Something from Nothing

[polymath257]

Of course it's difficult to cover the subject in such a short time, but note that matter and anti matter 'particles' appear from nothing. 1:08.

What happens to "nothing" if it is discovered how this happens?

I'm speaking from foggy memory here, but I remember reading that matter/anti-matter particles are theorized to pop into existence and then subsequently annihilate one another. There is even an experiment involving two metal plates that suggests that this phenomenon may be real. Also, Hawking radiation from black holes is thought to be related to this phenomenon.

I'm not sure how much this relates to the "something from nothing" idea, but it does tend to suggest that there is more to "nothing" than we might immediately intuit.

It's called the Casimir effect. Yes, it has been measured and is due to quantum fluctuations like you said.

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A few of our elements on the atomic chart are like that, they can appear and disappear, living on the edge of matter so to speak.
Some of the elements discovered by fission are very unstable.

Thisisn't quite accurate. Many of the heavier elements have very small half-lives, so they decay. But when they decay, what happens is the nucleus splits and we get two or more other nuclei: the matter didn't disappear. These heavy nuclei are formed by colliding two other large nuclei together. They don't just 'appear'.