Is "empty space" empty (only reasonable answers)

[reality.Mathematician]

Is "empty space" empty ? (only reasonable answers)

[Welsh cake]

Outer space is most certainly not empty, and its not even stagnant.

In fact, as far as physics and cosmology is concerned, "empty", and "stagnant" are utterly worthless words.

[Whateverist]

Depends on what you think empty space is. If you have in mind a dynamic balanced substrate with the capacity for change, then yes space is that. Otherwise no.

[Anomalocaris]

Define "empty"

[The Valkyrie]

Define "empty"

Creationists' heads.

[Anomalocaris]

Define "empty"

Creationists' heads.

Space is certainly not that empty.

[ignoramus]

By empty you mean it needs to actually contain nothing? Or not contain nothing?
My argument with the galaxy expanding, is that it can only expand into something.

Like having a virtual OS residing not on a fixed partition, but a dynamic partition.
The OS will expand as needed.
But with this example, there is somewhere to expand to, until the hard disk runs out of space.
With the universe, I don't believe it is like this. There is no "real finite hard disk" to fill up.

To me nothing means void.
Void may exist which spontaneously created the BB, but's that's a different line of thought.

Therefore, based on void being nothing, it has always existed, so the matter/energy are free to travel through effortlessly.

After reading through it, I've realised that I have contradicted myself.
I blame that on myself for not defining things properly and also the lack of the language... Mine anyway.
Also with a little sprinkling of crazy and stupid.

[vorlon13]

Assuming the universe keeps expanding, space becomes increasingly more empty. Stars burn out, the rate of new stars forming is decreasing, Hawking showed us how even enormously large black holes can eventually 'evaporate', and the universal expansion continues. The time scales are staggering (really) but the universe is dissipating. Whatever someone's definition of 'empty' is, the universe will eventually reach it, and continue on into even emptier and emptier states.

The expansion of the universe also robs photons of their energy. They become weaker, and weaker as the eons accumulate. Eventually you get to a state where a volume the size of the universe today contains but a single, vanishingly weak photon, and the expansion goes on and on from there.

Also, at these low densities, and profoundly dissipated energy, Heisenberg's little caveat takes hold and any particle that is left will 'dissipate' too. As something cools, it's energy is more and more precisely known, that is, as the temperature approaches absolute zero, recall zero is an extremely precise number. Therefore, as the item's energy becomes more and more precise, it's location becomes more and more vague. The particle, when cold enough, and the universe will evolve to that point, and orders and orders of magnitude further and further, will essentially erase itself over a larger and larger volume. These volumes grow without limit as the universe gets enormously larger, colder, and emptier.

Even time starts to malfunction under these conditions, there being less and less of anything left for it to impinge upon. It's progression becomes immeasurable and erratic . . .


The exact opposite of a Big Bang, an ultimately unending thinning out, cooling off, super colossal expansion, and time fails, kind of a downbeat and boring end.

And if one looks upon such a long term burnout from the perspective of 'infinity', the universe isn't even a blip, it's nothing, because, on average, it averages out to, from that infinite viewpoint, absolutely nothing.

Really.

[vodkafan]

Nah its not empty. Full of photons and radiation, bits of atoms etc. And if the quantum foam idea is correct (not saying it is) then there may be underlying particles that hold up the ordinary matter that we can see.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Seeing that galaxies are constantly merging the idea of an expanding universe seems illogical.

BTW, there are voids up to 325 million light years in size scattered all over the place.
http://www.whillyard.com/science-pages/voids.html