I'm noticing a trend of scientific-sounding announcements about physics results that turn out to be theoretical explorations of simulations. The whole "false vacuum" idea isn't really even a hypothesis, just a what-if. We have no indication that the ground vacuum state isn't the lowest energy configuration. I think people just find a non-zero minimum unintuitive.

Anyway, the key figure in all these theoretical simulation articles is the multi-billion dollar quantum super computers running these simulations. Wouldn't it be funny if tech investors with a lot of money staked on quantum devices pushed for low-quality science that required their machines to be done, thus expanding the market and value of their otherwise pointless supercomputers? This article ends on a very optimistic "these computers have so many uses in cryptography and science" which seems a little out of place when discussing physics results.