This excellent and highly entertaining new video produced by YouTube channel Kurzgesagt—In a Nutshell tackles a speculative natural disaster of epic proportions—the collapse of the universe through vacuum decay.

In theory, a sufficiently powerful energy event could push a tiny region of the universe into a true vacuum state. This would kickstart a domino effect, spawning a bubble of existential despair that could spread outwards at the speed of light and destroy the entire universe in the process.

As noted in the video, this is highly, highly speculative stuff. No one really knows if a vacuum decay is actually possible, or if it poses a genuine threat to our planet.

That being said, particle physicists would most certainly like to know more about the prospect, lest we produce our own vacuum bubble inside a particle accelerator.