Since the discovery of massive, prehistoric dinosaurs, scientists have wondered what caused them to vanish. The most popular hypothesis is that they were killed off by an asteroid, although there are also speculations that the planet was suffocated by a series of volcanic explosions, rendering it inhospitable for these giants. But what if (and this is a huge if) it was something else? Well, one physicist has proposed an intriguing but “out there” theory: the extinction of the dinosaurs might have been caused by something far more fundamental: a shift in the values of physics itself.
Breakthrough Study Reveals Possible Cause of ‘Cot Death’ – It ultimately boils down to the Hubble Constant, which is the pace at which the universe expands. We may use the distance and velocity of neighboring galaxies, quasars, and supernovae to compute the rate of expansion of the universe. Another method for determining the pace of expansion is to examine the cosmic microwave background, which indicates the rate of expansion in the early cosmos before extrapolating to today. Of course, physics decides to be a jerk about it, and the methodologies provide completely different outcomes. The cosmos appears to be expanding at an increasing rate, and unless we’ve missed something, this disparity must be explained by new hypotheses, such as dark energy, which have so far proven inadequate.
Very far, so dinosaur-like. Professor Leandros Perivolaropoulos of the University of Ioannina in Greece, on the other hand, feels he has a theory that reconciles the disparities in the expansion rates obtained from each measuring method, as well as wiping out the dinosaurs. Perivolaropoulos claims that a 10% rise in gravity strength occurred over 100 million years, ending 50 million years ago, in an article titled “Is the Hubble problem associated with the extinction of dinosaurs?” published on the pre-print platform Arxiv.
“A first order scalar tensor theory phase transition from an early false vacuum corresponding to the measured value of the cosmological constant to a new vacuum with lower or zero vacuum energy could induce an ultra-late gravitational transition,” he writes in the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. The concept of a false vacuum is both intriguing and alarming, as it has the potential to cause the universe as we know it to collapse on itself, taking everything with it — from olives to supernovae.
Everything in the cosmos strives for stability, which is achieved by using as little energy as possible. Because vacuums have the lowest degree of energy, they are the most stable. There is, however, a hypothetical concept known as a “false vacuum.” Local vacuums that look to be at the lowest energy level but are not. The fake vacuum – which acts like a local bubble – appears stable for a while, but it can collapse when it comes into touch with a genuine vacuum, as the false vacuum descends to the lower energy state.
Imagine a valley in front of you with a deeper valley hidden behind a thin surface. The smaller valley is the fake vacuum, but if the thin surface is punctured, it collapses into the wider valley below, which is the genuine vacuum. This may collapse our whole universe in the worst-case scenario, but according to Perivolaropoulos’ idea, this may have already happened to our local false-vacuum bubble, modifying the intensity of gravity in the process.
