what is nothing

[johnpeel 100]

I agree . Its the what happened before scenario. It wasnt that long ago (1990's) when the question of what happened b4 the big bang was deemed a nonsensical question by leading physicists . These sane physicists some years later changed their tune and (i think it was when the infinite universe theories gained credibility) said of course u can ask what happened b4 the big bang. If you keep asking the question "what happened b4" will the answer ever be NOTHING?? I doubt it. If there was a state of "NOTHING" then u could argue that it is "EVERYTHING" . Let absolutely nothing at all being represented by 0abs and absolutely everything being represented by §abs then 0abs=§abs. ie everything is nothing and nothing is everything . nothing=infinity . Because there is something then I reckon that there has always been something and always will be.

[Ben Banana]

Nothing solely constitutes the interior of my skull.

[elas]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing

wikipedia definition of nothing for the linguistically impaired

 

I have been thinking (yes, I know its not a good idea)

and I came up with this

 

1. currently there is a universe

2. it started at the big bang (or something along the lines)

3. it had to start from something

4. that something had to come from something

5. that something had to come from something

6. that something had to come from something

7. that something had to come from something

8. (infinite regression)

9. that something had to come from nothing

 

so the million dollar question is what is nothing

 

*I just thought this was a valid thing to post here since no one has asked this simple question

**I know it is by no means a simple question to answer, prior apologies to anyone who has their mind bent into a pretzel due to this

***yes, I know this is a current question in physics that has yet to be properly answered

In view of recent statements by CERN I am in the process of colating my old submissions (2000 to 2010). One of the conclusions I have come to is that, as far as space is concerned; infinity is a constant. That means the number of particles in infinity is not only infinite, but also constant. God, nature and to a lesser degree, man; can change the nature of particles in a variety of ways but, the original contents are always present in some form. 'Absolute nothing' does not have dimensions, therefore only exist as points (Zero Points). It follows that there has never been and never will be a volume of absolute nothing.

Our knowledge of deep space relies largely on the observation of light. Photons are created when two particles collide, before the big bang there were no photons but only the constant of elementary particles. photons have decay states, elementary particles do not have decay states. (I am aware that current thinking is that photons are elementary particles, but those who say so do not explain how an elementary particle can decay).

As an exercise, think what would happen if the number of particles in infinity could be varied?

Edited April 23, 2013 by elas

[swansont]

photons have decay states

 

No, they do not.

[elas]

No, they do not.

A gamma ray is a photon with 100 thousand times more energy than light; it decays into e+ and e- (experimentally observed event).

When an atom emits an electron and a neutrino it is beleived (but not yet observed) to be via photon decay.

Edited April 24, 2013 by elas

[swansont]

A gamma ray is a photon with 100 thousand times more energy than light; it decays into e+ and e- (experimentally observed event).

When an atom emits an electron and a neutrino it is beleived (but not yet observed) to be via photon decay.

 

Pair production is not a spontaneous event — it requires interaction with a nearby massive particle. So it is not considered a decay mode.

 

An atom emitting an electron and antineutrino is beta decay. An atom emitting an electron and a neutrino via photon decay would violate conservation of lepton number, so yeah, it's not been observed. Has it even been proposed, in any serious fashion?

[johnpeel 100]

There is a mathematical way of obtaining something from nothing . Anything raised to the power of nothing = 1 . Maybe this rule explains how there has always been something and always will be.

[Kramer]

A counterfeit cent in table:
The forces inner the photon are opposite, and photon is in equilibrium. Near the heavy nucleus the parts of positron are pushed by the gravity out in the Dirac see., leaving parts of electron to be self -structured in electron..
For neutrino the forces are directed toward the centre of neutrino. The radius of neutrino diminished, mass of neutrino augmented (the so called change of "flavor" ??) and neutrino ends in Plank area particle.
Sorry if i make a mess instead to help.

[swansont]

There is a mathematical way of obtaining something from nothing . Anything raised to the power of nothing = 1 . Maybe this rule explains how there has always been something and always will be.

 

Does this mathematical function correspond to some event or QM operator in physics?

[krash661]

for me,

 

this is a tough topic,

 

and i seriously could not say what nothing is based on it's definition of such.

 

in a sense this is a great topic to ponder.

well for me anyways.

[Ben Banana]

For one, it's always been obvious to me that nothing is a virtual noun. Its meaning is effective when suspended in a metaphysical way. It encapsulates several concepts, such as void, zero, invalidity, vanity, incapacity etc. For example: 5 + 0 = 5. A much better example: No thing. Ha! It's like, semantics... It is pretty much just a class of indexical units, or in other words, a generic term for the constituents of this class of meaning. These units are important when a system is not malleable enough to simply replace ineffective parts. In quantitization, the number zero is a consistent symbol of an incomplete system.

The more interesting question is about incompleteness.

Edited April 25, 2013 by Ben Banana

[Popcorn Sutton]

0^0=1. This is interesting. Why do we raise to the power of to begin with though? It's not just a mathematical trick, there has to be some physics behind it.

[Ben Banana]

0^0=1.

 

Exponentiation is a function.

[Popcorn Sutton]

It captures curves really well. We use it in newtons equations.

[Ben Banana]

Indeed. Study the concept of indexicality. I will argue that:

 

AND does not produce the boolean table:

 

AND(false, false) = false
AND(false, true) = false

AND(true, false) = false

AND(true, true) = true

But rather, the concept of 'AND' has been identified congruential to this function and the function has been labeled so.

In a bit adder, do you really think the names of the "logical" gates imply anything meaningful about the nature of addition? That's very naive. I suggest that these names, such as AND, OR, XOR etc, in the context of a bit adder's "logic diagram" are merely congruences to the primitive functions of addition.

 

Edit:
Again, the implications of this suggest to discuss incompleteness rather than the concept of nothing.

Edited April 25, 2013 by Ben Banana

[imatfaal]

0^0=1. This is interesting. Why do we raise to the power of to begin with though? It's not just a mathematical trick, there has to be some physics behind it.

 

0^0 is sometimes said to be indeterminate and othertimes said to be equal to one - often only to make a particular definition work. There is not an agreed answer and the result given depends on the circumstances and use.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponentiation#Zero_to_the_power_of_zero

 

 

0⁰ (zero to the zeroth power) itself is undefined. The lack of a well-defined meaning for this quantity follows from the mutually contradictory facts that a⁰ is always 1, so 0⁰ should equal 1, but 0^a is always 0 (for a>0 ), so 0⁰ should equal 0. The choice of definition for 0⁰ is usually defined to be indeterminate, although defining 0⁰=1 allows some formulas to be expressed simply (Knuth 1992; Knuth 1997, p. 57).

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Power.html

Edited April 25, 2013 by imatfaal
putting in missing figures

[Ben Banana]

although defining 0⁰=1 allows some formulas to be expressed simply (Knuth 1992; Knuth 1997, p. 57).

 

As my point elaborated above. It also demonstrates a serious issue from an incompleteness aspect.

Edited April 25, 2013 by Ben Banana

[elas]

Pair production is not a spontaneous event — it requires interaction with a nearby massive particle. So it is not considered a decay mode.

Close, Marten and Sutton (authors of The Particle Explosion) refer to it as decay.

Edited April 25, 2013 by elas

[swansont]

Close, Marten and Sutton (authors of The Particle Explosion) refer to it as decay.

 

If that's an actual statement and not a misquote, then I think they are misusing the terminology. A photon in free space doesn't undergo any changes.

[Popcorn Sutton]

Boy this is quite the conundrum.

[futuretech1281]

to my understanding NOTHING is something that we dont know about and can not find answer to or see.

 

So there for we come up with a word for that problem NOTHING.

[DevilSolution]

You'll never know.

[studiot]

Johnpeel post#41

There is a mathematical way of obtaining something from nothing .

Yoyu nearly had something there!

 

Here is how to (mathematically) construict something from nothing.

 

1) Start with literally nothing - the set with no members -

 

[math]\emptyset [/math]

 

 

2) by successively adding more sets with no members form the transitive sequence of sets

 

 

[math]\emptyset [/math]

 

[math]\{ \emptyset \} [/math]

 

[math]\{ \emptyset ,\{ \emptyset \} \} [/math]

[math]\{ \emptyset ,\{ \emptyset \} ,\{ \emptyset ,\{ \emptyset \} \} \} [/math]

[math]\{ \emptyset ,\{ \emptyset \} ,\{ \emptyset ,\{ \emptyset \} \} ,\{ \emptyset ,\{ \emptyset \} ,\{ \emptyset ,\{ \emptyset \} \} \} \} [/math]

 

and so on

 

Note I have now formed a sequence with, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4......... members

 

So I have now constructed the counting numbers plus zero!

 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2013 by studiot

[Popcorn Sutton]

What is LaTeX, is this a new programming language?

 

I've been working on a theory of dispositions lately and your post resembles it.

[imatfaal]

Wikipedia Page on LaTex

 

Dave's LaTex tutorial