The environmental impact of vacuum decay

Details The environmental impact of vacuum decay The environmental impact of vacuum decay

Jan 1991

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1991amjph..59...25c&link_type=abstract

American Journal of Physics, Volume 59, Issue 1, pp. 25-32 (1991).

Physics

4

Elementary Particle Processes

Scientific paper

In the standard model of particle physics, the force laws changed discontinuously as the Universe cooled below the critical temperature for electroweak gauge symmetry breaking. In a recently proposed model, the gauge symmetry of electrodynamics, which is responsible for the photon being massless, will also be broken as the Universe cools below some critical temperature. As a result, the photon will suddenly acquire a mass that is of the order of 10-4 eV/c2, corresponding to a Compton wavelength of a centimeter. The effects of such a transition on our civilization are examined. All long-range electric and magnetic fields would vanish, as would all low-frequency electromagnetic waves. Atomic structure and solar radiation would not be appreciably affected. Effects on neural transmission might be serious, depending on the precise value of the photon mass. It is concluded that the impact on society would be severe, but probably not fatal. Life would continue, and our civilization could be restructured to accommodate the new laws of electromagnetism.

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