Can there be, in say a box, absolutely nothing, no atoms or anything?

Question

This is sort of hard to explain cause i don't get it myself, but can there be a space with nothing in it? Like absolutly nothing at all, can it be empty, without atoms or anything?

Answer 1

Looks like only one person got the right idea so far so I will try to underscore that.

Everyone who says that it is possible to have NOTHING inside a box if you have a total vacuum has ignored quantum theory which has proven to reflect reality extremely well.

The uncertainty principle allows energy to be borrowed from the vacuum for a very short time. The vacuum is seething with pairs of "virtual" particle+antiparticle pairs that are created with this borrowed energy. They pop into existence and then annihilate with each other extremely quickly.

So no, as far as anybody knows we have strong reason to believe that it is impossible to have absolutely nothing inside a box because something is always popping up everywhere in space. Maybe if you had a very small box and very big luck luck it would be empty just for the tiniest period of time.

Answer 2

Yes, it's called a vacuum. But it's extremely hard to find or make. With some work with shielding, you can also keep most energy out of the box. Some particles penetrate thick shielding.

Conceptually, there's no problem with empty space. Achieving it perfectly is simply an engineering challenge.

Update: I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but if you were able to evacuate all particles, shield against incoming particles, and shield all energy, you could have nothing but the gravitational field, which can't be shielded. See the neutrino article: To shield out half of neutrinos incoming from the sun, you'd need a lead sheild one light-year thick. If you could imagine doing all that, would there still be any basis for the spontaneous creation of virtual particle-antiparticle pairs?

Answer 3

No. Even in the deepest reaches of space there is matter and energy. It is called the zero-point energy field. Even in a pure vacuum, atoms and bits of energy appear out of nothing. The particles always appear as pairs, a positive one and a negative one. That's why it's called the zero-point energy field, the net energy is zero. This energy has been measured in the lab and can be transformed into real usable energy.

Answer 4

density of a planetary nebula is about few atoms in a cubic cm. so intergalactic space must be very close to a perfect vacuum

yet, the microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang is everywhere and according to e=mc^2 its energy has a corresponding mass m no matter how small, so matter density can never be absolutely zero anywhere

Answer 5

The Bible affirms that the universe become designed and created by using an clever God. The Bible additionally affirms that human beings can detect the lifestyles of this invisible God by using observing the seen universe He has made. in the direction of this end, clever layout concept makes use of medical technique to locate information that the universe become designed by using an clever being. The information is enormous, beginning up on the molecular point and achieving into the deep recesses of intergalactic area.

Answer 6

No. Vacuum isn't "nothing". The box will be filled with fields and gazillions of virtual particles popping in and out.

Answer 7

I dont believe so, unless you are outside of a universe. Even the vacum inside an atom, the space imbetween the nucleus and electron has a fabric of information or potential energy. I believe the whole universe has this, even in dark space. Outside of a universe, who knows.

Answer 8

Only in a true vacuum.

Answer 9

Why not.. in a perfect vacuum what would be there?