How can something be the smallest

[JoseCapablanca]

how can something be the "smallest"

While siting at work and doing nothing as usual a thought came to me...how can there be space in between the "smallest particles" when and if we do find them? Dosnt space need to be occupied by something no matter how small or rudimentary? What will we find, What will we find...when we find, the smallest particle. Let's say that there cannot be space in between these particles and that these particles make a cohesive sheet through out the universe, I wonder what would happen if we could knock one of these particles out of alignment what would be "behind" or what would take its place seeing that space cannot be occupied by nothing (if that's the case I don't know that it is).
well that's as far as I got until my phone rang. Help me on this, I bombed physics in college, but hold a Love for the abstract thought.

 

[Norman]

if space cannot be empty... how do you explain a vacuum?

 

[JoseCapablanca]

how can somethin be empty if it doesn't exist

 

[UltraPi1]

Perhaps you shouldn't be thinking of particles as something exclusively as full... up against empty, but rather empty against the concept of full. In other words - Two concepts which cannot be separated by any logical mechanism whatsoever but which are nevertheless different -----like the front and back of a door. Zero and one fit this bill, and a plethora of these entities can share the geometry involved. Hence a point in space can be shared by several units. I.E. A point in space can be represented briefly by one unit while another and yet another is briefly representing that same point that is no longer represented by the unit that left.

If you break the mold - That of a physical universe in favor of a conceptual one that obeys physical laws. You could actually understand what I said above

 

[Norman]

Originally posted by JoseCapablanca
how can somethin be empty if it doesn't exist

Which are you claiming doesn't exist... vacuum or space?

 

[garytse86]

aren't we getting a bit philosophical here?

Is space a perfect vacuum anyway?

Gary

 

[ahrkron]

Originally posted by Norman
if space cannot be empty... how do you explain a vacuum?

Because "vacuum" is not the same as "nothing".

In a space where there is no matter, there is still a field that gives it its metric properties (namely, the gravitational field). If you have no metric field, then your "space" has no extension and no time intervals on it.

 

[garytse86]

if space-time is discrete then there must be a smallest piece of matter

Gary