsars) can cause the most powerful collision and what energy is the plasma produced? I'd like to know how many GeV of plasma it can make as the minimum.

The most powerful compact-object collisions so far detected are mergers of black holes. The ones detected have involved black holes roughly 10-50 times the mass of our Sun, and tend to emit energy equivalent to roughly the mass-energy of our Sun, mostly in gravitational waves. It is not known if there is enough electromagnetic radiation from these events to be detectable that way, so there's not necessarily any plasma temperature associated.

Note that the mergers of supermassive black holes will also occur as the eventual result of galaxy mergers, and those will be vastly more energetic (since supermassive black holes can sometimes have masses a billion times greater than the black holes in mergers observed so far).

The most energetic events observed with photons are gamma-ray bursts, which can have temperatures in the (very) rough range of 10 million to 10 billion Kelvin.

 

[jtlz]

Thanks.. so which of them can produce collision energy with plasma above 100 GeV enough to cross electroweak transition temperature and produce isolated electroweak zero-vev plasma where the forces of EM and weak can unite in that collision point?

 

[kimbyd]

Thanks.. so which of them can produce collision energy with plasma above 100 GeV enough to cross electroweak transition temperature and produce isolated electroweak zero-vev plasma where the forces of EM and weak can unite in that collision point?

I don't believe any of these collisions can.

When you get to energies that high, you're talking about single particle collisions, e.g. from high-energy cosmic rays colliding with our atmosphere, not the collisions of astrophysical objects. The most energetic of these collisions yet detected are Ultra-high energy cosmic rays, which can have collision energies exceeding a trillion GeV.

 

[rootone]

There are some theories which suggest that entire Universe of spacetime is the debris which resulted from a collision of higher dimension objects.
https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0207140

 

[jtlz]

So there is no natural object in the universe that can create an isolated electroweak plasma?

Is this as difficult as trying to create a false vacuum bubble (if our vacuum were really metastable)?

That means if we could somehow in the future create an isolated electroweak plasma.. then we can also create a false vacuum bubble?

What is the energy (TeV) to maintain the false vacuum bubble?

 

[Orodruin]

Is this as difficult as trying to create a false vacuum bubble (if our vacuum were really metastable)?

What is the energy (TeV) to maintain the false vacuum bubble?

If the vacuum were metastable, that would mean that we are living in the false vacuum. If you created a bubble of true vacuum, it would expand at almost the speed of light to envelop everything in its path.

 

[jtlz]

If the vacuum were metastable, that would mean that we are living in the false vacuum. If you created a bubble of true vacuum, it would expand at almost the speed of light to envelop everything in its path.

Is the bubble the same as having a plasma of certain energy (GeV)? So you can create the bubble by producing isolated plasma beyond the electroweak plasma scale of 100 GeV?

What is the energy (GeV) of the plasma of the bubble of true vacuum (estimate)?

 

[newjerseyrunner]

If I understand the false vacuum hypothesis correctly, the amount of energy it'll have will be exactly the same as the amount of energy in the current universe, it'll simply be changed. I believe that energy is conserved through phase transitions.

What is the energy (GeV) of the plasma of the bubble of true vacuum (estimate)?

Unfortunately, I have no idea what you mean by this. Plasma is made of particles, a vacuum (false or true) is a field with no particles in it. Are you perhaps referring to the quantum foam?

 

[newjerseyrunner]

it would expand at almost the speed of light to envelop everything in its path.

Why? I was under the impression that it would expand at exactly the speed of light.

 

[Orodruin]

Why? I was under the impression that it would expand at exactly the speed of light.

Because it is a bubble and not a flat wall. The bigger it gets, the closer it gets to the speed of light.

 

[jtlz]

If I understand the false vacuum hypothesis correctly, the amount of energy it'll have will be exactly the same as the amount of energy in the current universe, it'll simply be changed. I believe that energy is conserved through phase transitions.Unfortunately, I have no idea what you mean by this. Plasma is made of particles, a vacuum (false or true) is a field with no particles in it. Are you perhaps referring to the quantum foam?

"Tunnelling can be caused by quantum fluctuations or the creation of high-energy particles. The false vacuum is a local minimum, but not the lowest energy state." (wiki)

What must be the energy of this high-energy particles?
Can't tunneling also be caused by creation of plasma above the electroweak energy? What must be the energy (TeV) to initiate tunneling (supposed we were in a false vacuum)?

 

[kimbyd]

What must be the energy of this high-energy particles?
Can't tunneling also be caused by creation of plasma above the electroweak energy? What must be the energy (TeV) to initiate tunneling (supposed we were in a false vacuum)?

If it were so easy to get out of the false-vacuum state, we wouldn't be here.

While it's in principle possible to create a localized vacuum state which has electroweak phase transition parameters which differ from the vacuum parameters, that state will always decay. The only way it wouldn't decay would be if the localized vacuum state was of lower energy, a state which would then spread at nearly the speed of light, destroying the entire observable universe.

The fact that this has not happened within the last 14 billion years means that there must be a potential energy barrier high enough to:
a) Prevent tunneling of the vacuum state to the true vacuum anywhere in our past lightcone over the last 14 billion years.
b) Prevent even the highest-energy particle interactions from producing energies high enough to get over the barrier.

As we've observed particle collisions with energies as high as $10^{21} eV$, the potential barrier to kick us out of the false vacuum must be much higher than that (if we are in a false vacuum). Quantum vacuum decay limits may show it has to be even higher.

 

[jtlz]

If it were so easy to get out of the false-vacuum state, we wouldn't be here.

While it's in principle possible to create a localized vacuum state which has electroweak phase transition parameters which differ from the vacuum parameters, that state will always decay. The only way it wouldn't decay would be if the localized vacuum state was of lower energy, a state which would then spread at nearly the speed of light, destroying the entire observable universe.

The fact that this has not happened within the last 14 billion years means that there must be a potential energy barrier high enough to:
a) Prevent tunneling of the vacuum state to the true vacuum anywhere in our past lightcone over the last 14 billion years.
b) Prevent even the highest-energy particle interactions from producing energies high enough to get over the barrier.

As we've observed particle collisions with energies as high as $10^{21} eV$, the potential barrier to kick us out of the false vacuum must be much higher than that (if we are in a false vacuum). Quantum vacuum decay limits may show it has to be even higher.

Are there models where there are many false vacuums separated by energy barriers? Like 5 false vacuums with 5 energy barriers before reaching the ground state true vacuum?

 

[kimbyd]

Are there models where there are many false vacuums separated by energy barriers? Like 5 false vacuums with 5 energy barriers before reaching the ground state true vacuum?

Generally such models tend to have many false vacuums (if I recall, string theory has approximately $10^{400}$). The observational limits are on the energy potential barrier to transitioning to any vacuum state with lower energy than our current vacuum state.

 

[jtlz]

Generally such models tend to have many false vacuums (if I recall, string theory has approximately $10^{400}$). The observational limits are on the energy potential barrier to transitioning to any vacuum state with lower energy than our current vacuum state.

In our present universe, is there still possibility for example there are 5 other false vacuums lower than our false vacuum? If not, what are the constraints or equations that rule them out? Any actual references?

 

[nikkkom]

So there is no natural object in the universe that can create an isolated electroweak plasma?

This would require temperatures in excess of ~100 GeV, or ~10^15 kelvins. As far as we know, these conditions are not realized in any astrophysical objects.

 

[nikkkom]

In our present universe, is there still possibility for example there are 5 other false vacuums lower than our false vacuum?

Our current understanding of QFT and Standard Model math is not advanced enough to calculate potential energy of any possible configuration of fields. The problems lie in non-perturbative configurations (usually high-energy ones), in particular, in quantum gravity (which so far has no perturbative theory).

So: we don't really know yet.

 

[jtlz]

We heard about harnessing the energy of the sun, or supernova, colliding stars or even black holes.. but it seems the energy of the Higgs Fields (at constant vev of 246GeV everywhere) exceeds even energy of pulsars or colliding neutrons stars.. is there no way to harness the energy of the Higgs Fields? There are only few W+, W-, Z0 in matter compared to the omnipresent constant Higgs field in all of space?

 

[kimbyd]

In our present universe, is there still possibility for example there are 5 other false vacuums lower than our false vacuum? If not, what are the constraints or equations that rule them out? Any actual references?

I'm not sure you'll find any solid references, since the existence of such alternate vacua is entirely hypothetical.

Even in string theory, we don't really know right now how to count the total number of metastable vacua. Estimates might range from $10^{10}$ to $10^{1000}$ (here's a paper that goes into some of this, though it is dense and difficult to parse). At the low end of that range, you'd expect zero or one false vacua between us and the "true vacuum". At the mid or upper end of the range, there could easily be $10^100$ or more.

So, we just don't know, and we don't currently have a way to know how many false vacuums exist between our observable universe and the true vacuum state (if any).

 

[kimbyd]

We heard about harnessing the energy of the sun, or supernova, colliding stars or even black holes.. but it seems the energy of the Higgs Fields (at constant vev of 246GeV everywhere) exceeds even energy of pulsars or colliding neutrons stars.. is there no way to harness the energy of the Higgs Fields? There are only few W+, W-, Z0 in matter compared to the omnipresent constant Higgs field in all of space?

High-energy particles may have a lot of energy individually, but their total energy is nothing compared to the energy output of a star.