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xkcd #2933: Elementary Physics Paths
(imgs.xkcd.com)
Alt text:
==COSMOLOGY==> 'Uhhh ... how sure are we that everything is made of these?'
These are the questions that make me feel such an insane sense of wonder and awe.
How deep does it go?
How high does it go the other way? How big does existence get?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
What is nothing made of?
Nothing is more of a definition than a thing. It's just the absence of matter.
Even in the absence of matter, there’s still the quantum foam. The most perfect vacuum is teeming with this energy. To truly understand the nature of 'nothing,' one would need to venture beyond spacetime itself—and even then, it’s not guaranteed that 'nothing' would be found. Physics suggests that anything existing outside of or predating spacetime would generally have no impact on us; it doesn't necessarily explain what the 'outside' might be like.
I'd say nothing is less a definition but rather an informal shorthand for how we percieve at macro scale with our wrinkly 4D brains.
And then even when you try to peer behind the definition of "nothing" with math all you are greeted with is infinities which we handily just swept under the rug and pretended to be zero so we could define a "nothing" state in the first place!
Right, it's part of what leaves me in such awe. What lies beyond? It seems nonsensical to us because we are defined by the gameboard we play on. The concept of the table it's sitting on makes no sense. How could we ever hope to detect or understand something like that, something that exists beyond our space time, with no ability to build instruments in anything above 3 dimensions plus time.
That's not really considering existence that deeply though. Nothing has to be something. Gravity and radiation are transmitted through the void of particle-less space. If nothing were truly nothing in an absolute sense....that couldn't be possible. Something permits information to pass from point to point through interstellar space where there are on average 100 particles per cubic meter.
What did the universe explode into during the big bang and expansion?? Nothing is actually really weird.
I recommend all of the videos on history of the universe on YouTube
It’s turtles all the way down
Oooh! I know this one! It's Quantum Foam! 😁