Urdu poet, Mirza Ghalib, Maut ka ek din muayyan hai,

Neehd kyon raat bhar naheeh aatee? It translates, That death will come one day is
definite. Then why does sleep evade me all night?

I'm assuming that by "complete vacuum" you mean "nothingness" in a physical (not
logical) sense, i.e. no matter, no energy, no physical entity -- nothing nada zilch zippo.
FYI, there is no such thing as "nothingness". Because there is no such thing as
"nothingness", it is not physically possible to create "nothingness". So now you'd
want to stump physics with pure logic and claim that you can create nothing out of
nothing. You might somehow succeed, except you always end up creating "nothing"
and, as explained by the more intelligent responders, "vacuum" is not equal to
"nothing".

Higgs Boson field is like an inverted pendulum tied to the floor as

shown in figure, it will try to rest either left or right when I lift it
to the centre and release it. At its centre, it has the maximum
energy. Same happens with Higgs Boson field. When an objects
enters Higgs Boson field, the particles Higgs Bosons interact
with it and offer resistance which depends upon strength of
interaction and that imparts mass to the object. The Higgs Boson
is a field that permeates space, giving heft to particles like
electrons, allowing them to form atoms, which bind into
molecules. Without the Higgs, there wouldnt be atoms, there
would just be a bunch of particles zooming separately through
the universe.

Since the matter including field tends to be at its lowest energy

level for its stability, therefore, it implies that Higgs field should
also be at its lowest value. But is it at its lowest level? To decide
this, it needs further before examination of what the lowest state
of energy is. Consider a paratrooper who jumps from an aircraft
flying over mountainous terrain wth two valleys below, one down
deep and another a bit higher.There is a probability that he may
land at the deepest or a bit higher valley. There are certain
factors like location of the plane when he jumps, wind direction
which will decide his landing point. But incidentally, he lands at
the higher valley and he is comfortable there, he can move and is
stable but there will always a lurking apprehension in his mind
lest he should not roll down the steep as he is still at a higher
level than the deepest valley. Had he landed at the deepest valley,
there would not have been any doubt of his sliding down and he
would always have been stable and safe. This lowest in Physics is
called true or absolute stable energy level. But at this valley
which is a bit higher, he is stable but not absolutely. Fierce winds,
slippery ground or any other disturbance can throw him down
rushing to mass of flesh. Such a stage is called metastable or
false stable ie a stage liable to be unstable. Fierce winds,
slippery grounds or other disturbances making him unstable are
called quantum perturbations which ere inherently present and
can never be avoided. The process of disturbing his metastable
stage is called tunnelling ie those disturbances even can form a
tunnel where from he can fall down. In classical mechanics,
these barriers are formidable and requires specified energy to
pierce through tunnel but in quantum mechanics, under normal
circumstances, quantum perturbation or fluctuations can cause
tunnelling depending upon the probability density.

This analogy works well with the universe, Higgs Boson field may
have settled at metastable level like the case of paratrooper and
there had always be apprehension that this field may not tunnel
through to its lowest value crushing the universe to a crunch like
that of trooper. After describing all these, two questions come to
Ines mind whether factually there are two Higgs fields or Vacua,
one stable and another metastable and whether we are in
metastable state. I will take up these one by one and use
physical formula to arrive at conclusions.
I assume as the energy density of scalar Higgs Boson field in
Vacuum, its potential on the basis of well known model of scalar
filed is given by

V() = squared.( squared v squared) + a.

where where , v, and a are constants. From this equation, if a

equals 0, the potential has a local minimum at = +, which is
higher than in a neighbouring minimum at = . The vacuum
state defined by the former minimum is referred to as the false
vacuum, while the latter is the true vacuum. While at small
positive a the degeneracy is lifted in such a way that the
minimum at + has energy density bigger than that of by the
amount 2 a v. The Vacuum state, when a is equal or lower than
0, is stable but it becomes metastable at positive a. Metastable
is that state which when disturbed becomes unstable whereas a
stable state remains always stable. Higgs field which pervades
ever abundant Vacuum, therefore, has two lowest energy states,
metastable and stable. Hereinafter I will use the conventional
term Vacuum for Higgs field in this article. Metastable Vacuum
state is commonly called False Vacuum and stable state True
Vacuum.

Now I come to second question whether our universe has false or

true Vacuum. I submit that an infinitely old universe will have a
true Vacuum due to the fact that decay or tunnelling of false
Vacuum can always be presumed to have passed in that old
universe. Conversely, when the universe was evolved after Big
Bang, the energy density of the universe was quite high,
therefore, question of existence of Vacuum, does not arise. The
relevant parameter for describing the future of the universe is the
cosmic time for which product of T/V and four- volume of the past
light cone becomes of order unity. T is the probability of decay
rate of false Vacuum per unit time and V is volume. If the cosmic
time is in milliseconds, the universe is in its initial stage of Big
Bang. Cosmic time is time taken for formation and development
of the universe. It corresponds to time as measured by clocks
that are at rest relative to the expanding space, and that have
been set to zero at the very beginning, the time of the
hypothetical big bang singularity. Its synonymous is age of the
universe. If cosmic time is in years, the universe will be in a sort
of secondary Big Bang. If the cosmic time is in the range of
1000000000 years, we have occasions for anxiety and this is the
situation with the present universe.
Another estimate to decide the state of Vacuum is value of Higgs
Boson, in the recent experiment on LHC, it has been found as 125
GeV. That implies that universe is on borderline of false Vacuum.
Further, it is also not certain that Higgs Boson is actually at 125
GeV and that makes the situation ambiguous and uncertain.

Bednyakov et al. have carried out refine experiments and their

conclusion is that the universe is in metastable or false Vacuum.
They also conclude that the universe is close to stable Vacuum
state. However to be sure, a more precise knowledge of the Higgs
boson mass, the top-quark mass, the strong coupling constant
and other parameters will be needed to shed light on the issue.
But it has nowhere been conclusively stated that the universe
has true Vacuum.

If the universe were metastable, how it did it reach this stage

despite the presence of deeper minimum slope? It has been
argued that the formation of negative-energy bubbles prevents
the Universe from populating the Higgs false vacuum if deeper
minima exist.

Now when the indicators point to its metastable state, what

would be going to happen to the universe? This again involves
principles of physics. When a fluid is superheated, bubbles form,
expand, then collapse to the fluid and this process continues. But
there may be a case where a bubble forms, expands to a critical
radius at which the energy loss due to surface terms is
compensated by gain in the volume energy. The situation of the
universe is analogous to this superheated liquid. This formation
of critical bubble is tunnelling process whereby the barrier
between the false and true Vacuum is tunnelled. This is called
bounce. The Spacetime nucleation rate of the critical bubble ie
the probability of such nucleation per unit time and per unit
volume, is proportional to the exponent of the classical action on
the bounce configuration. It is theorised that such nucleations
take place at primordial blackholes. In simple words, false
Vacuum which is at higher potential energy level will go down to
its its true Vacuum at low energy initiating at the point of
primordial blackholes.

Apart from this, it is also put forth that if a bubble of true Vacuum
gets created, it will expand and devours the universe by decaying
its false Vacuum at the speed of light. That was the reason, at the
time of LHC experiment, it was apprehended that by accident, if
such minuscule bubble is created, it may then expand decaying
the false Vacuum at the speed of light incinerating the universe.

Obviously, when the false Vacuum at higher potential would

decay into true Vacuum at lower potential, it would liberate
unthinkable enormous amount of energy that would burn to ashes
galaxies or any matter whatsoever which would come in its way
in its expansion. The process of incineration would continue till
true Vacuum pervades all over. True Vacuum will have its own
Higgs Boson field admittedly at lowest level of energy. That field
would impart mass to particles in its own way and new laws of
physics would come into being. New compounds would be formed
with changed chemistry. Nobody can predict what laws of
physics and chemistry would be at that time.

New laws researched either by experimentation or theoretical

deduction. Theory predicts existence of metastable Vacuum in
the universe. Decay of false Vacuum is a matter of probability and
it is argued that it much higher than the present age of the
universe. It certain that out of billions of person, draw of lot goes
to a single person although its probability was one amongst
billions of persons. Probability estimates likelihood but does nit
guarantee that it would not happen.

It is justified to apprehend that the universe is metastable and is

likely to go in its stable state but with little probability. It is quite
likely that false Vacuum takes such a long time that we might just
never observe it. Its possible for there to be an instability that is
so slow that we havent observed it yet because it hasnt
happened yet. But it could, in principle, still happen.

Before parting, it reminds me of a befitting couplet of the great

Urdu poet, Mirza Ghalib,