#vacuumdecay

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Hey, so i just learned about this wonderful theory about a possible "self destruct button" for the universe called Vacuum Decay, and i though i would share it with you guys (all one of you). This will be a very simplified, basic version of this theory, if yould like to learn more, Kurzgesagt youtube chanel made a wonderful video about it.

So to begin, imagine the laws of the universe and everything you understand have bosses, and these bosses are called quantum waves. Each wave has its own control. And these waves, like all matter want to be in a stable state, or a state of least potential energy.

So if the wave that "controls" the laws of physics somehow managed to be in a false state of stability, it would cause a massive explosion of instability rippling out into the universe at the speed of light, erasing everything it touched and causing the univerese to cease to exist as we know it. And if we somehow managed to survive, the laws of physics on the inside of the unstable explosion, would be completely differant, for better or worse.

I am very far away, and I am not a professional statistician. I know almost nothing about the material and am not sure I can be helpful. But if I did know, I would say:

1. For the most part, I think you should learn all the math and stats behind the material and go in with a good grasp of what you are doing. I think it's good to be well versed in the relevant technical terms, and it's good to be able to articulate what you're doing, but those are very different from being a "master of the field" or the "best at it." I don't know how well this is addressed in the literature (which I suspect it is not), but it seems like there is a certain arrogance or complacency in talking about how you "just" did a good job with some statistics or a good analysis, and not much else, especially for undergraduates like yourself. To be clear, you don't need a ton of expertise to do a good job. The material is probably pretty simple for you given your background.

2. Think about the results of your analysis. What do they say about the data, and what do they say about how the analysis was done? Are they reliable? If someone else did the analysis with the same data, what would their results say?