Once the expansion of the universe has accelerated enough we should be safe from this, right? My thinking is that if some galaxy starts collapsing as you described, but all surrounding galaxies are moving away at FTL speeds, it would never reach them.
If expansion does come close to or exceeds the speed of light we should be safe from far away galaxies, for sure. At the speed of light, it’ll take ages for such an event to ever reach us in the first place, so the only realistic danger is that vacuum decay has already happened and is coming right for us.
However, if it can occur at all, it can occur a second time, closer to our home.
Once the expansion of the universe has accelerated enough we should be safe from this, right? My thinking is that if some galaxy starts collapsing as you described, but all surrounding galaxies are moving away at FTL speeds, it would never reach them.
That would reduce the chances, but this could happen to literally any particle. Kind of hard to avoid it when it’s in one of your spleen molecules.
If expansion does come close to or exceeds the speed of light we should be safe from far away galaxies, for sure. At the speed of light, it’ll take ages for such an event to ever reach us in the first place, so the only realistic danger is that vacuum decay has already happened and is coming right for us.
However, if it can occur at all, it can occur a second time, closer to our home.