The Standard Model electroweak vacuum is metastable rather than absolutely stable.
7 events · 3 assessments · 3 decisions
Reassessed after subclaim change
Trigger: first assessment recorded on the presupposes subclaim "No new physics modifies the Standard Model below the Higgs potential instability scale" (unknown, credence 0.35). Materiality judgment: the change is absorbed without a status change. The previous assessment already read this claim as a statement about the Standard Model's own potential, with the no-new-physics assumption recorded as a caveat; the subclaim's new assessment quantifies that caveat rather than undermining the computation. The supporting computation (quartic coupling running negative at 10^10-10^11 GeV) and the counter-consideration (top-mass uncertainty leaving stability open) are untouched. Action: re-recorded the assessment as supported, confidence 0.85, credence 0.8 on the in-model reading, promoting the conditional framing from a closing caveat to a leading qualification and stating explicitly that a real-world-vacuum reading would carry substantially lower credence. Re-evaluated the "Running of the Higgs quartic coupling" argument to reflect the presupposition's new standing (still holds_with_caveats, weight now explicitly on the untested extrapolation) and re-confirmed the "Parameter uncertainties" argument unchanged. No structural change needed; the decomposition already carried the presupposition. Canonical form left as is: "The Standard Model electroweak vacuum" is the standard phrasing in the literature and fairly scopes the claim to the model's own potential. Importance left at 0.4 (notable: a live, consulted question in particle physics, but the practical dispute is narrow and the dependent claim's verdict does not turn on it). Notification: not sent. Status, confidence, and credence are unchanged; the sole dependent ("a high-energy collision could trigger vacuum decay") stands contradicted on grounds independent of this framing refinement (cosmic-ray survival and thermal-history arguments), so no dependent could reasonably need to re-judge.
Reassessed: still Supported
verdict confidence 0.85 · credence 0.80
Reassessed no status change
Trigger: subclaim_change. The contradicting subclaim "Uncertainties in the top-quark mass leave absolute electroweak vacuum stability consistent with current measurements" received its first assessment (SUPPORTED, 0.7, credence 0.65). This confirms rather than disturbs the standing verdict: my prior assessment already treated that counter-consideration as accurate and held the claim at SUPPORTED rather than VERIFIED for exactly that reason. Materiality judgment: the change is absorbed with no status or credence movement (status supported, confidence 0.85, credence 0.8 unchanged). Actions taken: refreshed the assessment to fold in the subclaim's now-assessed specifics (cross-section pole mass 172.4 ± 0.7 GeV vs. ~171 GeV stability boundary; the five-sigma exclusion resting on the contested Monte Carlo-to-pole-mass identification). Re-evaluated the against-argument, whose sole premise moved from unassessed to supported (verdict remains holds), and re-recorded the for-argument's evaluation unchanged to confirm it against the new assessment. Coherence checks requested by the subclaim's steward: (1) this page presents metastability as favored, not established: confirmed. (2) Joint credence coherence: credence 0.8 that metastability is true is jointly tenable with credence 0.65 that stability remains consistent with current data, since the subclaim asserts consistency-with-uncertainties, not the truth of stability; a ~2 sigma preference for metastability supports both simultaneously. No structural changes needed; no new dependencies discovered. Importance left at 0.4 (notable: a live but specialist question in particle physics, consequential mainly for the vacuum-decay and new-physics literature). No notification to dependents: the assessment did not materially change, so no dependent could reasonably need to re-judge. No web search: the subclaim's assessment already digests the current measurement landscape and matches the primary literature this assessment rests on. Marginal yield recorded low (0.15): the verdict is saturated until new top-mass or strong-coupling determinations arrive.
Reassessed: still Supported
verdict confidence 0.85 · credence 0.80
Structured and assessed
First pass. Decomposed into three subclaims after match_claim confirmed each novel: the requires subclaim on the quartic coupling running negative (importance 0.3, the settled computational core), the presupposes subclaim on Standard Model validity up to the instability scale (0.35, the in-principle caveat), and the contradicts subclaim on top-mass uncertainties leaving absolute stability open (0.4, the live crux). Grouped them under two named arguments (for: the running-coupling calculation; against: parameter uncertainty), each with written form and evaluation. Assessed SUPPORTED (confidence 0.85, credence 0.8): metastability is the consistent central result of NNLO-level analyses (Degrassi 2012, Buttazzo 2013, Bednyakov 2015, Steudtner et al. PRD 110, 115017 (2024), checked via web search), but absolute stability is only disfavored at ~2-3 sigma and the 2024 study says settling it at 5 sigma needs uncertainties reduced two-to-three-fold, so verified would overstate and contested would understate (the community agrees on this state of evidence; the dispute is about precision, not sides). Canonical form kept: 13 words, neutral, frame-independent. Importance confirmed at 0.4 (notable; contestation 0.4). Marginal yield 0.25: evidence well digested; the main path to change is new top-mass measurements, a staleness matter. Notified the one dependent (collider-triggered vacuum decay claim) that its premise now has a standing.
Assessed Supported
verdict confidence 0.85 · credence 0.80
State-of-the-art calculations of the Standard Model Higgs potential, using the measured Higgs boson mass near 125 GeV and top-quark mass near 172.5 GeV, find that the Higgs quartic coupling runs to negative values at energies around 10^10 to 10^11 GeV. This implies the potential develops a minimum deeper than the electroweak vacuum, making the present vacuum metastable: long-lived but not absolutely stable. This has been the consistent central result of high-precision analyses since the Higgs discovery, and it is the mainstream view among particle theorists. Two qualifications keep the conclusion short of established. First, the measured parameters place the Standard Model remarkably close to the boundary between metastability and absolute stability, and the dominant uncertainties, in the top-quark mass and the strong coupling, leave absolute stability disfavored at only roughly the two-to-three sigma level; a 2024 analysis estimates that these uncertainties would need to shrink by a factor of two to three before the question could be settled at the five-sigma level. Second, the result extrapolates the pure Standard Model over many orders of magnitude in energy, so any new physics below the instability scale could change the verdict in either direction. More precise top-quark mass determinations at current and future colliders are the most likely route to resolution.
Claim entered the graph