I was oversimplifying, but in current theories there are elemental particles. You can’t think of them as tiny, solid balls of matter. They’re really energy, charges and fields acting in complicated ways that give us the “illusion” of what we think of as solid matter.
You can’t divide these “particles” down any further. It’s where the buck stops with the fabric of reality.
The idea of absolute nothingness, of the sort of the age-old question, “why does something exist instead of nothing?” is almost purely in the realm of philosophy.
Is it meaningful to think there was absolutely nothing before our universe (including the laws of physics, matter, energy, space and time itself) exploded into existence?
Was there, or is there, something else before the Big Bang? And before that? Etc.
Does the fact that something exists mean absolute nothingness is impossible or unstable?
If so, must the universe be infinite in size, since nothingness can’t exist?
And so on.
Quantum mechanics does not allow for nothingness, to put it crudely.
The uncertainly principle tells us that certain pairs of properties, most famously position and momentum, cannot be simultaneously measured to infinite precision. One has to get fuzzier. Energy and time are another conjugate pair. This has the result that the vacuum is not a vacuum. Particles can emerge if they last for a sufficient short a period of time. This is known as virtual particles or the quantum foam. We can see the reality of this effect at the event horizons of black holes. One of the pair of particles can break away, causing the black hole to slowly evaporate as Hawking radiation.
Therefore, even without an answer as to what “space” or space-time" actually “is” we can say that it is filled with virtual particles everywhere at all times. Some have postulated an unusual blip in the quantum foam is the cause of the universe itself.
However the science works out, it finishes the concept of nothingness. Nothing/something is a binary duality that can’t exist in quantum mechanics. Only fuzziness can. Fuzziness is always something. There is never nothing. There never was nothing. There never can be nothing. The size of particles is irrelevant, too. That’s old-fashioned thinking. The tiresome endless arguments of 19th century philosophy can be put aside for newer and different tiresome endless arguments in 21st century mode.
Here is a nearly 2 hour discussion by physicists of what “nothing” is. Turns out there are a number of definitions. The panel includes Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Lawrence Krause, so it’s at least entertaining whether or not it answers the OP’s questions.
A gauge theory is really just a field theory with symmetries that represent redundancies in the field description vs the physical situations it describes. For example classical electromagnetism is an example of a gauge theory as electromagnetic fields that are distinct in a mathematical sense can represent the same physical situations.
In most physical theories analytic solutions are known only for a handful of situations and in some advanced physical theories the easiest known method of obtaining approximate numerical solutions is to approximate continuous spacetime as a discrete lattice. A lattice gauge theory is a gauge theory on the spacetime lattice that approximates continuous spacetime.
So really gauge theories and lattices and hence lattice gauge theories are just ways of understanding physical theories.
Beg to differ: I’ve been to the middle of nowhere.
I thought, like the universe, that nowhere doesn’t have a center.
“Empty space” and “waves in nothing” aren’t accurate, in my opinion. Fields are real, man. That Faraday guy was onto something. Waves are oscillating fields. Fields exist in space. There is no such thing as “empty” space. It’s full of fields.
So to the OP, particles exist in space. Fields exist in space. There is no such thing as empty space. Whether “nothing” exists depends on your definition and/or religion.
Let a black hole suck out the contents of a box, the close it tightly and mail it off to the I.R.S.
When they return it to you, it will contain nothing.
In my completely useless opinion, it’s highly unlikely that it’s particles all the way down.
What “particles” do is let us quantify behavior of the quantum world. That does not mean there is “space” between the tiniest particles and it does not mean the particles themselves are discrete from whatever “space” is.
And “space” is not nothing.
Well, maybe, but I was making an obscure board reference, starting at Post #7. But there’s a missing graphic in that thread.
Did you get there on horseback? If so, did the horse have a name?
Ahh, I see. Forgive me or taking your human emoticon literally. Your humor is… Logical. :dubious:
It does, and its name is. . .FRESNO.
Thanks for this. A very entertaining panel and discussion on Nothingness. I’ve read a third of Krause’s book, but after watching this debate, it inspires me to pick it up again.
I was just reading about this a few days ago. Hope it helps.
Einstein and Mach had differing opinions on this. One of the two (I do not recall which) felt that even empty space had meaningful “extent” of its own. You could talk about five cubic meters of perfect emptiness. The other argued that only the existence of matter made space meaningful, and you couldn’t talk about five cubic meters of perfect emptiness.
One believed that, in a cosmos consisting of only one planet, you could speak of the planet’s rotation, as it was rotating relative to an “absolute true east” of some sort. The other said no, the planet could not rotate, because there weren’t any other bodies – no stars, galaxies, whatnot – for it to rotate with relationship to.
I don’t know which view is held today, and I wish I could remember which of the two men held which view.
I’ll take “whats in my wallet” for $100,Alex.
I’ll show myself out.
For an excellent book on the subject, “The Fabric of the Cosmos” by Brian Greene, author of “The Elegant Universe.” Hopefully it’s not too out-of-date by now.
I know you’re just kidding, but for anyone who doesn’t know:
You can’t use existence as a property when using logic. If you do, you can prove that anything exists. The special nature of existence is one of the fundamental things that distinguishes modern logic (e.g., predicate calculus) from Aristotelian syllogisms.