According to Einstein space has shape, and can be warped by the mass of matter. And the shape of space dictates how matter moves. The old bowling ball on the trampoline image they use to explain how planets orbit in a way that looks like gravity is making them move ala Newton, but there really aint no such thing as gravity. Its all mass warping space.
But here is the kicker.
Where does matter get its mass from?
It gets its mass from the Higgs Boson, which is scattered throughout space (much like ether was supposed to be scattered through space in Victorian Age theory, but ether doesnt exist). Matter plows through space, and in turn space causes matter to have mass, the mass of matter causes space to warp, and that warped space in turn dictates how lumps of matter move. Matter tells space how to be shaped, and space tells matter both how to move and how much mass it has ...so the matter can warp the space. Seems circular to me. But whatever.
So if you call empty space "nothing" then nothing is actually a whole lot! And does a lot.
But I contend that what we call space is not really "nothing". Space itself is a thing. But there IS such a thing as "real nothing".
The Universe began with the big bang. All matter, energy, and empty space, all expanded outward. And matter and energy are really being carried along by the expansion of empty space (space can expand faster than the speed of light-matter and energy cant move faster than light).
So the Universe is this expanding bubble of matter, energy and space, and space itself is a thing. But space ends at the out edge of this expanding bubble. Out beyond the outer edge of space and matter at the expanding edge of the Universe is....nothing! Not empty space but real true absolute nothing! We cant cant image real nothing, and conceptualize nothing as being "empty space", because empty space is part of how we and our universe our composed. We have never observed real nothing. So we cant even conceive of it.
But if we could travel to the edge of Universe and observe real true nothing...that would really be something!