On nothingness/void

[sushi]

while most philosophers claim that the natural world is made of nothing/void and atoms (atomism), descartes claim that there is no such thing as the void. The former claim has laid the foundation of today's modern science and physics.

Nevertheless, I am with descartes that there is no true void.vaccum. The void is not void/nothing, it is merely something we cannot percieve. Descartes claim that the void and solid things are made of the same stuff. It is made of vortexes. To this day, we stilll have no answer of what the void is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_%28Descartes%29

 

[sushi]

On macroscale, physics seems to be accurate/precise about many things in the universe. But on microscopic/quantum level, physics does not seem to be accurate or could be way off. Perhaps the limitation of our perception and intelligence makes us unable to comprehend certain principles of nature.

 

[Sinny91]

Its commonly called the Aether, and if Quantum Mechanics has taught us any, its that we don't have a clue, merely observing reality will change it.

My favorite theory is that the Aether is a superfluid.

 

[redbaron]

On macroscale, physics seems to be accurate/precise about many things in the universe. But on microscopic/quantum level, physics does not seem to be accurate or could be way off. Perhaps the limitation of our perception and intelligence makes us unable to comprehend certain principles of nature.

A lot of it's to do with scale. The human mind can't really extrapolate the enormity of 13.72 billion light-years into a tangible mental image, or the sheer mass of a supermassive black hole. Nor can it properly comprehend the miniscule planck scales of time, size, mass etc.

So since can't realistically fathom how the extremities of the universe operate, we express it in mathematics.

"No one intuitively understands quantum mechanics because all of our experience involves a world of classical phenomena where, for example, a baseball thrown from pitcher to catcher seems to take just one path, the one described by Newton's laws of motion. Yet at a microscopic level, the universe behaves quite differently." - Lawrence Krauss

At the end of the day, we have pretty good working understanding of how things work. Enough to predict the existence of the Higgs-Boson 50 years before the LHC was ever built. In physics, theory is typically waiting for technology to catch-up so that what we know as a mathematical reality can be made an empirical one.

Since people are just stuck sitting around looking at a bunch of differential equations and algebra and there's no way to really provide suitable anecdotes for the layman, Quantum Mechanics is terribly misunderstood and misapplied. Can't blame people though, since most of it is like:

Spoiler

Ultimately though it's just a perception thing. The shit works, we just don't perceive it working because of our biological limitations.

 

[sushi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics)

here is another article that says the void is not possible

Its commonly called the Aether, and if Quantum Mechanics has taught us any, its that we don't have a clue, merely observing reality will change it.

My favorite theory is that the Aether is a superfluid.

Yea, but i thought aether was disproved by the michelson morley experiment.

maybe there are really 5 phases of matter: solid/liquid/gas/plasma/"nothing"

 

[gilliatt]

Thinking/thought: Aristotle's remark that thought is the form of forms, just as the hand is the tool of tools. A seal is a tool fashioned by man; it is used by an instrument of a higher order, the hand. When the mind thinks, it takes on the intelligible form of the object out there and becomes identical with it. Not identical with the object, of course, but identical with the object's intelligible form. Thought occurs only in the presence, and as a result of a succession, of sense experiences. Thought remains rooted in sense experience.
Void: There is no such place. There isn't even nothing "out there": There is no " out there." The axiom is that 'existence exists, means to grasp the fact that nature, the universe as a whole, cannot be created or annihilated. A void would be a contradiction. Be like saying, 'non-existence.' absence of a fact. The concept 'absence' starting from the concept 'presence. The 'void concept' is such a zero with no sequence of numbers to follow it! ha, ho, he!

 

[Terran]

Observing nothing in whatever way conceivable will in the process make it something, so you cannot observe nothing, therefore nothing is nothing, it doesn't exist... until it does because something fills it up and it becomes something! It's not that we don't know 'what it is' it just has no attributes to talk about.

It's like thinking about what it is like to be dead.

In fact even giving it a name is ridiculous, it simply cannot be talked about in the sense of it being something at all, of any nature.

 

[Terran]

Hell the best way to perceive nothing is to think about NOTHING!

Also, I have always liked to think of the universe as a mathematical construct, not a physical one, mathematicaly the 'concept' of nothing is ever present and easy to understand, it is everything that is not happening or in the equation, whether that is an area of could be space, or whatever else, it is just what is not at the moment. But if time/space was infinite, surely all current nothings will and have been something at some point, therefore nothing is only nothing in specific instances of time.

Gotta be one of the coolest things to think about though, just the concept of nothing!

 

[Sly-fy]

Descartes describes substances as consisting only of three elementary elements: fire, air and earth

Well that`s interesting, but there is obviously a lack of all three of these elements in the vacuum of space.

 

[QuickTwist]

TL;DR,

The universe is just a black hole in a black hole in a black hole ect. Metaphorically speaking ofc. What I mean to say is that for everything we know, if you go beyond, there is less, and for what we know of that less, there is what we know and that is less.

 

[sushi]

Observing nothing in whatever way conceivable will in the process make it something, so you cannot observe nothing, therefore nothing is nothing, it doesn't exist... until it does because something fills it up and it becomes something! It's not that we don't know 'what it is' it just has no attributes to talk about.

It's like thinking about what it is like to be dead.

In fact even giving it a name is ridiculous, it simply cannot be talked about in the sense of it being something at all, of any nature.

~gilliatt: what you say is like "nothing but only thought", rather than "nothing".

thought is based on senses. When senses tell me that "nothing" is really something, rather than nothing, perhaps nothing is really something. Or perhaps it is just my brain lying and fucking with me. Nothingness/vaccum can actually exist.

being dead is another interesting thought experiment, but it is not comparable to this because you can actually percieve "nothingness" in every current moment, but death is beyond your immediate perception and lies in the future. Perhaps one day we could simulate what is like to be dead in virtual reality.

 

[Terran]

thought is based on senses. When senses tell me that "nothing" is really something, rather than nothing, perhaps nothing is really something. Or perhaps it is just my brain lying and fucking with me. Nothingness/vacuum can actually exist.

There are a few things to be said about this.

Firstly stuff gets PUSHED into vacuums, not pulled, it is because stuff of any density is constantly exerting some outward force, which is just being counteracted by other stuff in environments such as the atmosphere, so nothing cannot be felt, you are only feeling your own something in the case of exposure to a void.

Secondly, the universe is a mathematical structure, maybe in terms of philosophy and to some extent physics, the concept of nothing can 'exist' and be given relative attributes, but in terms of mathematics, and how it really is despite the contradictions of our minds and how things seem to be in the physical world, there really is nothing there. It is just nothing, it doesn't have a size or shape, the stuff which someone might perceive to be around it might suggest a shape, but any attribute at all is entirely irrelevant, as it is just what isn't currently.

If you look up at a star, there is nothing between you and it, but it take ages to get there! Fuck. I really don't know how to explain that, apart from maybe that there is some kind of other nature to physics we don't know of where distance is not actually distance but just kinda, I don't know some-kind of co-ef of size! (that's why it appears smaller further away!) lol!

Actually I suppose stuff gets farther away because it gains force and velocity in a certain 'direction' (why are there multiple planes?), so I guess thinking of it as 'distance' is stupid as there can only theoreticaly be anything there between to give it a 'distance', so it is as if everything in the universe is all tightly bound together, but you need certain levels of force and energy to get to certain other things, or for them to appear and feel closer I suppose. So velocity increases the...magnitude? of relative objects. Changing the co-ef of its size!

But I suppose the problem with all of that is perceiving the universe physically, it's not, it's mathematical. We just have thought and senses to perceive it in a very limited and confusing way, so we have to do science to figure it all out.

 

[Cognisant]

I think the law of conservation of energy is wrong.

I think the presence of matter/energy, or perhaps gravity, somehow stabilizes the quantum foam, that existence as we know it is an emergent property of pure randomness, after all if anything can occur then it would only be a matter of time (I term I'm using VERY loosely) until something stable occurred and I can't think of a reason why this state of constant occurrence would end.

We're a mathematical snowball rolling down an infinite metaphorical hill.

I think the reason we're not observing this constant occurrence of matter is that it's happening slowly (again using a word very loosely) and a few (greatest understatement ever) spontaneously occurring atoms in the furthest reaches of space aren't very noticeable.

 

[Terran]

Ha, that's an interesting concept, the only thing keeping the laws of physics together is probability! Maybe once day the sheer improbable will happen and gravity will be reversed or something.

In the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy they use an 'improbability drive' to change things so they can travel through space. Turning into a rubber duck and teleporting to the other side of the universe!

Spoiler

 

[Cognisant]

Can you please put a spoiler around that? The flashing is unpleasant.

Ha, that's an interesting concept, the only thing keeping the laws of physics together is probability! Maybe once day the sheer improbable will happen and gravity will be reversed or something.

I think gravity is likely the stabilizing force, it would explain why our current models of physics break down near super massive/dense objects like black holes, the laws of physics there might work differently because they're not being influenced by a factor of instability.

The sudden appearance of a whale or teapot may be random in an abstract sense but whales and teapots are very specific things so such occurrences are exponentially more unlikely because, although the spontaneous appearance of each atom may be random, their arrangement is relatively speaking extremely orderly.

 

[Terran]

Haha, well of course things like rubber ducks wouldn't appear, but I don't know, maybe the engineer configured the probability to lean towards household objects for a laugh!

 

[sushi]

What is the difference between space and solid matter?

Both has volume and energy, but somehow the difference between them is unresolved.

I am suspecting space is made of energy bubbles, but i am not so certain yet.

It is true that universe is made of math, but its still not concise enough to describe the fundamental structure of space and matter. Math is just equations and numbers.

 

[Cognisant]

Math is just equations and numbers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlujizeNNQM

 

[Haim]

What is the difference between space and solid matter?

Both has volume and energy, but somehow the difference between them is unresolved.

I am suspecting space is made of energy bubbles, but i am not so certain yet.

It is true that universe is made of math, but its still not concise enough to describe the fundamental structure of space and matter. Math is just equations and numbers.

Math is a tool we use to describe realty, an image or a description of a thing is not the thing itself.
Nothing is just a human concept, you can call sand nothing,you can call earth air nothing as it is transparent, you can call vacuum nothing, and you can call it a thing.The difference between nothing to thing is not physical, it is but a label in your brain, different people can put different labels on the same thing(or nothing)

 

[QuickTwist]

Since people are just stuck sitting around looking at a bunch of differential equations and algebra and there's no way to really provide suitable anecdotes for the layman, Quantum Mechanics is terribly misunderstood and misapplied. Can't blame people though, since most of it is like:

Spoiler

Ultimately though it's just a perception thing. The shit works, we just don't perceive it working because of our biological limitations.

Thinking/thought: Aristotle's remark that thought is the form of forms, just as the hand is the tool of tools. A seal is a tool fashioned by man; it is used by an instrument of a higher order, the hand. When the mind thinks, it takes on the intelligible form of the object out there and becomes identical with it. Not identical with the object, of course, but identical with the object's intelligible form. Thought occurs only in the presence, and as a result of a succession, of sense experiences. Thought remains rooted in sense experience.

I like these two comments; they seem to go hand in hand. If I am too see a commonality, or rather, how they complement each other it is this: Knowledge always comes before practical application of said knowledge. I don't know if this is an actual law or not (I'm sure its a specific theory somewhere) but it out to be at least a cornerstone of how what is taught in schools. Basically, thinking about this in terms of pottery. A good potter is almost always going to have in mind what piece they want to make first before they actually get to the point where they even begin to work on the piece. It works like this for any artisan who makes any craftable thing. Its the type of thing you just don't see being taught in schools, but is vitally important to the understanding of how to create. If it is talked about in school, its one of those things you learn in elementary and you forget as soon as you enter high school. That's the kind of shit that should be reiterated over and over so people don't forget. Its basic, yeah, but vitally important to understand.0.

I think the law of conservation of energy is wrong.

I think the presence of matter/energy, or perhaps gravity, somehow stabilizes the quantum foam, that existence as we know it is an emergent property of pure randomness, after all if anything can occur then it would only be a matter of time (I term I'm using VERY loosely) until something stable occurred and I can't think of a reason why this state of constant occurrence would end.

We're a mathematical snowball rolling down an infinite metaphorical hill.

I think the reason we're not observing this constant occurrence of matter is that it's happening slowly (again using a word very loosely) and a few (greatest understatement ever) spontaneously occurring atoms in the furthest reaches of space aren't very noticeable.

I agree with this. Don't know about the law of conservation of energy being wrong, but I agree.

What is the difference between space and solid matter?

Both has volume and energy, but somehow the difference between them is unresolved.

I am suspecting space is made of energy bubbles, but i am not so certain yet.

It is true that universe is made of math, but its still not concise enough to describe the fundamental structure of space and matter. Math is just equations and numbers.

That's the thing though. Unless I am understanding something completely wrong, there is no matter in that space where uh... space is. The stuff that is in between planets, stars, matter, there is nothing.. literally.

 

[sushi]

my newest hypothesis space is made of tiny points, but some people say strings is possible. (to me strings doesn't make sense)

also space and nothing could be a form of radiation.

nothing and void doesn't seen to be right,.

 

[Cognisant]

I agree with this. Don't know about the law of conservation of energy being wrong, but I agree.

Well in the presence of gravity it's right because the quantum foam is stabilised but the further from a gravity well you are the more unstable causality becomes.

 

[sushi]

what does space become?

does space become time?

or does space become distance?