What is the vacuum? Does vacuum even exist? Split from Wit? Dtee?

[TrappedLight]

 

 

But space seems blatantly different from matter to me. It is to my mind, the one other thing in the universe we can observe (albeit it by shooting photons through it) is the emptiness between matter.

 

There is actually no such thing as empty space. All space, is a bubbling sheet of virtual particles.

 

Empty space is a Newtonian concept.

In fact, it's an electromagnetic aether. Space isn't normally called an aether because it is generally considered taboo.

[Daniel Foreman]

I've been reading up on virtual photons, the experimental evidence for it deriving from the Lamb shift experiment, and the Casimir effect. (I can't find any other experimental evidence).

 

We know that gravity can affect matter over massive distences. So I can accept that space could be the result of forces interacting with each other un a way we don't understand yet. But again I think virtual particles is an over complicated answer to an experiment (the lamb shift) that simply didn't work in the way it was predicted to.

 

How are these particles created? Why are they tempoary? If empty space is filled with them why don't they interact with photons in the same way normal particles do?

 

It appears to be yet another thing we can't actually observe directly being treated as the answer to something. Again, sorry to sound like a broken record but I'm not convinced.

[TrappedLight]

I've been reading up on virtual photons, the experimental evidence for it deriving from the Lamb shift experiment, and the Casimir effect. (I can't find any other experimental evidence).

 

We know that gravity can affect matter over massive distences. So I can accept that space could be the result of forces interacting with each other un a way we don't understand yet. But again I think virtual particles is an over complicated answer to an experiment (the lamb shift) that simply didn't work in the way it was predicted to.

 

How are these particles created? Why are they tempoary? If empty space is filled with them why don't they interact with photons in the same way normal particles do?

 

 

 

The virtual particle may not have the same mass as an ordinary particle, but the longer it exists the more likely it is to approach the same features. A virtual particle though, in every other kind of way is exactly the same as an ordinary particle, the only major difference is that they are extremely short-lived. We know they exist because they appear in calculations, a smudge factor of interaction which means virtual particles leave behind a measurable effect in the lab. The existence of this underlying excitation of the field has presented itself in the form of virtual energy which transforms into real measurable energy between two plates in a vacuum (the Casimir effect). What is interesting is that quantum theory predicted the existence of the plates interaction with energy in the vacuum.

 

So to be best to stick to mainstream, virtual particles make up the vacuum, there is no such thing as Newtonian empty space in quantum mechanics.

[Popcorn Sutton]

I've often wondered what a variable is. Maybe it is a vacuum getting filled with a new bit of information.

Maybe it's the effect of reverse fractility.

[Daniel Foreman]

Information is a human concept. I find it doubtful that the universe is made up of bits. It ain't no computer after all.

[TrappedLight]

Information is a human concept. I find it doubtful that the universe is made up of bits. It ain't no computer after all.

 

When scientists talk about information in quantum physics, we usually speak about binary codes. Nature may not be made up of one's and zero's, but Hawking has made it clear, that when we speak about the vacuum, we are not only inferring on space-time-matter-energy, but information as well.

[Popcorn Sutton]

If time is changes in the position of everything, and the only way cognition is possible is through these changes, you have to assume that knowledge is a sequence of occurrences. When you imagine something, you can maneuver it, the only way to maneuver it is through filling variables.

 

I would have to assume that an empty variable can be filled with a cognitive component, something that is computable. But the question is, how do you detect an empty variable? There are two ways, in my opinion, but I'll wait to hear your responses.

[Daniel Foreman]

 

 

but Hawking has made it clear, that when we speak about the vacuum, we are not only inferring on space-time-matter-energy, but information as well.

 

I'd love to see where he says that, do you have a source for it?

Edited September 25, 2013 by Daniel Foreman

[TrappedLight]

 

I'd love to see where he says that, do you have a source for it?

 

Information exists as states of systems in the universe. This is how he presented his information paradox.

I also take the reference that Hawking refers to information, not just space-time-matter-energy also from (Wolf, Parallel Universes, 2001? I think).