does nothing exist inside this little place?

if you got a glass airtight container about say i dont know, 2 square ft in size and nothing could escape the container and nothing can get inside of it, then you extracted all of the matter and particals inside of it, no gases no dust no anything whatsoever, so it was just a container with nothing inside of it atall.



does the space inside the container still exist?


if you answer yes then you have just understood what the dao is,

if you answer no then you have just proved my little experiment false and see some kind of flaw in it,



thanks,

peace.

 

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Wow, who'd have thought that gaining understanding of the dao could be so easy and so pointless?

 

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it really depends on how you look at it. from a physics perspective, you don't need the dao to understand that quantum tunnelling allows particles to pop into and out of existence within the container, no matter how hard you try to keep it empty. space, even as a vacuum, is not empty, it is filled with energy.

but by all means, please explain how the dao says that the container is not empty, i know little about this philosophy.

 

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And that energy is...?

 

http://www.fred.net/tzaka/tao/tao_intro.html

Now that's cool

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Here's the hub: http://www.geocities.com/dao_house/basics.html

Very cool stuff.

 

Inside an airtight bottle? To me, nothingness cannot be.

 

so hypertheticaly if you were to actually extract all matter and energy from the container, the empty space would collapse in on itself sucking in the container kind of causing a small event horizon black hole effect?,

if this is not the case and say there actually was just empty space inside the container, then what would you class empty space as? and how can it exist?

if empty space could exist wouldent that prove there is an unseen force holding the fabric of existance in place?.

the unseen force that is the dao,


peace.

 

Good luck sucking all those particles out...

 

Good point. I find the example of 'nothing', within finiteness, to be a contradiction. Within the universe it seems to me that we have nothing continuing for 'an infinity'; hence we are without an 'edge of space', and an up and/or a down etc.

 

I imagine that even if there was absolute nothing within the container, from a geometric standpoint, there would have to be that "space" within in order to give the container a shape, therefore defining it and proving that it exists as a container. Sort of a chain reaction I guess.

 

but there is no possible way that you are going to get everything out of the container. no matter how tight you seal it, particles are able to pass right through the walls to enter it. and also, there is an evidenced theory that shows even empty space is filled with particles of energy, popping into and out of existence.

 

I would say that if it was possible to remove all matter from a container, that exactly what EmptyForceOfChi said, the container would collapse in on itself to fill the void.

Which is interesting.

On one hand, we have the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Yet, on the other had, it appears that when we attempt to create a vacuum, or void, particles of energy, or matter, pop into and out of existence, self-create and then self-destroy.

What this seems to suggest is one of two things. Either the Law of Conservation is false, or things are not as they appear to be.

Going back to the example of the voided container. It seems logical that if we remove everything from inside it, it would implode to fill the emptied space. We can see this happen on a more basic level when we remove air from a balloon.

It would seem that there is another principle at play here. I don't know what the principle might be called, whether it's already been stated in any kind of official manner, or not, but it seems to be something along the lines of the following (and bear in mind that I really haven't thought a lot about this, so this won't be fully or very well formulated): there can never be "place" that is not occupied. Whenever matter or energy shifts, or relocates, its previous position is filled by other matter or energy, immediately and simultaneously.

Thus, if this kind of principle exists or is true, and one takes the Law of Conservation to be true, then one has to ask, where is the matter, or energy come from when we seem them "appear" to pop into existence, and where do they go when they "appear" to pop out of existence? Moreover, WHY do they appear to pop into and out of existence?

Perhaps there is a more basic level of reality that we aren't aware of yet, to which the law of conservation actually applies.

Ah... who knows.

 

Interesting stuff beyondtimeandspace. Perhaps then we are asking the wrong question: instead of trying to study how nothing can become something we have come to study how something can become nothing.

 

reminds me of the Zen insight 'form into emptiness, emptiness into form'
it reminds me of....where there is nothing someting is, where there is something nothng is

we have to look at how we usually think

we tend to think in abstracts, and confuse them with reality. ths is especially so wit polar related abstracts like 'something' and 'no-thing'.......qe dream of a thing as 'nothingness'.....what would such a 'thing' be like? well we can IMAGINEit but is it the actual. confusing our abstracted conceptual analyses with living dynamic reality can be the problem

 

You know, it's odd, and maybe I just simply haven't grasped the whole concept of E=MC^2 yet. I get that the equation means that Energy is equal to Matter moving at twice the speed of light, but maybe I don't fully understand what energy is.

I've heard and read and have been taught that energy is the ability to do work. Ok, well what does that mean, and how is it that we're able to say that the ability to do work is actually matter moving at twice the speed of light?

I think the way alot of us think, myself included, of energy is "lightning" or electricity. This seems odd when you think about the physics definition (the ability to do work). Certainly, we talk about electricity as being a form of energy, electrical energy, but do we really understand what it means? Of course, there's also other forms of energy, like nuclear energy.

And, when you break it down in physics, we talk about electricity in terms of particle movement (correct me if I've mistaken the term particle here, and it wouldn't surprise me if I did), protons, electrons, neutrons, what have you. The positive and the negative. Thus, the explanation of lightning.

That's electricity, and we talk about it as being a form of energy. Well, energy is the ability to do work. I suppose when you think of electricity as allowing you to do work, then you could understand electricity as a form of energy.

But then this brings us to ask the question, well what is work? Interestingly enough, physics defines work as "the transfer of energy from one physical system to another..." But wait, I thought energy was the capacity for work?

This has always been something that confused me, and maybe I just didn't have it explained right, but the two terms are circular. When we substitute energy for it's definition, and work for its definition, the definition of work is thus: "The transfer of [the capacity to do [the transfer of [the capacity to do [the transfer of [the capacity to do [the transfer of [.... ad infinitum.

We cannot use a the term we are defining in the definition, thus you cannot say work is the transfer of the capacity to do work from one system to another. So, in my mind, energy still hasn't been satisfactorily defined.

Which, again, to me means that it would be impossible to postulate the equation E=MC^2. Which ALSO means that we cannot postulate the Law of Conservation of Energy.

The reason I got thinking about all of this was from the quote at the beginning of this post, by spectrum. When he asks, how does something become nothing, the intuitive answer is that it can't, which would also mean that nothing cannot become something. This seemed to support the Law of Conservation. Yet, at the same time, the Law of Conservation of Energy, in my mind, seems to be in doubt, at least as far as its terms are concerned.

If a resident sciphysicist could explain where I'm going wrong, I'd appreciate it, as it would certainly help answer some serious questions.

 

How can something be destroyed? It depends upon whether we are talking about matter or spirit. Spirit can be destroyed, as we know, but can we destroy matter? I believe the best example is an atomic bomb; the destruction of an atom (usually hydrogen, if I'm not mistaken). Surely we may say that the destruction of matter itself creates something; namely Heat and light, and radio-activity. True destruction should leave us with nothing. So then how do we destroy matter? With heat and light? But does burning matter destroy it, or simply leave us with a burnt mess? Eventually heating will turn a solid into a liquid, and then a gas, but then gases do still exist. Should we expose an element that is in a gaseous state to an abundance of energy we will surely find heat, and light, again. So then where is this cycle that predicts an 'energized' element should become a solid from a gas? An element must be 'de-energized' so that it may become a liquid first!

 

First of all, how could you extract anything if there wasn't a way to get in the container, and more importantly, nothing could escape it

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?

But don't worry about that, we assume that we get all the matter extracted.

The container would squeeze so that the outside of the container (and the inner atoms/particles of the containers inside outside (?) ) would meet perfectly.

If the container were undestructable then space-time would squeeze inside so that the undestructable object would be intact, but still would look squeezed.

 

Yep it exists. There is no evidence consequently that the concept of 'nothing' exists in reality. What's inside that container? The structure of space-time... theorized to be 11 dimensions of hyperspace intersecting a 3-d brane.

 

Such a situation exists in the form of 'outer' space. There we find a vaccum where 'nothing' exists, and movement within it is possible. So, space does exist.