How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything

[wingspan]

> “And Knosso whatever-his-name was a physicist. That’s the Library of Nothing.”

> “Nothing?”

> The old woman had her spiel ready. “Physicists long since determined that most of space was empty, and most of each atom was empty, so that the overwhelming nature of the universe is nothingness, with tiny interruptions that contain all of existence. So their library is named for this Nothing that comprises most of the universe. And the mathematicians share the space, because they are proud to say that what they study is even less real than what the physicists study, so their portion is called the Library of Less than Nothing.”

> Rigg decided he was going to like the physicists. It seemed to him, though, that the mathematicians must have an annoying competitive streak.

Pathfinder (2010) by Orson Scott Card

[micheles]

Speaking as a physicist, I have always hated this nomenclature. There is no vacuum at all. The universe is filled with quantum fields, they are the source of the Casimir effect. Terms as "vacuum energy" are simply a bad naming, the energy comes from the quantum field, which is a very physical object even if not intuitive, as anything quantum.

[dumbworld]

I think the quantum universe is simply too difficult to perceive for most people. If you begin to talk about quantum biology or get into specifics like the Vaidman bomb tester or how information propagates logically, most times I’ve either been accused of being mentally ill or not knowing what I am talking about.

I think the key mistake is expecting others to operate at a conscious and curious level.

[tasty_freeze]

I'm in the mood to nitpick:

> In a theatrical demonstration in 1654, he showed that not even two teams of horses straining to rip apart the watermelon-size ball could overcome the suction of nothing.

In fact, there is an addendum saying the article originally said grapefruit, then updated it to watermelon.

Say the watermelon had a diameter of 10 inches, or a cross section of 78.5 sq in. Atmospheric pressure is 14 psi. The force of the vacuum would be 78*14, so 1100 lbs. Impressive, but it seems like a horse could possibly generate that much instantaneous pull.

This site [0] says horses can pull six times their body weight for short pulls! That leads me to believe the sphere was bigger than a watermelon, and in fact, the drawing of the affair shows a sphere about the size of a beach ball.

[0] https://horserookie.com/how-much-weight-can-a-horse-pull/

[sigmoid10]

The actual sphere was 20 inches, but the quality of the vacuum they were able to create is unknown. So it could be a lot less than the theoretical max of 2200lbf. You can see a picture of the original and its measurements here (they are in a museum in Munich): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_hemispheres

[daniel-cussen]

Part of the issue for the horse is it'll be his first vacuum ever pulled, he doesn't have any knowledge of how to break that weight. Meaning get the motion started, it's got a different response to force than what that horse knows, eg carriages and plows, very different, you can plot it, totally different.

[zvrba]

> he showed that not even two teams of horses straining to rip apart the watermelon-size ball could overcome the suction of nothing.

Um. It's not "suction of nothing", it's the pressure of the atmosphere. If the vacuum-"filled" ball were put into another vacuumed container, a small child would have no trouble separating the halves.

[pixl97]

If the balls were made of very smoothly polished metal would that be true?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_welding

[MisterTea]

> If the vacuum-"filled" ball were put into another vacuumed container, a small child would have no trouble separating the halves.

Hell, they would likely come apart on their own due to a low pressure differential and gravity pulling at them.

[andrei_says_]

Where can I see good explanations of these terms?

[treeman79]

A small child in a vacuum chamber is going to have larger concerns.

[inphovore]

This is a miscomprehension.

The underlying aspect of existence is universal potential. All existent reality is a perturbation of universal potential distributing as an “aspect” of existential being.

This nothing being observed is actually the distribution of potential acting upon itself. The “space between” existent potential is the potential acting upon neighboring potential. So where “nothing” is observed, it is actually the field separation of the discrete potential.

For instance in the pauli exclusion principle, the boundary of a particle is not similar to a physical object, more like a magnetic field, these oppositional forces displace other particles, producing the distant nothing in between.

The smallest aspect of the universe isn’t a particle, it is potential, and a particle is a discrete localization of the stably bound particle’s potential. And nothing is all that will fit in between!

[kurupt213]

The energy of the vacuum is quantized…and works out to be Einstein’s cosmological constant from the relativity equations

[meltyness]

To attempt to summarize the touchstones from a microscopic, and macroscopic approach,

force conception of pressure -> modern physics and qft, Higgs field implies non-vacuum -> kaluza klein and string theory compactified dimensions -> it's actually a theory for each vacuum state -> the anthropic principle -> some vacuum states hypothesized to destroy spacetime vvv

https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.L...

^^^ a dark energy description by de Sitter <- the observation that the universe is undergoing accelerated expansion <- the multiverse hypothesis <- the anthropic principle

[acqbu]

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there anything at all?

[layer8]

I suspect that there isn’t just something, but that actually there is everything — all possible worlds, or maybe more formally, all logically consistent structures. In other words, there is no difference between existence and possibility. The answer to why there is anything then boils down to “because it can”.

[kekebo]

If you consider existence / non-existence as a quantum superposition you'll have 0 observers and thus no entanglement in the non-existing branch and basically get existence for free. Maybe existence just happens to be the default. Joscha Bach has more elaborate thoughts on this.

[pixl97]

I recommend the 'history of the universe' channel as they ask this exact question.

https://youtube.com/c/HistoryoftheUniverse

[mensetmanusman]

Per definition, an entity must exist that doesn’t have a beginning. (It is hard for me to reason about events outside of time…)

[jboulanger2]

How would you observe "nothing"?

[euroderf]

If there were nothing at all, that would really be something eh

[namero999]

Why is a terrible question when dealing with the reduction basis :)

[a_t48]

I can’t be the only one who gets some pangs of anxiety reading about this stuff

[lvncelot]

Have you ever "played" Space Engine? Zooming around the universe with a speed approaching megaparsecs always induces a sinking feeling in my stomach and a sense of insignificance, and it's a little bit what I'd imagine the Total Perspective Vortex from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe would feel like.

[drraj32]

Can you explain the reason for anxiety? I read through first few paragraphs where author talked about vacuum. "Nothing" about it is anxiety inducing. But then, I grew up in the subcontinent where the ancients postulated that everything came from Shunyata (nothingness).

[senectus1]

Not being an American, and watching the events in America and American politics has helped me realize there is some things i have Absolutely no control over.. and if I have no input or control over it then there is no reason for me to get stressed about it.

Physics is one of those things. its too big and far away for me to stress about it. If its gonna kill me I cant stop it.. I might as well enjoy what I do have control over.

[quickthrower2]

reading the selfish gene also does this - “you can’t handle the truth” applies to all of us!

[zoomablemind]

"...If so, the good times won’t last forever."

"...Don’t panic. Even if our vacuum is only metastable, given its staying power so far, it will probably last for billions of years more."

Ooph, such a wild ride an article!

No wonder a participating scientist, as mentioned, has worked himself to a disturbing need to seek therapy.

Reading this, it seems that the science is very comfy operating with time concept as we know it, projecting its flow into the 'billions of years' into the future. Time as a sole witness to truth and to the human struggle to comprehend its own destiny. But could this time too be a temporary or a even dynamic state or even a dimension itself?

[beefman]

Original source: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-physics-of-nothing-un...

[the-mitr]

Of possible interest

https://archive.org/details/PodolnySomethingCalledNothing

[kbrkbr]

There is a nice popular science movie called Everything And Nothing, „starring“ Jim Al-Khalili that tells a similar story (without involving string theory). My kids loved it.