knudsen (08/06/82)
If, as an article just said, a vacuum can spontaneously decay into real particles, then we have one hell of an unruly universe, and I'm not sure whether physics might not deteriorate into the same subjective morass as Political "Science". At least, we sure as hell don't need God, Carol Marcus' GENESIS device, black holes, or even the Big Bang -- the universe will just keep on creating itself. Of course, to impose some structure on these particles arising from nowhere from nothing, it might be nice to have some controlling, steering intelligence -- like God, GENESIS, -- or at least some LAWS (?) of physics!!
doug (08/08/82)
I should mention that the spontaneous decay of vacuums into non-virtual particles would only be in the vicinity of an extremely highly charged nucleus. In this vicinity, the SA article maintains that it would be energetically desirable for such decay to occur. The nuclei required, if I remember correctly, have proton numbers > 200. Experiments are being conducted to create (albeit for a short time) such nuclei.