If a vacuum is a true void, how can light or any information propagate through it?

Question

quantum information cannot persist in a void ruling out all particles and fields.

Answer 1

There cannot be a true vacuum in quantum mechanics. There are always spontaneous creation-annihilation events of subatomic particles (mostly positron-electron events). Any matter bounding the vacuum emits radiation (light) and that will rapidly form a photon gas in your vacuum. This is simply inevitable.

Answer 2

James Clerk Maxwell solved this problem mathematically in 1864. From Faraday's laws, he set up the partial differential equations for the propagation of electromagnetic waves, and showed mathematically that the solution needed no carrying medium, i.e. that it was valid in a vacuum.

There is some truth in the view that a vacuum permeated by such radiation is no longer a vacuum, but Maxwell's result is still true that electromagnetic propagation will proceed in the entire prior absence of any particles or fields.

Otherwise, how would we see the stars?

Answer 3

Your statement about quantum information is not correct. No material substance of any kind is required to propagate electromagnetic radiation -- the radiation is simply an exchange back and forth between electrostatic and magnetic field energies. The discovery by Michelson and Morley that no medium could be required to propagate light was the beginning of the Special Theory of Relativity. And, as any resident of Hiroshima can tell you, that theory is a done deal.

Answer 4

What do you mean by information? Moreover, light has no particles, as Steven Hawking proved because light would be affected by gravity. With that said, a non-particle entity would be able to travel through something such as a vacuum.
-Dan

Answer 5

The absence of fields is not vacuum but an imaginary space of nothingness. Energy can travel through a vacuum that is devoid of particles.

Answer 6

That is how dual nature of propagation of light comes into play....If you consider light as electrical and magnetic disturbance travel ling perpendicular and having orthogonal phase, light can travel in vacuum as electromagnetic disturbance do not require any medium for propagation..

Answer 7

You've never heard of a photon?

The dual nature of electromagnetic radiation has long been accepted in modern science, and thus you can think of light travelling in vacuum as particles, called photons.

Answer 8

Once we realise that the concept of "through" is not applicable in this instance, we will cease trying to figure this out. A true "field" just exists everywhere spontaneously, it is our limitations as humans which gives it the appearance of travelling.

Answer 9

A vacuum is NOT a void.

Answer 10

one:a vacuum still occupies space

two:an absolute vacuum doesn't truly exist,even in space

3:light doesn't need a median to travel through