lets talk about nothing

[lasto]

So here goes :

nothing - what is it :

To get to a real form of "nothing", we need to go into outer space. Imagine that you go to the farthest, emptiest corner of the universe. This is as close to nothing as we are ever going to get. What we are looking for is a section of space that contains zero atoms. No atoms at all -- it is a perfect vacuum. That is the best approximation of "nothing" that we have in our universe today.

The girls asked another question: "What color is nothing?"

What we think of as "color" comes from light that hits our eyes. Small units of light, called photons, have to leave the object we are looking at in order for our eyes to see a color. Photons can either be produced by something, like a light bulb, or they can bounce off of something and get reflected into our eyes. Those photons are what our eyes "see."

Since "nothing" contains zero atoms, there is nothing in "nothing" that can produce photons, or reflect them - so there are zero photons. Our eyes see zero photons as black. So the color of "nothing" is black

But here's a deeper question: Is a section of space that contains zero atoms really "nothing"?

Not really. Space, even if there are no atoms in it, is "something." For example, photons can move through space even if the space contains zero atoms. So can gravity. So can radio waves. So can a magnet's field. And we can measure space -- a chunk of space has a length, a width and a height. And time elapses. In other words, empty space is a measurable framework that has the ability to transmit certain types of energy.

"True nothing" would be truly nothing -- no space. This is hard to get a grasp on, because we cannot imagine this kind of nothing. We have never seen it. It is, presumably, what existed before the universe existed. Apparently, at the creation of the universe, there was truly nothing. Space, with its ability to transmit different types of energy, was created when the universe was created. Then energy in this space condensed into matter -- the atoms that we find all around us today.

"True nothing" is that immeasurable, zero-energy, non-existent thing that did not exist before the universe, and all the space in it, came into existence.

Who knows what that was like?