The Nature of Empty Space and Nothingness ( Chapter 3 )

According to Science “Nothing is actually one of the most interesting something in all of physics”

So, how do we study Nothing?

Consider an empty Jar. An empty Jar is always contain something, like molecules of air and a bath of infrared light from its warm environment. There’s also the ambient electromagnetic buzz from the surrounding city and a stream of exotic particles from the surrounding cosmos. But what if we suck out every last molecule of air, chill the Jar to absolute zero, and shield it from all eternal radiation? Then the Jar contain only empty space. But it turns out that empty space is far from nothing.

                                                                                                                             (empty space simulation)

Before we begin we should know what is ‘absolute-cold’. Actually it’s impossible to reduce any substance to absolute zero in temperature. Zero Kelvin means no motion whatsoever. But the perfect stillness implies that a particle’s position and momentum are simultaneously perfectly defined and this is impossible according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. According to uncertainty principle the position and the velocity of an object cannot both be measured exactly at the same time. Because particles are always uncertain and vibrant in very small scale. So, the walls of the empty Jar will always radiate a heat glow.

But hypothetically what is a perfectly empty space?

The answer will bring us closer to understanding the nature of Space itself. Our universe contain planets, stars and galaxies and those are the things we see. But the only reason these big structures exist is because of the nature of nothingness. We need to understand why we have to go back to the beginning, the very beginning, the Big Bang. We always thought that in the Big Bang the observable universe started from a single point or singularity and then just expended steadily more or less to the point that we are at today. But that's not actually how it happened. There were four different phases in the universe's expansion. To start it was expanding steadily but then after just a tiny fraction of a second the expansion just blew up and the whole universe increased in size by ten to the power twenty six times (10^26) in very short period of time and that period is known as Inflation, which we discussed previously. After that, universe continued expanding but at a decreasing rate. So the expansion of the universe was actually slowing down. But then about five or six billion years ago the expansion of universe started speeding up again and this is caused by Dark energy an energy tied to space. So before that time there was enough matter, the matter density was high enough that it was pulling everything back together and slowing down the expansion. But once the universe reached a critical size then there was enough dark energy to start pushing things apart and that is the phase that we are still in. The expansion of the universe is accelerating.

Although this theory doesn't really explain the formation of particles until we tie in the nature of nothingness. Everything around us is made of particles of atoms and electrons but our best theories of physics are actually field theories.

 Quantum nature of space is described by "Quantum field theory". In short, Space itself is comprised of fundamental quantum fields, one for each elementary particle. Those field oscillate, vibrate with different energies and those oscillation are the electrons, quarks, neutrons, photons, gluons etcetera. That comprise the stuff of our universe. These fields are quantum fields. Now anywhere there's an excitation in this field, that is some energy in the field and that is where we will observe particles.

So the completely empty space is where the values for all of these fields are basically zero. But it's impossible to make a field perfectly flat and zero. We can't take a quantum field and make it completely quiet, because of the Heisenberg's uncertainty principal. It says you can't take a partial and pinpoint it to exactly zero energy. Likewise you can't take a quantum field and make it exactly flat everywhere.

Now, this is very important because ordinarily these fluctuations are really tiny and they only effect subatomic processes. But during that period of Inflation the universe expanded in size so rapidly that those tiny fluctuations got blown up to the scale of the observable universe. Now without them we think the matter distribution in the universe would have been completely homogeneous, completely uniform and that means the gravitational force on any object in the universe would have been the same in all direction. Which means nothing would ever have collapsed into the big structures that we see today. But thanks to these fluctuations there were slightly denser and less dense regions. The denser regions had stronger gravitational fields so they pulled in the matter from around them and that clumped together the matter into huge gas clouds that would go on to be the galaxies that contain the stars and the planets and all other things we known today.

We can actually see the imprint of these quantum fluctuations in the leftover radiation from the Big Bang by the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Now here is another special field which is Higgs field or Higgs boson or God particles. And the mystery become more interesting when we discuss about the origin of Mass itself and bring virtual particle in our discussion.

One of the most amazing things about atoms is they're mainly empty space. So all of the atoms that make up human, trees, air and all the solid things in our universe are mostly empty space. But now we know that empty space is not truly empty.

Empty space is actually full of quarks and gluons field fluctuations. And it is possible to annihilate a quark from empty space, because it's not empty. The empty vacuum actually costs an enormous amount of energy to create. If we create it, we'll discover that is unstable and any sort of perturbation would push that empty vacuum into something where the vacuum is actually full of quantum field fluctuation. Now understanding how the quantum vacuum fluctuations work gives us a sense of what the fundamental particles do.

The origin of Mass is empty space. All of the mass comes from the Higgs mechanism. Which means that all electrons are traveling through Space-time, they interact with the Higgs field and through Higgs field they generate there mass. Higgs field slows them down and stops them from traveling at the speed of light. 

We know most of the mass in our universe comes from neutrons and protons and they are not fundamental particles. They are made of constituent particles called quarks. And the theory that describes quarks and their interaction with each other through gluons is called "Quantum Chromodynamic". According to this theory we can't create an individual quark, because if we try to pull one out then we have to put so much energy into the situation that another quark-antiquark pair will be created.

So, the interesting behaviour about a proton or neutron is that there may be more than three quarks, because additional quark-antiquark pairs can pop in and out of existence. So, at any given time there could be five or seven or any odd number of quarks can make up a proton or neutron. This additional quarks clear out the vacuum. Then the gluon field will suppress in between them. And that is really what is binding these quarks together.

So, where is the mass of the proton coming from? Well obviously the constituent quarks do interact with the Higgs field and that gives them a small amount of Mass. But if we add up the quarks in the proton it would only account for about 1% of it's total mass.

 So, where is the rest of the mass coming from? The answer is energy (E = mc ²). The mass is coming from energy fluctuations in the gluon field and the quarks are interacting with those gluons and that is how the mass is generating. This theory is extraordinary because what we think of as ordinarily empty space actually that turns out to be the thing that gives us most of our mass.

We'll discuss more about virtual particle when we include "Hawking radiation" in our topic.

Quantum Fluctuation, Inflation and Big Bang (chapter 2)

"Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious and however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up"- Stephen Hawking.

     Quantum Fluctuation : In quantum physics, a quantum Fluctuation or quantum vacuum Fluctuation is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in Space, as explained in Heisenberg's " uncertainty principal ". This allows the creation of particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles.

     So, particle-antiparticle pairs can be created from " nothing ". That is from no particles to two particles, but energy must be provided. So, these particles can be viewed as having been created from the energy.

     But energy can neither be created nor destroyed, rather it transformers from one form to another. For instance, Chemical energy can be converted to kinetic energy in the explosion of a stick of Dynamite.

     But regarding the fact " The Big Bang created from nothing ", now cosmologist have replayed that the universe formed spontaneously. Recent Scientific theory explain energy can be produce in different subatomic fields by the form of particle's mass. We'll discuss more on this topic in my upcoming chapter.

     Inflation : In physical cosmology, cosmic Inflation or just Inflation is a theory of exponential expansion of Space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch lasted from 10⁻³⁶ seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularity to sometime between 10⁻³³ and 10⁻³² seconds after the singularity. Following the inflationary period, the universe continues to expand, but at a less rapid rate.

     The Inflation Theory proposes a period of extremely rapid expansion of the universe during it's first few moments. It was developed around 1980 to explain several puzzles with the standard Big Bang theory, in which universe expands relatively gradually throughout it's history. The Big Bang theory is the leading explanation about the Universe as we know it started with a small singularity, then inflated over the next 13.799 billion years to the cosmos that we know.

     Cosmic Inflation asked new questions on our very understanding of what the beginning of our universe even means. The Big Bang theory describes the earliest time of our universe amazingly organised. It has made predictions that have been verified beyond reasonable doubt. But two significant problems with the simple model tell us that something strange must have happened in early times, an insane growth that we call Inflation. The observable universe is extremely huge ( approximate diameter 93 billion light years ) that two opposite distant points should never have had time to communicate with each other. And yet, at some point in the distant past they must have been in contact. The cosmic microwave background ( CMB ) tells us that they were once close enough together to become perfectly smoothly mixed. This smoothness of the CMB is known as horizon problem.

     We can use the apparent size of the very subtle fluctuations in the CMB to measure the flatness of the fabric of the universe of Space-time. For example, if we draw a triangle on a flat sheet of paper, then it's always 180 degree. Now if we try to draw the same triangle on a surface of a sphere like a football, then the angles become more than 180 degree, which is known as positive curvature. But on a negative curvature hyperbolic plane a saddle like structure they become less. Triangles in 3D Space obey exactly the same rules as on 2D surface, and their geometry measure the curvature of Space.

     If we consider the same process in our universe on very large scale then we can find out our universe flat or curve. And proper measurement proves the curvature of our universe is within 0.4 of 1% of perfect flatness.

     So what? The universe is flat. No, actually it is extremely weird. An expanding universe doesn't tend to stay flat, even if it starts that way. If our universe is flat to within 0.4 of a percent now, then in the first instant, the universe had to be flat to one pert in 10 to the power of 62.

     This flatness problem is just as much of an issue as the horizon problem. Both seem strange if we assume that regular gravity was always the only force affecting the rate of expansion after the initial kick of the Big Bang.

     So, now it turns out that we can fix both of these problems with a single, elegant idea called Inflation. So, the idea is start with a universe so crunched down that the entire currently observable part of it was all causally connected. After that, for a very short period of time blow it up much faster than the speed of light. Then most of it appears causally disconnected, at which point Inflation stops and regular expansion takes over. So, universe retains it's once subatomic smoothness and flatness. According to Inflation the universe that we see in a tiny part of a vastly larger universe that itself may well be curved. This Inflation solves both the horizon and flatness problem.

     Actually for last 13.799 billion years the universe has expanded by about the same amount that it did during Inflation. Now after those 13.799 billion years still our universe expanding faster that light but this time the culprit is Dark energy. And yet light is the ultimate speed limit. Also the theory of quantum Fluctuation and Inflation has suggested that the Big Bang was not the only cosmic event ever happened. So, from here we can start imagine a multiverse. We'll discuss all those highly likely possibilities on my upcoming chapters. So stay with me.

'Cosmology'-the birth of Science (Chapter 1)

  " I think that it's important for scientist to       explain their work, particularly in cosmology.   This is now answers many questions once asked   of religion" -Stephen Hawking.

   Our universe is the most mysterious place, which is bound by two extraordinary things 'Time' and 'Space'. In this Space-time all matter and energy created which include planets, moons, star, nebula, galaxies, Blackhole etc. The exact size of our entire universe is still unknown. 

The metric expansion of space is the increase of the distance between two distant parts of the universe with Time. It is an intrinsic expansion where by the scale of space itself changes, carrying the early universe with it as it grew. It is assumed by observation that galaxies are distributed uniformly in all direction, meaning that our universe has neither an edge nor a center. Discoveries in this century have suggested that our Universe had a beginning from nothing and it is expanding at an increasing rate. Which is more mysterious. The majority of mass in our Universe appears to exist in an unknown form known as Dark Matter.

But the earliest scientific models of the Universe were developed by ancient Greek and Indian philosophers and were geocentric, placing Earth at the centre of the Universe. Over the centuries, more precise astronomical observations led Nicolaus Copernicus to develop the Heliocentric model with the Sun at the centre of the Solar System. Further observational improvements led to the realization that our solar system is located in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is one of many galaxies in our Universe. And all started from a single event known as Big Bang.

                                                                                             According to Big Bang theory, Space and time emerged together 13.799 billion years ago, and all fixed amount of energy and matter has become less dense as the Universe has expanded. After the initial expansion, the Universe cooled, allowing the first subatomic particles to form and then simple atoms. Giant clouds later merged through gravity to form galaxies, stars, and everything else seen today. It is possible to see object that are now further away than 13.799 billion light-years because space itself has expanded. This means that object which are now 46 billion light years away can still be seen in their distant past, because at that time they were much closer to us.     

  

There are many competing hypotheses about the ultimate fate of the Universe and about what, if anything, preceded the Big Bang, while other physicists and philosophers refuse to speculate, doubting Big Bang theory. Some physicists have suggested various multiverse hypotheses, in which the Universe might be one among many Universes that exist. From here new theory emerge, like String Theory. String Theory allow us to mix Einstein's 'theory of relativity' with 'quantum physics'. Hence we can compare atoms and string's behaviour with stars and galaxie's behaviour in Space-time curvature. We speculate and calculate new possibilities like higher dimensions, super string, worm holes, white holes, Higgs Boson, multiverse, parallel Universe and many more. Our science explain that Time can play tricks with us, and Space-time curvature made our universe mysterious and farther complicative.

But talking about the birth of Science, We the human of planet Earth divided our Science into three parts, Physical science, Chemical science and Biological science. We raised tons of questions throughout in our short human history. Some of them are scientific and others are philosophical. Questions like what is the purpose of life? how Big Bang happened? How life on earth formed? Why we leave in a perfect planet, in a perfect Galaxy which in a perfect Universe? How our Brain works? Science are hunting answer for every puzzle ever asked and giving us extraordinary conclusions.

We'll periodically discuss more on those topic later. But first collaborate for this magnificent journey of Science. We'll debate every possibility impartially. We'll create a better Scientific society by asking questions.