(April 18, 2012 at 11:05 pm)RaphielDrake Wrote:(April 18, 2012 at 3:36 am)teaearlgreyhot Wrote: I was thinking about ex nihilo... Theist of course use this in cosmological arguments, and the more sophisticated arguments define "nothing" as having no mass, energy, or temporal qualities. They define it this way to get around the quantum mechanics examples where something comes from nothing. So "nothing" isn't just empty space. Space itself is something to theists. But is "nothing" when defined this way really possible and/or coherent? My impression of this sort of "nothing" seems impossible to imagine sort of like trying to imagine a square circle.
It is very much a hot issue debated frequently in the scientific community.
The truth is we have never experienced absolute nothing because its nigh impossible to find a space devoid of anything. No air, light, background radiation, matter, forces or fields. We can theorize or conceptualize nothing but even if we were to create this space there would be no light to see the effects.
It is essentially a moot point until we can create absolute nothing. I suppose one way to create it would be to create some kind of force bubble that pushes *everything* out. Once everything is pushed out the force that pushed everything out inside the bubble would cease but the force bubble itself would remain preventing anything else from entering. Inside this bubble would be absolute nothing but as far as I know we have nowhere near the capabilities to create such a thing. But then this would essentially be the opposite of a black hole so I suppose it must be possible.
If that is "nothing", then nothing would just be an enclosed vacuum, which has matter field oscillations inside of it. They just cancel one another out, but on a quantum sale create oscillations determined by the available wavelength defined by the boundary. It wouldn't be nothing, it would be the vacuum state. You can measure the effect by measuring the effective pressure on the boundary you are creating.
You can't really stop the oscillations from occurring insofar as I know. Can you?
Maybe a nice definition would be a vacuum region of a volume defined by lengths smaller than the Planck length. There the region is going to be too small for any such oscillations to occur. I'd have to think about it some more but that may just mean nothing literally is undefinable (it is literally too small to physically exist by some theories). Which would
Mean that nothing doesn't just mean not existing. Nothing doesn't physically exist.
"Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate by the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony!"
- Dennis the peasant.
- Dennis the peasant.
