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A Terrible, Strange Place
hillsbororiver:
I believe in the article Ray was contemplating what was before "the beginning" or big bang or whatever one chooses to call it, if everything in the Universe were compressed into a pinpoint what existed outside that pinpoint?
Hi Phazel, you are referring to quantum physics or mechanics right? So what you said about "nothingness" not being real you have a very valid point when we view it through the lens of quantum theory.
The quantum mechanical world created by physicists in the 1920's and 30's to describe the behavior of matter at the smallest scale required the introduction of the idea that space itself is the playground of both the directly perceived real particles and virtual particles which are merely unrealized versions of real particles waiting to hatch, should the energy to promote them to reality be found. One way of visualizing this is to imagine creating a tremendously strong electrical field, a much larger version of what could be generated by connecting two conducting plates to a source of high voltage. In such a field, if one were to place an electron in the middle, it would fall towards the positive plate (a proton would fall towards the negative plate). With sufficiently high field strength, the vacuum itself breaks down - out of the "nothingness", an electron and positron pair (the positron is a sort of "mirror electrical image" of an electron) can pop into being, assume real existence, and each would travel to the correspondingly opposite electrical plate, acquiring the energy for their existence from the high field strength created between the plates.
So there really isn't such a thing as "empty space" -- space itself is a busy substrate which itself seems to play a major role in defining what "particles" are.
David J. Barry
Here is some more stuff that might fry a few brain cells; ;)
20 Things You Didn't Know About... Nothing
There's more there than you think.
by LeeAundra Temescu
1 There is vastly more nothing than something. Roughly 74 percent of the universe is “nothing,” or what physicists call dark energy; 22 percent is dark matter, particles we cannot see. Only 4 percent is baryonic matter, the stuff we call something.
2 And even something is mostly nothing. Atoms overwhelmingly consist of empty space. Matter’s solidity is an illusion caused by the electric fields created by subatomic particles.
3 There is more and more nothing every second. In 1998 astronomers measuring the expansion of the universe determined that dark energy is pushing apart the universe at an ever-accelerating speed. The discovery of nothing—and its ability to influence the fate of the cosmos—is considered the most important astronomical finding of the past decade.
4 But even nothing has a weight. The energy in dark matter is equivalent to a tiny mass; there is about one pound of dark energy in a cube of empty space 250,000 miles on each side.
5 In space, no one can hear you scream: Sound, a mechanical wave, cannot travel through a vacuum. Without matter to vibrate through, there is only silence.
6 So what if Kramer falls in a forest? Luckily, electromagnetic waves, including light and radio waves, need no medium to travel through, letting TV stations broadcast endless reruns of Seinfeld, the show about nothing.
7 Light can travel through a vacuum, but there is nothing to refract it. Alas for extraterrestrial romantics, stars do not twinkle in outer space.
8 Black holes are not holes or voids; they are the exact opposite of nothing, being the densest concentration of mass known in the universe.
9 “Zero” was first seen in cuneiform tablets written around 300 B.C. by Babylonians who used it as a placeholder (to distinguish 36 from 306 or 360, for example). The concept of zero in its mathematical sense was developed in India in the fifth century.
10 Any number divided by zero is . . . nothing, not even zero. The equation is mathematically impossible.
11 It is said that Abdülhamid II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s, had censors expunge references to H2O from chemistry books because he was sure it stood for “Hamid the Second is nothing.”
12 Medieval art was mostly flat and two-dimensional until the 15th century, when the Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi conceived of the vanishing point, the place where parallel lines converge into nothingness. This allowed for the development of perspective in art.
13 Aristotle once wrote, “Nature abhors a vacuum,” and so did he. His complete rejection of vacuums and voids and his subsequent influence on centuries of learning prevented the adoption of the concept of zero in the Western world until around the 13th century, when Italian bankers found it to be extraordinarily useful in financial transactions.
14 Vacuums do not suck things. They create spaces into which the surrounding atmosphere pushes matter.
15 Creatio ex nihilo, the belief that the world was created out of nothing, is one of the most common themes in ancient myths and religions.
16 Current theories suggest that the universe was created out of a state of vacuum energy, that is, nothing.
17 But to a physicist there is no such thing as nothing. Empty space is instead filled with pairs of particles and antiparticles, called virtual particles, that quickly form and then, in accordance with the law of energy conservation, annihilate each other in about 10-25 second.
18 So Aristotle was right all along.
19 These virtual particles popping in and out of existence create energy. In fact, according to quantum mechanics, the energy contained in all the power plants and nuclear weapons in the world doesn’t equal the theoretical energy contained in the empty spaces between these words.
20 In other words, nothing could be the key to the theory of everything.
http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache:FsczvL9Pd_UJ:discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-nothing+space+nothing+atoms+empty&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us
Below is a scale of the relative distance between a proton and an electron, quite amazing!
http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/atom/
Where did you put the aspirin? :D
Peace,
Joe
Patrick:
6 So what if Kramer falls in a forest? Luckily, electromagnetic waves, including light and radio waves, need no medium to travel through, letting TV stations broadcast endless reruns of Seinfeld, the show about nothing.
;D
Sorin:
I was going to originally post this, in my original post in this thread. Then I changed my mind, but after getting a second opinion from a friend ;) I've decided to go ahead and post it.
"I agree with Arcturus-that is magnificent! Also, explains why after numerous attempts at denying that God exists, and pulling away from this site- God keeps dragging me back. I said to myself, from this point on, I'll just forget about God, and just live my life, do things I shouldn't be doing, the pleasures of the flesh and so forth, but that act of rebellion was short lived. God has ways of making you re-think
your plans very quickly. And well, let's just say it's not a very pleasant feeling.'
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 10:31"
Take care,
Sorin
gmik:
What an absolutely riveting thread. From mind-hurting quantum physics to Seinfel d to Sorin's honesty! Loving it!!!!!!!
Thanks Joe and all posters!!!!
(this is parent teacher conference week for me and I get all anxious--I love my forum family where I can come and get grounded again!-no pun intended)
Grateful:
Hello!
I just want to weigh in about a book I read years ago, called The Tao of Physics , written by a nuclear physicist, Dr. Fritjof Capra. I had to read that extremely scientific book THREE TIMES in order to UNDERSTAND what the author was trying to explain. I finally was able to boil it all down to simply this : Using a linear accelerator with powerful magnets situated at different points along its length, the atoms that were propelled throgh its beginning successively had their electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, muons, etc., etc., stripped off, and the FINAL RESULT was that MATTER is nothing but SPACE, ENERGY, AND LIGHT!!! (As per the photographs that were snapped at various points in the accelerator.....with LIGHT being the FINAL "thing" that appeared on film. NOthing is solid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is a Bible verse that says "God is the Father of Lights." Food for thought, huh? :) ::) :D
"DeLight in God, and He will give you the desires of your heart."
Linda
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