It is a trivial matter to reach in and remove a physical, solid object.
What’s left? An empty box?
NO.
The box still has air in it.
FINE.
Pump out the air and you have a box containing a high vaccuum.
Now is it empty?
NO…passing through the box is background radiation in the form of neutrinos, radio waves from the local TV stations, Microwaves left over from the Big Bang, etc.
AWRIGHT AWRIGHT…I use my super-duper magnet to suck up all the radiation in the box, and surround the box with Unobtanium shielding to prevent outside radiation from getting in.
NOW IS IT EMPTY???
NO!
The box still contains Spacetime…the very fabric of existence.
Okay…let’s just say I’ve acquired godlike powers that can bend the very laws of physics to my whim.
From within the box, I remove the very concept of left-right x forward-backward x up-down x before-after.
Would not the box instantly collapse like an implosion?
A box has interior dimensions separated by “distance”.
If the concept of distance is removed the sides of the box are, by default, tangent…yes?
You’ve assumed spacetime and direction and distance are the same thing. You might be right, but you might not.
It might also be useful to rigorously define “empty”.
Removing all the gas, dust, and radiation is possible at least in principal. And so admits of an FQ answer. As a practical matter your box walls will outgas, leak, and occasionally emit a decay particle. So even if you empty your box of those pollutants, it won’t stay that way.
Once you introduce the magical power to alter spacetime, then the answer transmutes to “Whatever else your magick dictates it might be.” There are zero scientific answers to magical questions. By definition. It’s like the parable of the one drop of sewage in a barrel of wine. What you have then is merely a barrel of sewage with no useful wine anywhere.
In all, I think this is an interesting question worthy of discussion. But IMO there is no one clearcut answer.
An object as prosaic as a box is typically defined by the stuff it is designed to contain. So when it can’t physically contain anymore of that stuff, it is “full”. When it contains none of that stuff, it is “empty”. Going on about air, neutrinos, and spacetime is meaningless blather
If you go by the way the term is commonly used, “empty” means if you turn the box upside down and shake it, nothing falls out.
Clearly the OP is using some other definition, but as you state that definition isn’t given. Therefore, there is no way to answer the question.
Is the OP really asking for a factual answer or are they engaging in a philosophical debate? I’m honestly not sure. Because the factual answer to the thread title is an easy “yes”, but the content of the first post obfuscates it to the extent that I don’t see a clear question.
I hold with @Dorjan on the practicalities. Frex: a retail packaging box designed to hold a basketball has two states: “basketball inside” and “no basketball inside”. The former state is “full”; the latter state is “empty”.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe your hypothetical “box” would not contain any part of the universe. In other words, the universe exists everywhere except inside that box.
Up until this point, you had a basically factual question about the nature of spacetime and the universe (though I’m not sure that we understand enough of it to provide an actual answer). But altering the laws of physics is what drives this over the line and out of FQ territory.
There’s also the question of how you try to “empty” the box. You can’t empty anything until you empty out half of anything in the box. Then you have to take out half of what’s left. Then half of that. And so on. Eventually you’ll get the box empty enough that you can see “Box by Zeno” printed on it.
Well, in fact, I just received an Amazon package that was essentially a box containing another box.
Could you nest another box inside that one, and another inside of that, and on infinitely if you lived in a mathematical rather than physical universe? And if you did have a box within a box and imploded the universe, would the outer box go first or the inner box? What if you have an infinite number of boxes? Would it take an infinite time to implode them all, or since spacetime can move faster than light, would the time needed be merely finite?
The factual answer is, there is no physical procedure to empty a box to absolute zero; nor does that matter because, due to the Uncertainty Principle, the supposedly empty box is always teeming with virtual cats— I mean, particles.
The OP also talked about disrupting the structure of space-time, which mechanisms to do I have to suggest take a rather large concentration of energy, thereby as a side-effect also eliminating the box, the observers, the lab, you get the idea.
