Can a space of absolute nothing be created?

Originally posted by nicolet
reply to post by jiggerj

 

nothingness is all of space. the only reason you experience it is as something is because of what you are projecting yourself onto that space or how you yourself are connecting to that space. this is how powerful each and every single one of us is (and we don't even know it)

Quite an intellectual trick for all newborn babies, and kangaroos, and mosquitoes.

Originally posted by Astyanax
Hi again, jiggerj. You ask interesting questions.

Please don't be disappointed that most of my answers are negative. This is how we make progress in science – arriving at the truth by progressively eliminating what is false. Every time we do that, we learn a little more.

And with that said, à nos moutons...

First of all, there was no 'before' before the Big Bang. Time (or whatever it is we perceive as time) also had its beginning in the Big Bang. This is hard for people to understand intuitively because, although we can conceive of nonexistence, we cannot picture it. But without time, there can be no 'before' and 'after'; therefore the question 'where did the universe come from?' is meaningless. So are the questions 'what happens after the universe ends?' and 'what is outside the universe'?

There are some models in which our universe is one of many, or in which our universe exists inside a larger universe. If this is so, then we can legitimately ask the above questions – but only from the point of view of an observer in the larger universe that contains this one! The questions and their answers will still have no meaning for us in our universe.

Now to your actual question. Can a space of 'absolute nothing' be created? The answer is no. Apart from the difficulty of creating a perfect vacuum, which has already been explained, there is a much deeper issue; a vacuum is, quite simply, not nothing. It is empty space, and space – oddly enough – is something. It expands and contracts, stretches and snaps back like elastic. Particles pop into existence from it, and pop back out. It has energy, at least in a theoretical sense.

Your proposed experiment is designed to remove all matter from an area of space. There are practical, engineering reasons why it won't work, but even if you overcame these and somehow created a perfect vacuum, the vacuum would still be full of space.

Your negative answers are always welcome, Astyanax. You state your intelligent thoughts in a clear, yet conversational tone, which is exactly what I'm looking for in a chat forum. I have seen Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos, and how he describes the stage, the background, of the universe. Would it be ignorant of me to think that even this stage had to have been non-existent at some point, and then created? This is what I was going for in my experiment. I'm not trying to remove matter from a space by creating a vacuum, but to create a space before matter fills it. If this pre-matter void cannot ever be achieved then doesn't this imply that the stage of the universe was not created, and has always been there?

reply to post by jiggerj

Would it be ignorant of me to think that even this stage had to have been non-existent at some point, and then created?

The trouble is that language breaks down in the face of these ideas. In the scientific model of the cosmos we are discussing, time has only existed for as long as the universe has, because it is part and parcel of the universe. Without time there can be no 'before', no 'have been'. The universe is 13.7 billion years old, give or take a few. The universe has always existed. Both those statements are true, and strange to relate there is no contradiction between them.

I'm not trying to remove matter from a space by creating a vacuum, but to create a space before matter fills it.

Either way, spacetime itself (what physicists call 'the metric') remains. Space, like time, only came into existence with the Big Bang. Incidentally, this also means that space is almost certainly finite in extent, but nevertheless has no boundaries, no 'beginning' and no 'end'.

It depends on your definition of 'nothing'.

Even in deep space, you get the occasional atom of hydrogen or whatnot. Plus there's generally always some sort of photons traversing the space.

And if you look really really closely, you're going to see that there's a constant seething of virtual particles wanting to substantiate.

Originally posted by particlezen
nothing doesn't exist

I second this motion. There is no such thing as "nothing" it is merely a placeholder for a nonexistent value, like 0 and numbers. Even a vacuum consists of "something" because if it was "nothing" once the vacuum would exist, you would cease to see it in any way, shape, or form. Just like if you have 0 apples, you aren't going to see any because 0 is a placeholder, just like "nothing"

Originally posted by Astyanax
Hi again, jiggerj. You ask interesting questions.

Please don't be disappointed that most of my answers are negative. This is how we make progress in science – arriving at the truth by progressively eliminating what is false. Every time we do that, we learn a little more.

And with that said, à nos moutons...

First of all, there was no 'before' before the Big Bang. Time (or whatever it is we perceive as time) also had its beginning in the Big Bang. This is hard for people to understand intuitively because, although we can conceive of nonexistence, we cannot picture it. But without time, there can be no 'before' and 'after'; therefore the question 'where did the universe come from?' is meaningless. So are the questions 'what happens after the universe ends?' and 'what is outside the universe'?


There are some models in which our universe is one of many, or in which our universe exists inside a larger universe. If this is so, then we can legitimately ask the above questions – but only from the point of view of an observer in the larger universe that contains this one! The questions and their answers will still have no meaning for us in our universe.

Now to your actual question. Can a space of 'absolute nothing' be created? The answer is no. Apart from the difficulty of creating a perfect vacuum, which has already been explained, there is a much deeper issue; a vacuum is, quite simply, not nothing. It is empty space, and space – oddly enough – is something. It expands and contracts, stretches and snaps back like elastic. Particles pop into existence from it, and pop back out. It has energy, at least in a theoretical sense.

Your proposed experiment is designed to remove all matter from an area of space. There are practical, engineering reasons why it won't work, but even if you overcame these and somehow created a perfect vacuum, the vacuum would still be full of space.

that made alotta sense. Good explanation

reply to post by Astyanax


What would the area the universe existed in before it banged be like?

or your saying..... the energy/matter in the universe is a tree trunk, space is its leaves, and it all started in a seed?

reply to post by ImaFungi

What would the area the universe existed in before it banged be like?

As already explained, there was no 'before', so the question has no meaning.

or your saying..... the energy/matter in the universe is a tree trunk, space is its leaves, and it all started in a seed?

There are no shortcuts to understanding. Everyday analogies cannot help us comprehend ideas that do not emerge from everyday experience. Indeed, they are worse than useless – they are an obstacle to understanding. If you wish to understand, you must put away your preconceptions and invest real time and effort in the subject.

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by ImaFungi

 

What would the area the universe existed in before it banged be like?

As already explained, there was no 'before', so the question has no meaning.

or your saying..... the energy/matter in the universe is a tree trunk, space is its leaves, and it all started in a seed?

There are no shortcuts to understanding. Everyday analogies cannot help us comprehend ideas that do not emerge from everyday experience. Indeed, they are worse than useless – they are an obstacle to understanding. If you wish to understand, you must put away your preconceptions and invest real time and effort in the subject.

I do not understand the explanation of there being no before the beginning of the universe.. so your saying everything that makes up the universe including the space, exists in the same non space area that the universe has always existed in? , the space at the farthest reaches of the current universe, did that exist as a part of the universe moments after the big bang? even if you put a lot of real time and effot into the situation you couldnt explain to me simply or semi complexly how the universe was contained in an infinitely small state, where/what area this event occurred in,, is there no context, no direction, if there are no limits of distance what made the universe occur at a certain point?

i know my questions are silly and stupid but try and answer them to the best of your knowledge, even quick simple answers, it would help me learn,,

reply to post by IgnorantSpecies


That is a mere play on words, since before the big bang there was no time or space. To me the concept of no space/time is the closest I can conceive as nothing. Void is a void, it must contain something to be distinguishable, but nothing is utterly nonexistence.

d00d even in an absolute vacuum, they can occasionally detect light or electrons or something... it just pops in from nowhere, another dimension or something.,.,.

reply to post by ImaFungi

I do not understand the explanation of there being no before the beginning of the universe.. so your saying everything that makes up the universe including the space, exists in the same non space area that the universe has always existed in?

Try to imagine a world without time. What would it look like? Could you even see it?

Now try to imagine a world without space. How many things would it have in it? How could you tell?

To imagine what was there 'before' the Big Bang, try to imagine a world without space or time. Is that possible?

the space at the farthest reaches of the current universe, did that exist as a part of the universe moments after the big bang?

Yes, but you wouldn't recognize it then; it was tiny and crammed to overflowing with mass-energy.

how (was) the universe contained in an infinitely small state?

It wasn't. The universe only began to exist at the Big Bang.

where/what area (did) this event (occur)?

It occurred at every point in the universe, of course.

is there no context, no direction, if there are no limits of distance what made the universe occur at a certain point?

It did not occur at a certain point (see answer to previous question).

...it would help me learn

Your questions are not silly or stupid. They are the obvious and sensible. The trouble is not with the questions but with the answers. They don't fit in with common human experience, so it is hard to take them in properly.

Originally posted by jiggerj
If (and that's a big IF) there was nothing before the Big Bang, then is it possible to create a space of absolute nothing?

Nothing is an illusion as there is something called "vacuum energy". There can never be nothing. As you probably know if there is "nothing" in universe that will mean it's a zero energy universe. Beyond that I think you have posed a very good question which I cannot answer with all certainty.

reply to post by minor007

As far as I understand it, in classical terms the space in atoms and between them is mostly empty. Like 99.9%. However, in quantum terms all space has potential energy based on probability. It cannot be classified as empty. I think this is because of superposition or something. Like how a wave/particle is everywhere until you observe it. Once you observe it, the wave function collapse and it becomes discrete. This is one of the reasons they say that atoms are NOT like solar systems. Electrons are not like orbiting planets around a sun. They're MUCH more like waves of energy that look like a cloud.

It's kind of like when we look at the vacuum of space. To us it looks empty. Same thing happens when we view electrons or atoms. They look mostly empty. But to understand this you have to understand quantum physics. Quantum physics doesn't neatly fit our classic methods of understanding things.

This is a fun video:

I found this and it's interesting too:

reply to post by Ek Bharatiya

'Vacuum energy' can only exist once space comes into existence.

The energy of the universe is zero.