What I’m specifically thinking of is the assertion that at least since the inflationary period of the early universe, it never got hot enough for some of the more esoteric predictions of Grand Unified Theories to actually manifest: cosmic strings, etc. Can the universe have underlying laws of physics that have never manifested? And if somehow some ultimate technology could contrive to create conditions beyond anything that’s ever naturally occurred, what would be the implications; would/could we “break” the universe?
And how does one determine that this has never manifested anywhere in the entire universe even though it is possible?
Theoretically yes; false vacuum decay is one example.
A less apocalyptic possibility would be creating exotic particles and exotic forms of matter that have never existed in nature, because the right conditions for them never happen naturally.
Heavy isotopies that no known natural processes is judged capable of making (no matter how big a star or how nasty a neutron star collision may be) might be an example, tho it is possible some have been made here and there, but they are too unstable to hang around for very long before decaying.
IIRC such things are known to exist; stars can make some isotopes that are immediately destroyed by the conditions that exist inside a star.
Also, there’s long been theoretical speculation about an “island of stability” of superheavy elements. Which we can’t make yet, but who knows what a sufficiently advanced civilization might be able to do?
That’s an interesting example because in theory there’s a limit to how many electrons could surround a heavy nucleus before the innermost ones would have to be traveling faster than light: naively at about Z=137, more probably about Z=173. Assuming that such super-heavy nuclei could exist long enough for electron shells to form around them, that would likely present a situation reflecting physics beyond our current understanding. Less likely, by synthesizing such nuclei we would have created an impossible paradox; “backed nature into a corner” so to speak.
I’m struggling with the wording of your question.
I’ll bet https://arxiv.org/ is flooded every day with theoretic papers on stuff that the laws of physics allows but have never been observed.
Heck, the news summary pages of New Scientist and Science News have reports every issue of real-world phenomena that were never observed before.
Philosophically, a large strain in science says that anything that is allowed by the laws of physics will exist under the right conditions. How can any of this “break” the universe? What could that possibly mean?
But all these things happened (presumably) before the inflationary period; even if we can’t reproduce these events, we can find evidence that they occurred. There might be laws of physics that could only take effect when some volume of the universe is colder than occurs in nature - and I suppose people could create those conditions.
I think we can say with high statistical confidence that event that could occur within the conditions of the extant or history of the universe after the formation of quark plasma (“quagma”) has happened many times just because even the visible universe is so vast and there are so many gradients and concentration of energy within it. Anything that would ‘break’ the universe would represent some kind of phase transition where some new form of matter or energy could exist, or spacetime as we understand it would break down. This may, in fact, occur within the singularity of a black hole, which is why cosmologists are pretty confident that ‘naked’ singularities (those without a unidirectional event horizon) cannot exist, and also why stable macroscopic traversable wormholes––while technically possible within the framework of General Relativity––could not occur naturally and probably can’t exist at all. The ‘laws of physics’ as we define them are based upon our models and observation which are almost certainly incomplete. They may even be just a kind of mean field approximation of some more fundamental physical mechanics that we cannot observe and may never be able to explore fully within our universe.
Stranger
Can’t argue with that, unless you redefine the English phrase “the laws of physics,” which seems to be a necessity for your events.
Something that is outside the current laws of physics is not covered by the limitations imposed by the current laws of physics. Otherwise you devolve into paradoxical statements.
This is a pedanticism, to be sure.
It’s my understanding that we have in fact already done so, although it didn’t break the universe. The Bose-Einstein condensate was first created in 1995. As far as I can tell, the conditions necessary for its creation don’t exist anywhere in the universe except in labs here on Earth designed specifically to create Bose-Einstein condensates.
Yeah, that’s an example where, for all of the history of the Universe, it was too hot. And we don’t know of any “natural” process (meaning, one that happens without the deliberate intervention of intelligent beings) that could produce temperatures that low.
The conditions can be met, I would think. For example, a small grain of dust with a small deposit of elemental lead far enough from the heating effects of a star could certainly fall below the critical temperature for superconductivity, which would mean the formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate. Not something we would readily observe, but in the vastness of space, the conditions seem likely to have been met for a BEC in general.
But, yeah, for most BECs, it’s not happening naturally. This can be extended to a wide range of material phase transitions that require carefully controlled conditions.
Otherwise, the false vacuum decay mentioned by @Der_Trihs and the wormhole case mentioned by @Stranger_On_A_Train seem to be the most “honest” examples of what the OP is looking for, short of invoking more speculative physics, in which case we have almost too much freedom.
Other random thoughts using a wide interpretation of the OP.
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Heavy anti-nuclei are, we expect, just as allowed as regular heavy nuclei, but the engines to create them are not present in our universe.
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Some things are allowed by physics but are effectively forbidden by their statistical improbability, e.g., a gas-filled region of space spontaneously becoming vacuum by chance. Given free choice of requirements on saying that a Thing Happened, it could be made arbitrarily unlikely.
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You could define the titular “something” to be an obscure higher-order particle interaction process that is likely not to have happened.
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Magnetic monopoles are generally allowed (and there are theoretical reasons to want them), but it’s possible they don’t exist.
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A somewhat fair answer might be processes that involve items that would never exist naturally in the same era. Some particles that would be around in the very early universe will never have been around together with, say, neutral atoms. So, interactions between those could be well-defined but never occurring.
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In a slightly cheating take, if our universe’s parameters are chosen through the dynamics of a more general set of laws, then our universe will never experience many things that that more general set of laws would allow, given that we’re in a (sub) universe that has “frozen in” certain choices. This is cheating since I’m using two different definitions of “universe” in a single breath.
I’m fond of my advisor’s take on the subject: “Magnetic monopoles definitely exist. But there might be a very small number of them, such as zero.”
Maybe another example along the same lines is the creation of ultra low temperature. The cosmic background radiation implies that everything in the Universe is at about 2 degrees kelvin, i think. So cooling matter to 0.0001 above absolute zero is creating something that has never existed.
Dang, ninjaed in a post above by Chronos
Depends upon the meaning of “laws of physics”.
If that phrase refers to the accumulated description of behavior of the universe as codified by humans, then that statement is correct. Humans don’t understand everything about how the universe works.
But often that phrase is taken to mean “how the universe works”, not limited by what humans have figured out.
That seems to be closer to the OP’s statement about the universe having possible behaviors that never manifested.
Either phrase is an acceptable use, but what usually happens is they get conflated.
Ninja’d even earlier
I just recalled an example of something theoretically possible that has never actually existed yet: a black dwarf. The universe just isn’t old enough yet.