[ExI] End of time?

[scerir]

I've got the impression that it is sometimes dangerous to think in terms of 
'time' (or space-time). As Spike suggested, the question comes down to whether 
the 'vacuum state' - and not time itself - is stable.  http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Vacuum_state . Our universe might be a pocket of low energy (in terms 
of VEV), which might decay further if this it is a meta-stable state.  The meta-
stable vacuum with a small lambda may expand for a very long time if the decay 
is slow enough (inflationary state).  If the vacuum state is not stable there 
might be some phase transition that ends the universe (as we know it). As 
somebody (L.B.C.) wrote the argument of that paper only really makes sense if 
we can understand the stability of the vacuum. Sidney Coleman and Frank di 
Luccia worked the theory of an unstable false vacuum with gravity in 1980 http:
//prd.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v21/i12/p3305_1 and this is still the main paper 
which leads to the theory of nucleating bubbles of real vacuum expanding within 
a false vacuum.