According to the Standard Model is space (all particles removed including virtual particles/quantum fluctuations) nothing/void or is it something? [closed]

Question

According to general and special relativity on which the standard model is based is space absolute empty void or something and I do Not mean the popular notion of space but the last possible reduced out of all possible matter space. Imagine high vacuum chamber one cubic meter. Now imagine you have so powerful suction mechanism able to extract out all particles including Quarks Gluons and of course the last thing that it could be left the virtual particles that pop into existence from empty space. What is now left in the chamber. Just pretend for a moment that the walls are so strong that they did not collapse while squeezing the chamber out of all matter, for the sake of learning. What is the GR and SR take on that. On one side SR explains how EM waves/light can propagate in empty space, on the other Einstein talks about bending space, inflation of space. Empty space cannot bend/inflate. Does he refer to the quantum fields extending throughout empty space which are responsible for the physical properties manifested by space like bending. In actuality does the quantum fields of the particles bend and do all the fancy stuff space does or the space itself stripped off every possible quantum field incl. virtual does on its own even after totally emptied out. I hope I did not answer my question my self at the end :). I look forward your expert answers. Please it is very important for me to know the exact situation not just hypothesis. For this reason I kindly recommend you answer to this question only if you have absolutely certain answer. I am not expert myself and I dont wish to get confused in 20 different contradicting opinions. One is saying it is something one is saying it is nothing. I already have this situation every time I visit forum and view replies on similar topics.I have read already all popular articles with fancy headlines: " Empty space is not empty" and than they describe the situation that I already know: it turns out it is not empty because there are phantom particles are poping in and out. This still does not answer my question what is left when we get rid of the phantom particles as well. Again I am not asking for personal opinions please respect that. I also have personal opinions on space that may differ from what I know so far is the standard model. This question is to figure out what is the main stream accepted formula about space learned in the universities and other official institutions as reference. Thank you for understanding

Edit: Here is what the linked post says "The General Relativity Vacuum is a space-time model region without matter'' "vacuum" and "empty space" is always the same thing Quantum field theory implies that the vacuum is full of virtual particles that emerge and quickly disappear However. None of those answers my questions whats left after we remove also quantum fluctuations/virtual particles

The only think that I might consider final answer would be:(citation from same post which presumably answers my question too)

"quantum mechanics implies that the vacuum corresponds to a very particular "state" - a vector on the Hilbert space - called |0⟩|0⟩. It is completely unique and as empty as you can get In particular, it is the eigenstate of the energy operator with the minimum allowed energy - essentially zero.

Ok so my last question is based on what you just read: Is this the correct answer: If we remove all quantum fluctuations/virtual particles we are left with this essentially zero nothingness state completely empty space. It says "it is empty as you can get" Is this the answer I am looking for. This would mean that empty space actually exist around the popping in and out of existence virtual particles? I still have no absolute confirmation that this is the exact situation we end up. Someone to clarify. Sending me to read other posts is not final confirmation since there is contradicting opinions there. Half people say no empty space the rest say indeed absolute nothingness is left. What is the truth? This is very fundamental question and I will not give up before I find 100 percent sure answer according to the standard model, not personal opinions. There must me accepted truth and reference about that in the world scientific community right? It is this exact reference I want o know not bunch of contradicting personal opinions. Important edit: Steve asked me: So let me recapitulate my point: no theory in physics today treats space as an empty void. Space can be emptied of matter, but it cannot be emptied of it's fields and waves, and it cannot be emptied of itself (i.e. leaving a volume of mere nothingness).Has that answered your question? I totally understand the quantum fields are irreducible as this if impossible attempts have been made and it is impossible in the real world. I proposed hypothetical removal of all quantum fields as an learning exercise only. If we remove all quantum fields we are left than with space which is obviously irreducible. I did not say I want to reduce space itself. I said imagine we clear space from all possible quantum fields representing fluctuations/ VP and everything. We now have only space. Is this now the nothingness scientists refer to when they say particles/universe/ fluctuations emerge out of nothing. If space itself is something and not nothing than why serious PhD write books and publications claiming that there is fundamental nothing, empty volume a nonexistence from which everything arises. I can post links to all scientific legitimate sources. Are they all wrong than and you and me we are right saying fundamental space is SOMETHING not nothing. If this is so how come everybody else say it is nothing.This question have to be resolved once and for all. I still wait for someone who can explain why scientific papers and books and people here in this forum in the same time try to convince me, no space is not empty is fundamentally something, its continuum of something and not nothing. In this case you force me to believe space is something while teachers in oxford say no problem particles are created out of nothing. Who is wrong They or me. I say space is something. What do you say. What everybody says. In my eyes everybody says space is something and when I turn my back everybody say no space is nothing. Just like the paradox of the double slit experiment where you get two different results by applying control and observation. I am here now with you and I am asking you, I am the conscious observer please give me this ultimate answer: Is space(underlying the quantum fields) infinite something or is it infinite nothing and if you thing space is finite because the universe is finite than is the finite space something or nothing. If quantum fields/VP dont emerge from nothingness empty space as claimed from WHAT do they emerge?

Answer 1

What physicists actually agree upon, are the methods of calculation, prediction, and measurement. There's something there, you need numbers to describe it, you can use other numbers to predict it.

However, physics does not give us a definitive answer to questions like: What is the true nature of numbers, space, existence, and consciousness? What is the relationship between them? To even get a possible answer to such questions, you need philosophy, ontology, metaphysics.

Most physicists do not have a systematic metaphysical framework in their heads. They have ways of speaking, ways of visualizing, a few striking concepts, a few opinions. The creators are different - Einstein and Bohr both wrote philosophical essays about their physics - but the nature of mathematical formulas is such, that someone can take their formulas and disagree with their philosophy.

In your remarks, I see two issues that you want resolved. If we emptied space of quantum fields, would it be nothing or something? And, what about someone like Lawrence Krauss who says the universe came from nothing?

Regarding Krauss, he doesn't say "empty space is nothing". He says there was "an absence of space itself".

In the quantum method of calculation known as a path integral, to calculate the probability of going from state A to state B, you consider all possible "histories" that begin with A and end with B, calculate a complex number for each individual history, and then combine those complex numbers to get the final probability.

If you applied this method to the universe, then state A would be three-dimensional space, filled with particles doing one thing, and state B would be three-dimensional space again, filled with particles doing another thing. And the individual histories appearing in the path integral would be, geometrically, four-dimensional - three space dimensions plus time.

Hartle and Hawking introduced a new type of path integral. State B is still three-dimensional space containing some distribution of matter. It's one boundary of the four-dimensional history in the path integral. But they consider a four-dimensional geometry which is smooth at the other end. It's a higher-dimensional analogue of a hollow sphere cut in half. If you have half a ping-pong ball, it has one "boundary", the circle where you cut it, and then the surface stretches back to a smooth pole.

In the Hartle-Hawking path integral, state B is defined on the single three-dimensional boundary of a four-dimensional analogue of the half ping-pong ball. The path integral is a sum over "half ping-pong balls that end in state B".

Krauss has decided to interpret this as "state A is nothingness". You can argue about the legitimacy of that interpretation - I would. I would say, you shouldn't make nothingness into a thing; there just is no state A. But one thing he is not saying, is that "empty space is nothingness". In this path integral, space itself does not stretch as far as state A, and that's why he speaks of "an absence of space itself".

Maybe this already answers your real question. But you also asked, what if we consider space minus the quantum fields? Well, that is already outside physics because that is not a physically possible action. So you could be saying, what if there were no quantum fields? Or you could be saying, ignore the quantum fields for a moment, even though in reality they are always joined with space, and just think about space by itself - is that nothing?

I think most physicists, if they went along with these questions, would say, no, pure space is not nothing. It still has geometry, it has dimensionality, I can say something about it, therefore it is not nothing. The people who would reject your scenario might be those, like the followers of Ernst Mach, who believe that space only exists as a relation between material objects, so space without matter is nothing, because space without matter cannot exist. But these are philosophical opinions rather than physical knowledge.

Answer 2

In relativity, "particles" do not really form an essential part of the theory. Space is treated as a medium in which waves account for all the phenomena described by it. It may often be talked about as "empty space" - but what this means is space devoid of matter.

Your trick of emptying the vacuum chamber with a pump, merely pumps out matter - it does not pump out space itself, or the residual electromagnetic and gravitational fields within it. And what is pumped out, still remains on the outer surface of the structure of the chamber - this external matter (as well as the structure of the chamber itself) still interacts with the space inside it.

If you understand that, even in a vacuum, space remains in that void (and space is something that cannot be pumped), then it is not troublesome to understand why "empty space" can still be curved or convey EM radiation. Because space is the medium, and it remains.

Quantum mechanics is equivocal on the subject, but in practice all massive "particles" also manifest wave-like behaviour in QM - so-called "matter waves". In fact, the term "particle" in QM bears little relation to the familiar Newtonian conception of a particle - which is a piece of solid, static, substance that has hard edges, and with space as a true void consisting of nothing.

So really, the state of the art in physics today, is that Newtonian particles do not exist - they have been falsified. Indeed, even in classical physics, once "fields" were introduced to account for electromagnetism, that was the death knell of conceiving empty space as a void. Instead, to explain fields and the apparent ability for EM to propagate through "nothing", they tried to conceive space as consisting of a "luminiferous aether" of little tiny particles which conveyed the electromagnetic interaction - a theory which itself has been falsified.

Now, you refer to "phantom particles popping in and out of existence". But are you thinking about these "phatom particles" in the Newtonian sense? Or are you thinking about them as something akin to a wave-like perturbation in the space-medium? Because the former is false, and the latter is closer to the truth as we know it.

So let me recapitulate my point: no theory in physics today treats space as an empty void. Space can be emptied of matter, but it cannot be emptied of it's fields and waves, and it cannot be emptied of itself (i.e. leaving a volume of mere nothingness).

Has that answered your question?