Does space exist?

Question

May sound silly but, is space made up of
a)quantifyable parts or
b)completely empty and essentially non-existant?

Presumably answer A signifies a finite universe surrounded by event horizon and B signifies that only matter is finite within a potentially infinate\reoccuring arena?

Does anyone know or are we all just spouting crap?

Listen pissypoo, do you somehow believe your ignorant dumbness is of any use to the human race?

jiahua44: I think you are the only person on this page whodoesnt seem to understand why i asked it. And yes, thanks for the advice.. I gave up pot 2 months ago.

Listen here pissypoo, take a wee $hit for yourself!

Answer 1

In the old days of classical mechanics the idea of a vacuum was simple. The vacuum was what remained if you emptied a container of all its particles and lowered the temperature down to absolute zero. The arrival of quantum mechanics, however, completely changed our notion of a vacuum. All fields - in particular electromagnetic fields - have fluctuations. In other words at any given moment their actual value varies around a constant, mean value. Even a perfect vacuum at absolute zero has fluctuating fields known as "vacuum fluctuations", the mean energy of which corresponds to half the energy of a photon.

Perhaps you meant to inquire the ideas of space as if it had some kind of texture or structure to its expanses not occupied by any physical material, then the above extract is just the beginning. There is other phenomenon observed at a sub-atomic level that suggest that any vacuum, as in space, is far from being devoid of activities or substance of a sort. In fact, space is seething with activity but that activity is not within the easily observable regions of solid-state matter but at the boundaries of existence of matter, so to speak.

It has been scientifically observed and studied that there are forces called Casimir forces that permeate all space, and that become calculable when two mirrors are held very close, for instance. Then there are numerous particles that emerge from out of nowhere in empty space and then as they came they disappear into same vacuum leaving absolutely no trails of energy busts. It has been explained in most strangely in terms of quantum mechanics that they borrow energy from the future to make their presence, which is strange.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/9747

Answer 2

I'm not sure that either of your alternatives are true. Before I start rambling on, though, let me summarise by saying it does exist, and as far as I know may or may not be made of quantifiable parts.

Space - as in the vacuum - does exist, because it contains energy. After the Big Bang, the universe went through various "phase changes" as it cooled - imagine the way steam cools to water, then to ice, each of these is also a phase change.

Currently, our universe is not at the lowest-energy phase. There is some speculation about whether cramming to much energy into too small a region could force local space to change phase, which would release phenomenal amounts of energy, causing a chain reaction which would lead to our entire universe (as we know it) being destroyed.

As for whether it's made of parts: some people believe that space is quantised - that is, a particle may exist "here" or "there", but not anywhere inbetween. The quanta, of course, would be too small for us to observe, motion to us would appear continuous.

Whether space is quantised or not, I don't think it could be made up of parts, ie be divisible. It's probably all one big membrane or something (maybe shaped like an egg box, which would make space quantised). It can be deformed and stretched about, though - gravity does this all the time.

Answer 3

Yup. Space exists. Space exists as a concept, an idea of being (despite there not being anything "in space"). It exists as a cultural phenomenon: "It Came From Outer Space", the Space Race (a race, let's face it, to see who could stick a man in the middle of "nothingness" first) etc. Anything you imagine, from what a house in the Falkland Islands looks like to how tall your great-great-great-great-grandmother was to the death of a mortal enemy by your own choosing exists, albeit in your mind and yours alone. Hence we have inventions. For all the inventions such as the aircraft that made it into reality, there are countless others that exist/have existed but have never been developed, whilst for every fulfilled dream there are many more that have gone unfulfilled.

Aside from the scientific argument (which is different - and more reasoned - from what I'm spouting), just so long as space has somehow entered someone's mind then it exists.

What it exists as is probably more in the line of quantifying such existence.

Answer 4

Space can be seen as a relationship between the objects in it rather than a thing in itself. Things can be a certain distance and in certain directions relative to each other, so rather than being non-existent, it could exist in the same way as being at different temperatures or pressures is possible. Concerning quantifiable parts, the problem with this is relativity, because the same volume would vary in size according to the force of gravity and the velocity of nearby objects or objects moving through it. Then again, there is a quantum vacuum filled with potential particles according to physics, so maybe it does exist as a particular.

Answer 5

Even empty space does have a kind of substance to it. It may not be a physical substance like matter, but there is SOMETHING there. We know this for a fact because it changes and affects other things.

One example is the 'expansion of the universe'. Every galaxy we see is moving away from us. This might normally be consistant with the results of a big explosion, but the speed with which things are moving is proportional to their distance from us. One of the very few ways in which this might happen is if the stuff of space itself is stretching and just carrying everything in space along with it. This idea is so commonly accepted that I know of no astronomer who disputes it.

Another example comes from gravity. Gravity draws things of mass toward each other... but it affects things WITHOUT mass too. It does this because it literally warps space itself. This kind of effect has been very well observed around our Sun and other stars (called gravitational lensing), and is one of the tools astronomers use to judge the distances of far objects.

You are correct in some of your conclusions as well. I know of NO astronomer who describes space as infinite. It is of a not-precisely-known, very large, and changing volume... but not an infinite one. One of the theories for the end of the universe involves universal gravity stopping the expansion of these distant edges and drawing them back in to a 'Big Crunch' (recent measurements suggest this will not occur, however).

What is outside of the edge of our universe? That answer is completely undefined in physics. It is something we cannot answer or even really guess at, much like 'what happened before the Big Bang'. There are some places science can never go, and there always will be. Those who imagine possibilities will always have a job!

Answer 6

We just don't know! because we can't see very far into space(I assume... who knows, perhaps the next generation of telescope will discover the end of the universe). We don't know anything about time really, because we don't even know if there was once a time without time. We don't even know if the universe has always been here or not. Perhaps the universe moves in cycles of existence and non-existence, where everything is exactly the opposite of existence for a
very long time, rather like a void. I mean like everything in the whole universe has its exact opposite out there somewhere. WHO KNOWS?

are you talking to ME??

Answer 7

that is fairly possibly that there is different existence interior the universe, and not unreasonable to think that a number of that is been, is, or would be fairly sensible. however the appropriate clarification for the shortcoming of alien visitation is in simple terms that regardless of extraterrestrial beings could exist have not yet visited Earth. the appropriate clarification, parsimoniously speaking, is *not* that they are here and a technique or the different "stealthy," or that they a technique or the different look in simple terms like human beings. there's somewhat of the human inhabitants, besides the undeniable fact that, that looks to have desperate earlier to time to have self belief in alien visitation. they attempt to characteristic this or that prevalence to extraterrestrial beings, even nevertheless they are able to't furnish any data that the alleged extraterrestrial beings have been the reason. That hypothesis isn't unavoidably risky. yet then they pile on one and all of those conspiracy theories approximately how the government is hiding data of extraterrestrial beings, and that persons who dispute the alien-involvement theories are despicable "debunkers" with ideological motivation. They act to guard their enjoyed ideals, not evaluate the data dispassionately. In different words, time-honored conception in extraterrestrial beings is extremely supportable, yet do not go overboard with it.

Answer 8

This is more easily understandable if one considers the actual scale of the components of an atom. If one takes into account the fact that the neutrons, protons and electrons of an atom actually have huge spaces between them it becomes clear that the atoms that make up seemingly solid objects are made up of 99+ percent empty space.

This alone does not seem too important till you add the idea that the atoms that make up seemingly solid objects are more of a loose conglomeration that share a similar attraction but never really touch each other.

At first glance this does not really seem relevant, but closer analysis reveals that this adds a tremendous amount of empty space to solid objects that are already made up of atoms that are 99 percent space. When so-called solid objects are seen in this light it becomes apparent that they can in no way be the seemingly solid objects they appear to be.

We ourselves are not exceptions to this phenomenon.

These seemingly solid objects are more like ghostly images that we interpret as solid objects based on our perceptual conclusions.

From this we must conclude that Perception is some sort of a trick that helps us to take these ghostly images and turn them into a world we can associate and interact with. This clever device seems to be a creation of our intellect that enables us to interact with each other in what appears to be a three dimensional reality.

I hope that helps to answered your question.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 9

Prob just spouting...

Like air, I beleive that space has quantifiable parts... just extremely scarce.

Which would lead me to conclude that our universe is finite, yet expanding, within the infinite.

Answer 10

In theory deep space has a density of about 1 molecule per 2.5 cubic feet to 8 cubic feet or per cubic meter; but that is speculation basically.

It helps to think of something like "north", does "north" exist? Yes it describes a relation. Space describes a relation of things about it, around it, or in it, as a volume with distances between things.