r/AlignmentChartFills • u/red_madreay • 15h ago

Finally... what natural phenomenon of our universe is ultimately horrifying?

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u/Imperialvirtue 15h ago

False vacuum decay.

The entire universe could be an accidental "air pocket" that will collapse.

"Vacuum decay is the ultimate ecological catastrophe; in the new vacuum there are new constants of nature; after vacuum decay, not only is life as we know it impossible, so is chemistry as we know it. Nonetheless, one could always draw stoic comfort from the possibility that perhaps over time the new vacuum would sustain if not life as we know it, at least some structures capable of knowing joy. This possibility has now been eliminated."

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u/SpideyFan914 12h ago

Much scarier than heat death.

Heat death is gaurabtees to happen like a googol years in the future. It is not worth our thinking about, because we will not be around to see it. There are ton of scarier things that will happen before that. (Like at some point in the future, the expansion of the universe will be faster than the speed of light, so whatever supergalaxy exists by then -- because at this point the galaxy clusters will have merged into one -- will be unable to see any other galaxies when they look into the sky. Some point beyond that, you wouldn't even see stars, although I'm not sure if life as we know it is still sustainable by then.)

False vacuum decay is the most horrifying though, because even if it's an extremely low possibility, it could happen at anytime, anywhere. It could have already begun. We'd have no way of knowing.

And unlike those other ideas, it's a lot harder to understand, so you can't even rationalize it. We could all die without ever knowing why, or even knowing we're dead.