Scientist once believed that atoms were the smallest part of matter … until they found that they really weren’t.
Science has since broken matter down to other, smaller particles like protons, neutrons and electrons.
Then there are these things called ‘quarks’ and ‘charms’ just to name a few!
My question: All of these ‘particles’ are in something … aren’t they?
What happens when the breakdown of particles reaches the very end?
They must exist … somewhere, in something like space?
Like the planets and stars which exist in space, doesn’t mater, no matter (play on words ;)) how small have to exist in a space of some kind?
Is there really such a thing as nothing or will we forever be discovering smaller and smaller particles?
I know that this question probably cannot be answered but I find it fun to ponder!
This question has bugged me so much that I am trying to learn as much about the fundamental forces of nature as possible. If reality didn’t exist, what would? What is the fundamental nature of reality? In “A New Kind of Science”, Stephen Wolfram suggests that the universe is composed of a large network of interconnected nodes that correspond with the Planck length and are updated according to some function that embodies the laws of physics every Planck time, which would explain how the speed of light is the fastest possible speed. Unfortunately, such a description of reality probably is not consistent with what we know about quantum physics, specifically Bell’s Inequality violations that rule out hidden-variable local realistic universes.
It is fairly safe to say that there is some underlying lattice of Planck-length scale structure, but the means by which the universe arises out of that structure is probably far more complicated that what Wolfram imagines. Even trying to fit in general relativity into such a theory runs into problems. We know that mass warps space-time, but we don’t have any clue how and/or why that happens - all we can do is describe it. We have no fully fledged quantum theory of gravity despite having very robust quantum theories of everything else in the Universe, but gravity and general relativity are so important in cosmology that it basically means that without such a theory we just don’t know.
Part of the problem will likely be a complete inability to test theories. String theory holds all sorts of possible answers, but has never once made a prediction that we’re actually capable of testing - it just tries to coalesce all we know about physics into one theory. I’ve heard that most of the time developing such theories will lead to conclusions that are absolutely ludicrous and cause people to start over with a slightly different theory, but I’m not even close to an expert in the field. The basic problem is that we generally are limited in receiving information via electromagnetic waves, and to probe smaller distances we need shorter wavelengths which require increasing large amounts of energy. But trying to interact with the systems with photons of such high energy disrupts the system and we really can’t tell what we’re seeing.
Nothing either exists or it does not.
If it exists, it has the property of Existence, it is then something.
If it does not exist, well… it is only then that it is really nothing.
“Nothing” is the absence of any thing. You can’t make nothing by braking a thing down into smaller and smaller things; that just gets you more things. It may well be that you reach a thing which is irreducible and cannot be further broken down. That is still a thing. The question “what will you have if you break it down?” has no real-world application, since it cannot broken down. Hypothetically, if it could be broken down, what you would have is not nothing, but (at least) two things.
I kind of like gauge theory, because I kind of understand it. Since we observe fields, there has to be something to serve as a medium for them. Gauge theory (AAUI) models a very fine 3D lattice of charge/force carrying something-or-the-other. When a single frame in the lattice is not symmetrical, meaning you cannot trace around it and come up with the same state, there is something there. So basically, all matter and energy consists of little asymmetric twists in the gauge lattice of spacetime.
If nothing exists, its state of existence makes it something rather than nothing.
True nothing must have a state of nonexistence to exist, which, um, means it doesn’t exist, doesn’t it?
Or… I could just have a cup of tea, which does exist and seldom creates any philosophical issues, at least until the cup is empty, which then contains a full cup of non-tea, a total absence of tea, a nothing state of tea-ness… Sorry.
No… Or if it there was, its undetectable so may as well be nothing.
Not even photons are waves in something (electric and magnetic fields don’t need to be in anything, apparently…the numbers suggest it … the properties of various substances and the empty space are consistent… in that the empty space measures up as empty space… in terms of electric and magnetic properties)
