What IS space?

[sergey500]

What oh, what is space

IF this question is answered plenty more scientifc questions can be answered as well.

 

1. a. Mathematics A set of elements or points satisfying specified geometric postulates: non-Euclidean space. b. The infinite extension of the three-dimensional region in which all matter exists.

2. a. The expanse in which the solar system, stars, and galaxies exist; the universe. b. The region of this expanse beyond Earth's atmosphere.

-SmarterChild, Aim bot

 

OK...so what is it?

1. well i am refering to the physucal space, as in outer space (def 2.)

2. The expanise....IN WHAT? what hold all this?

 

Space, is something, it is not nothing, otherwiese it would not excist and besides light passes through it thus it must be someting. IN outter space space there are particles, mostly in solar winds, but sub-atomic particles float in outer space, free of gravity. But...what are they floating ON? What is the fabric of space?

 

When a black hole is created it said to rip through space and time.....wtf? how can you rip spacetime? what is spacetime? it not solid object to be ripped? or is it? So looking at it like this. Space, like air on earth, Has to be made out of someting for stuff to move through it, it a median! But in space, there is very little particles, so what in between them? nothing? i doubt it!

 

So what sub atomic particles are there for space to be made out off?

well we have *takes a breathe of air*; Boson catorgory: photons (most common particle, most ligthest, our little light particle), X bosons, W and Z bosons, the nutrino (does it even belong in this catogory?), Higgs Boson (i know i will get comments on this one), then we have our unknown particles of WIMPs and MACHOs (if you do not know what this means, please ask, do not joke around): here we have our Gluons, Gravitons, magnetic monopoles (have these even been found?), Z particles, Quarks, Leptons....Oh **** it, there is too many to go through!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So the point is, what subatomic particles might have effect on this? I don't know, it just some hints that might help, keyword, MIGHT.

 

Well space may include matter, so we need to acknowledge Dark Matter and Anti matter scenerios, dark energy is not included though, it might be.

 

Now then, one theory says it Aether that makes up space, but ......nobody knows what it is....well it up to you!!!! find out this question of ultimate truth....I am tired off typing

 

Also space can not be nothing, nothing just doesn't excist!

 

Discuss:

Space

spacetime

Fabric of the cosmos

anything on this subject htat might help

[BobbyJoeCool]

Imangine for a second the 2D world that exists on the surface of a spherical object. a 2-D being (thinking that a small plane on the surface of the sphere is his planet), doesn't have a concept of "up" because it doesn't exist to him. The surface area that doesn't have other planes on it (other "planets" as it were) would seem to have nothing to "float" on, and yet it does. We see it as moving along the surface of the sphere.

 

Just as in 4-D space, volume is much as we perceve surface area. So in the hypersphere (which is what I believe the universe to be, and it is a respected theory on the matter), the volume (our universe) is only a small part of the hypervolume that makes up the 4-D sphere.

 

Or, objects don't need anything to "float in." The mass of other objects affects us by pulling us towards it, but there's no rule that you have to move along something. Because if you were moving along something in space, you would have something to form friction against and actually change directions. No matter now much you kick and squirm, you can't change your direction without some sort of jet pack (most commonly used nowadays is Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide). Space it literally nothing. There are particles floating around in it (and planets/stars/etc.)

 

As for black holes, and ripping spacetime... The border between this dimention and the next is very fragile. With enough force (like that generated by the black hole), it can rip the fabric of spacetime and create a rift to another dimention. In theory. No one even knows if this happens, because no one knows what happens inside a black hole because nothing can escape past the event horizon (where all of this takes place).

 

Ripped is a metaphor. Like saying that you "ripped the relationship apart." It's not a solid, tangable object, like spacetime...

[sergey500]

THANK YOU

You are the first person, out of like 4 forums that answered that question and made a great point, fircition that what i need to remember, i was thinking now why can't object syay on someting? FRICITION, oh thank you. You answer that question but not whole, what is in between the stuff they float on? nothing? no such thing, empty space? what inside the empty space? that what i a m getting at! But thank you!

 

More ideas?

[Kyrisch]

Space' date=' is something, it is not nothing, otherwiese it would not excist and besides light passes through it thus it must be someting.[/quote']

Light does not need a medium through which to travel. The "aether" you were talking about is a very old theory that has been disproven. Most of space is, in fact, nothing, only a few stray atoms just floating. What are they floating on? Well, no one's really sure. There are theories, of course, but not one, solid answer, which is what you seem to be looking for.

[CPL.Luke]

I think a better question would be, why would they be sinking?

[sergey500]

Light does not need a medium through which to travel. The "aether" you were talking about is a very old theory that has been disproven. Most of space is, in fact, nothing, only a few stray atoms just floating. What are they floating on? Well, no one's really sure. There are theories, of course, but not one, solid answer, which is what you seem to be looking for.

 

Yep...exactly my question, anybody?

Are you sure light does not need a median? if so i think i am beginning to form some kinda answer to this, with still loophoes.

[buzsaw]

. Most of space is, in fact, nothing, only a few stray atoms just floating. What are they floating on? Well, no one's really sure. There are theories, of course, but not one, solid answer, which is what you seem to be looking for.

 

So if one of the properties of space is "a few stray (floating) atoms" what are the properties of the space/area between those existing atoms? Nothing but area. Right? If you agree with this, then wouldn't those atoms be something existing/floating in space/area and not properties of space perse?

[sergey500]

So if one of the properties of space is "a few stray (floating) atoms" what are the properties of the space/area between those existing atoms? Nothing but area. Right? If you agree with this, then wouldn't those atoms be something existing/floating in space/area and not properties of space perse?

 

yea i noticed that too, i am starting to form a different hypothesis on this matter, it make sence but i need work out all the bugs

 

Any other ideas?

[the universe]

I'm not telling!

[sergey500]

I'm not telling!

 

LOL, please mr.universe or mrs.universe / multiverse tell what you are made out off

[bascule]

I'd like to think that "empty space" is an artifact of our perception of an underlying structure in which everything is interconnected.

[buzsaw]

I'd like to think that "empty space" is an artifact of our perception of an underlying structure in which everything[/i'] is interconnected.

 

[X facter]

Gravitons?

[Martin]

I'd like to think that "empty space" is an artifact of our perception of an underlying structure in which everything[/i'] is interconnected.

 

this is more or less the way Aristotle described space, I believe, and also Leibniz, and also several leaders in the contemporary search for a quantum theory of spacetime-----Carlo Rovelli at Marseille, Renate Loll at Utrecht.

 

Renate Loll has two pieces written for general audience, one is

The Universe from Scratch, free PDF download:

 

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0509010

 

(in slang, to build something from "scratch" is to make it from the most basic raw materials, instead of from readymade preprocessed ingredients. is there a word equivalent in French?)

 

these people would say that SPACE is the sum total of all spatial relationship between things and that it HAS NO INDEPENDENT EXISTENCE

 

And spacetime is inseparable from the geometry of spacetime, which according to 1915 Gen Rel is nothing other than the gravitational field.

 

Space is a compendium of spatial relations like inside, adjacent, outside, between, towards, away from, and more complicated relations like angle, volume, area. Spacetime is this and also all the temporal relations also perhaps involving causality, but certainly involving before and after, earlier and later relations, also curvature is an important property

 

And so these quantum gravitists, like Rovelli and Loll, are constructing a

QUANTUM SPACETIME DYNAMICS. The basic representation of the geometry of the universe can be something simple like a NETWORK, a graph with nodes and links, or a higher dimensional analog. Or, in Loll's case, a TRIANGULATION or an assemblage of simplexes (a simplex is the analog of a triangle in the appropriate dimension)

 

The important thing is that whatever it is should be able to EVOLVE DYNAMICALLY, and the a spacetime history with its evolving geometry should have a quantum amplitude.

 

the Loll approach is a PATH INTEGRAL or sum over histories, where the path is in the space of all possible geometries.

 

it looks like Rovelli is also favoring the sum-over-histories approach also but with a different formalism called "spin foam" which is different from the "triangulation" formalism.

 

Anyway these people take the classical Einstein approach (where space has no existence apart from relationships) and QUANTIZE General Relativity in ways that are close to the original idea. (no extra dimensions, a minimum of extra "made-up" structure)

 

for them, space is something that EMERGES from a microscopic dynamical principle...

With Loll, she does not even specify at the beginning that the macroscopic space should have the usual 4 dimensions! That too has to arise. She and her collaborators set up a computer model of their spacetime dynamics and for the first time last year they succeeded in getting 4D macroscopic space to be produced "from scratch" in the computer simulation.

 

I think that of anybody today, Renate Loll and people working along similar lines, may have the most accurate idea of what space and spacetime are, and how they come about.

 

you might want to look at the programme of the Loops 05 conference----click on the speakers name to see an abstract of the talk to be presented.

 

http://loops05.aei.mpg.de/index_files/Programme.html

 

Of particular interest, I think, are the talks of Loll, Rovelli, and Martin Reuter.

[Martin]

Popular article by Rovelli:

From Physics World (November 2003)

http://cgpg.gravity.psu.edu/people/Ashtekar/articles/rovelli03.pdf

 

Collection of popular and semipopular articles on quantum spacetime and related stuff:

http://cgpg.gravity.psu.edu/people/Ashtekar/articles.html

 

Popular articles about Loll's approach here:

http://www.phys.uu.nl/~loll/Web/press/press.html

 

Loll's thumbnail sketch of her research:

http://www.phys.uu.nl/~loll/Web/research/research.html

 

Loll homepage:

http://www.phys.uu.nl/~loll/Web/title/title.html