Is there such thing as nothing?

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Jitro
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14 Nov 2012, 10:38 pm

Or is it imaginary like unicorns and fairies?

ruveyn
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15 Nov 2012, 10:36 am

Jitro wrote:

Or is it imaginary like unicorns and fairies?

It is a necessary logical abstraction. If we an conceptualize something (an existing something) then we are also force to deal with its negation (that is logic for you). The logical negation of Something is Nothing.

I think the notion of nothing is not only wired into logic, but into or languages as well. We are stuck with the concept and Nothing can be done about it.

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Last edited by ruveyn on 15 Nov 2012, 10:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

AProudHillbilly
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15 Nov 2012, 10:41 am

Nothing exists the same way cold does. It exists as a lack.

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ruveyn
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15 Nov 2012, 10:45 am

AProudHillbilly wrote:

Nothing exists the same way cold does. It exists as a lack.

Wherever Something is not, Nothing is.

We have this hard-wired urge to plug up the hole.

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AProudHillbilly
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15 Nov 2012, 10:48 am

Who knows what dark and dangerous things lurk in those places where nothing is placed.

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The_Walrus
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15 Nov 2012, 2:49 pm

Nothing only existed before the Big Bang.

Now, absolutely nothing, even in a given space, can't exist. You can have nothing in your bank account, but even in the deepest vacuum you're going to have photons and force carriers zooming around.

ruveyn
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15 Nov 2012, 3:09 pm

The_Walrus wrote:

Nothing only existed before the Big Bang.

Not according to a theory proposed by Steinhardt and Turok. The Big Bang is an intermediate event according to their theory.

Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekpyrotic_universe

At this juncture their theory makes exactly the same prediction as the B.B. modified by Guth's hypothesis of early extra luminal expansion.

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naturalplastic
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15 Nov 2012, 4:07 pm

The_Walrus wrote:

"I got plenty o' nothing. And nothin's plenty for me."

Not only is that not necessarily so: that there is no nothing now- and that true nothing only existed prior to the Big Bang.
The opposite could be argued.

The mass of the universe was not created with the big bang.
It already existed.

Before the big bang the mass of the universe was just concentrated at one point-the singularity.

But...space didnt yet exist. Space expanded with the big bang.

So - on the eve of the big bang- there was the same amount of something that there is now. But there was no nothing. So in the last 13 billion years of cosmic expansion the ratio of nothing to something has actually increased. We have ever increasing amounts of nothing because of the consant expansion of space.

Satanist
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18 Nov 2012, 2:51 pm

Yes

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Krabo
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20 Nov 2012, 4:28 pm

What does a man love more than life?
Hate more than death or mortal strife?
That which contented men desire,
The poor have, the rich require,
The miser spends, the spendthrift saves,
And all men carry to their graves?

Nothing.

– Leemings, Joseph (1953) Riddles, Riddles, Riddles, New York: Franklin Watts, Inc. –

VIDEODROME
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20 Nov 2012, 5:01 pm

What if you combine Matter with Anti-Matter? Certainly there should be a massive release of energy but isn't that a process of exchanging something for nothing?

Kurgan
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20 Nov 2012, 5:26 pm

The_Walrus wrote:

There was no before the Big Bang--just like there's no before 00:00 on a YouTube clip. The Big Bang stems from a singularity with (this is an approximation) no volume and infinite density/pressure; thus it's impossible for time and space to exist "before" the Big Bang according to the general relativity theory.

If there ever was a "before" the Big Bang, then it's because of unlikely scenarios: the universe is oscillating (in which case anything before the Big Bang is erased and can in no way affect us or anything else after the Big Bang) or there are multiple universes (in which case the timeline outside the universe is separate from this timeline).

"Nothing" never existed. It's just a convenient approximation.

ruveyn
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20 Nov 2012, 5:32 pm

Kurgan wrote:

[

"Nothing" never existed. It's just a convenient approximation.

Also an artifact of our language which demands a subject for the verb or an object for the verb whether it exists or not. In this sense the term "nothing" is a syntactical space filler not to be confused with metaphysical entity.

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JNathanK
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21 Nov 2012, 5:49 pm

I think there's such a thing as activity, passivity, and neutrality and that "nothing" has something to do with the relationship of the three.

JNathanK
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21 Nov 2012, 5:53 pm

The_Walrus wrote:

It could have been a homogeneous energy singularity before the big bang. If that was the case, it was neither "something" nor "nothing" at that point. Arguably "nothing" came into being as empty space when the singularity differentiated contrastingly into material energy and void.

On the other hand "something" and "nothing" may be a duality of eternal opposites. The fact that the singularity was pure energy and that it slowed down to form matter when empty space began to emerge makes me think this. The two factors of energy and empty space may have either been a homogeneous thing before the big bang, or they may be two wholly separate dimensions that ultimately exist separate of each other in the pre-big bang conditions, and they're currently colliding or conflicting with each other to create space-time.

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