What is space, vaccuum, or nonexistence?

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The discussion explores the nature of space, energy, and matter, questioning their distinctions from nothingness. It emphasizes that matter occupies space and has mass, while energy is defined as the capacity to perform work. The conversation touches on the philosophical implications of existence, with some participants suggesting that matter may be a manifestation of vibrating space. The dynamic nature of energy is acknowledged, alongside the complexities of time, which is debated as either a real dimension or an illusion. Ultimately, the thread reflects a blend of scientific and philosophical perspectives on these fundamental concepts.
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What I mean to say is what is energy? I mean what is matter? What does it have that separates it from blankness or nothingness?

Thanks.
 
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It's something we can measure.
 
It sounds like this is a rather philosophical question, but I think the answer to your question is that matter and energy exist and blankness or nothingness does not exist.
 
Energy is the ability to do work. And matter is something that takes up space and has a measurable mass. Does that answer satisfy you?
 
the indivisible 'atom' of existence is the 'event'. events happen. non-existence doesn't happen.

mass and energy desribe 'how' events (in our universe) happen.
 
Not bad. But how do events "happen"? How do mass and energy "describe" this?
 
discretely
 
granpa said:
discretely
Yeah. So don't go blabbin' it around.:biggrin:
 
Skhandelwal said:
What I mean to say is what is energy? I mean what is matter?
Make up your mind. Which is it: space, vacuum, nonexistence, energy or matter?
 
  • #10
I guess I should have posted this philosophical forum...admin...can you move this into philosophy so people are free to say what they want?
 
  • #11
Matter is a thing
Energy is a thing

When you don't have either you have no thing.
 
  • #12
What is the difference btw matter and energy?
 
  • #13
Matter is something that you can touch, and see around you. In philosphical terms, energy is a force fueling everything. I physics term, the ability to do work.
 
  • #14
Then what keeps the energy dynamic? If it is big bang then what started big bang?

<< post edited by berkeman >>
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #15
Alright, if energy is the force that enables work, then energy itself is dynamic, but it takes the form of elements, which we can either see or feel. Big Bang? - that theory is very controversial. Okay - immense compression of energy. One of it's properties is that it's dynamic, extremely. Therefore, I didn't like to be compressed in one place.
 
  • #16
I don't like this kind of reasoning.

If this theory is controversial then why don't you guys tell me how you think about it?
 
  • #17
Skhandelwal said:
What I mean to say is what is energy? I mean what is matter? What does it have that separates it from blankness or nothingness?

Thanks.

It appears that the answer to your question is that we really do not have the complete picture of matter and energy. As of now they are concepts which will finally lead to a complete understanding...
 
  • #18
Matter and energy, according to Albert Einstein (and no-one has been able to show he's wrong yet) are equivalent. They aren't the same thing, obviously. Mass has an energy equivalent and vice-versa. Simple and succinct, or even beautiful. Certainly elegant.
 
  • #19
JoeDawg said:
Matter is a thing

Some people are saying that the simplest explanation of matter is that it is space vibrating.

1.3 Matter is formed from the Wave Motion of Space

It is well known that there is a particle-wave duality for light and matter. Given this most simple science theory is founded on One substance, Space, we must consider the Properties of Space, thus we cannot add 'parts / particles' to Space. So we are left only with waves.
Thus there is only one solution - Space must exist with the Properties of a Wave Medium, and matter is formed from wave motions of Space.
So Aristotle and Leibniz were largely correct, they just did not realize that matter's activity / motion really came from the wave motion of Space (a vibrating Space / substance is a simple way to imagine it).

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Most-Simple-Scientific-Theory-Reality.htm

Energy is a thing

Not at all, its a property of what we often think of as a "thing":

In physics and other sciences, energy (from the Greek ??, energos, "active, working")[1] is a scalar physical quantity that is a property of objects and systems of objects which is conserved by nature. Several different forms, such as kinetic, potential, thermal, electromagnetic, chemical, nuclear, and mass have been defined to explain all known natural phenomena.
Energy is converted from one form to another, but it is never created or destroyed. This principle, the conservation of energy, was first postulated in the early 19th century, and applies to any isolated system. According to Noether's theorem, the conservation of energy is a consequence of the fact that the laws of physics do not change over time.[2]
Although the total energy of a system does not change with time, its value may depend on the frame of reference. For example, a passenger in an airplane has zero kinetic energy relative to the airplane, but nonzero kinetic energy relative to the earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy

Edit: With these definitions in mind we might answer the OP's question (what is space?) with "everything".
 
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  • #20
What started time?
 
  • #21
Skhandelwal said:
What started time?

Time is the human interpretation of change (rates of change) and how different rates of change relate to each other.
 
  • #22
So Does time really exist? Or is all relative like velocity?
 
  • #23
Skhandelwal said:
So Does time really exist? Or is all relative like velocity?

We need a physicist to answer that one. And here we are in the middle of a physics forum.-)
 
  • #24
Yes. Time exists. Otherwise, there would be no "now".
 
  • #25
Please, please, please don't say that "energy" is a "force". If you are using the physics definitions of those words, that is obviously untrue. If you are not, then it is non-sense until you have told us what definitions you are using.
 
  • #26
MaWM said:
Yes. Time exists. Otherwise, there would be no "now".

What if there is only 'now'?
 
  • #27
Yes. Energy is a force, whether you like it or not, that fuels everything. I'm using the term "force" because actually energy is just energy. In physics, Energy is the capability to do work. Otherwise, it's hard to explain:

Energy is dynamic, if you will. It allows everything it fuses with the ability to something, and in that, physics is correct. It's also correct in saying that there are different types or kinds of energy. But there's also the fact that Reiki masters use energy, your Aura is pure energy, and there are millions of points (called Charkras) in your body that allow energy to move through the body, but only seven main are always in focus, because there are just too many of the others to take into account. People with telekinesis do not exactly use their brains alone, but also use their outer energy as a medium to lift the chair in front of them so that their daughter can vacuum the carpet underneath. So now we've got both sides: the scientific side, and the metaphysical. Which side will you go with? There may be other things out there.I do not know. But on our earth, this is what I've seen. And o yeah, have you been to a church or a prayer and a pagan ritual? energy is used in both accounts. The amount of energy a person can focus on the thing he wants determines how quickly a person gets it, or not at all.
 
  • #28
JoeDawg said:
What if there is only 'now'?

Our theories and expirements allow us to predict the future and arrange the past in a logical fashion. I can think about things that are not happening now, and they will come to pass if I use the proper science.
 
  • #29
PhysiksFreak said:
But there's also the fact that Reiki masters...

Reiki masters of full of something, its not just 'energy', and it requires a shovel.
 
  • #30
MaWM said:
Our theories and expirements allow us to predict the future and arrange the past in a logical fashion. I can think about things that are not happening now, and they will come to pass if I use the proper science.

You remember the past, now.
You predict the future, now.

You experience, now.
Anything else is conjecture.
 
  • #31
JoeDawg said:
You remember the past, now.
You predict the future, now.

You experience, now.
Anything else is conjecture.


So? The theories work. The expirements work. I won't be impressed unless you show me evidence that time is an illusion.
 
  • #32
MaWM said:
I won't be impressed unless you show me evidence that time is an illusion.

I don't much care what would impress you.

You said: Yes. Time exists. Otherwise, there would be no "now".

That is faulty logic. Now exists, and a theory of time can be inferred from that, but I certainly can't prove it.

If anyone needs to prove anything, its you who claim that 'time' also exits, when it indeed could be an illusion.

The fact that 'now' exists doesn't prove that your 'theory of time' is correct, regardless of how impressed you are with yourself.
 
  • #33
HallsofIvy said:
Please, please, please don't say that "energy" is a "force". If you are using the physics definitions of those words, that is obviously untrue. If you are not, then it is non-sense until you have told us what definitions you are using.

Because of this forum I am able to avoid thinking of energy as a force. What I have so far is that energy is a form of measurement used to measure the amount of "work" or motion taking place in a specific condition. Energy can also be "potential" in that there is no work taking place but there is the potential for work to take place ie: gravity.

Maybe this is why time and energy are considered a dimension... as in a "measurement". I don't know. Any physicists on board??!-)
 
  • #34
Skhandelwal said:
What started time?
I'm not sure that time ever "started." I'm not sure if there are those who have studied this formally as it seems somewhat speculative and philosophical. Personally, I think of time as a rather ordinary dimension like width, height, and depth. While consciousness moves forward in time, the past and future still exist. They're just located at a different point in space-time.
 
  • #35
JoeDawg said:
Reiki masters of full of something, its not just 'energy', and it requires a shovel.

Umm, JoeDawg, You should go get some Reiki yourself. Maybe then you'll believe?
 
  • #36
JoeDawg said:
I don't much care what would impress you.

You said: Yes. Time exists. Otherwise, there would be no "now".

That is faulty logic. Now exists, and a theory of time can be inferred from that, but I certainly can't prove it.

If anyone needs to prove anything, its you who claim that 'time' also exits, when it indeed could be an illusion.

The fact that 'now' exists doesn't prove that your 'theory of time' is correct, regardless of how impressed you are with yourself.

In fact, he's damn right, without time, there would be no "now", but nor would there be a tomorrow, which would mean that there would have been no past as well (I'm taking this viewpoint from time zero.). Time is also an illusion, do you know why? because no where in the world time is EXACTLY the same. Just because man made it so, it doesn't mean nature has to go along with it. Without time, there would be no date with the hot girl down the street at ten o clock, nor would there be lunch with mom at twelve, nor breakfast with dad at nine, nor going to my best friends birthday on Sunday. If we're discussing about time, we need to think outside the box, and then only we might get an idea of what time is.
 
  • #37
PhysiksFreak said:
In fact, he's damn right, without time, there would be no "now", but nor would there be a tomorrow, which would mean that there would have been no past as well (I'm taking this viewpoint from time zero.). Time is also an illusion, do you know why? because no where in the world time is EXACTLY the same. Just because man made it so, it doesn't mean nature has to go along with it. Without time, there would be no date with the hot girl down the street at ten o clock, nor would there be lunch with mom at twelve, nor breakfast with dad at nine, nor going to my best friends birthday on Sunday. If we're discussing about time, we need to think outside the box, and then only we might get an idea of what time is.

No so true. Without "now" there would be another name describing the same thing.
 
  • #38
JoeDawg said:
I don't much care what would impress you.

You said: Yes. Time exists. Otherwise, there would be no "now".

That is faulty logic. Now exists, and a theory of time can be inferred from that, but I certainly can't prove it.

If anyone needs to prove anything, its you who claim that 'time' also exits, when it indeed could be an illusion.

The fact that 'now' exists doesn't prove that your 'theory of time' is correct, regardless of how impressed you are with yourself.

As I said, our theories work, and our expirements wok. These theories and expirements incorporate time explicitly. There a a few conclusions we can draw from this. "Time exists" or "Time is an illusion", for example. "Time is an illusion" says nothing about the universe. It says that time doesn't exist, but doesn't say what does. It has no predictive power. On the the other hand, "Time exists" puts very strict and specific limitations on our universe. Limitations which do indeed appear in the expirements we perform. Thus, these expirements are strong validations of our idea that time exists.

This is almost the same argument as evolution vs creationism
 
  • #39
Hmm.. the above post can be summarized most succintly with "Time as an illusion is not falisifiable"
 
  • #40
same

the same question happns to come in my mind frequently.. sometims it seems to me that vacuum between two particles itself something.. nothing is also something.but i can answer this in a way like blankness or vacuum can be defined like it has no response on any event to support or oppose the event
 
  • #41
PhysiksFreak said:
Umm, JoeDawg, You should go get some Reiki yourself. Maybe then you'll believe?

I have no interest in people who make money from selling snake oil. Masters indeed.
 
  • #42
MaWM said:
As I said, our theories work, and our expirements wok.
Only in general... theories of time are vague at best and only descriptive.

This is not an 'empirical' issue. Its an epistemological one. I can say that now exists because I experience it 'directly'. I don't experience tomorrow or yesterday the same way. A theory of time may in fact predict lots of things, but you're really missing the point here. It is always now. You can't predict future, unless you assume that a future is there to predict. So confirming that, with predictions, is circular logic.
"Time exists" puts very strict and specific limitations on our universe.
Its a good assumption, no more. The question of whether it is an illusion however has no relevance to predictability. A good magician can fool you every time, even when you know how the trick works. Such is the nature of illusion.
This is almost the same argument as evolution vs creationism

No, the creationism argument falls down because it assumes an entity which demands an infinite regression, even though it claims the opposite. Arguments about what time is, address the nature of knowledge, and are not necessarily limited to the ontological .
 
  • #43
Random comments.

If I may be so bold, time is something that is both experienced and measurable. Ask youself how do we experience time vs how do we measure time? How can you separate now from the past and future? To experience time you must make a comparison, a measurement, in order for you to "know" there is a "now" you must have something to compare to ie. past or future. Without the past or future "now" is meaningless. Can you really say that we can experience time without there taking place some form of measurement or comparison? If there were only 'now' with no past or future, there would be nothing to experience.
Any measurement we make or experience we have relies on the ability to make a comparison. In the context of time it is restricted to a comparison within the cyclical nature of events, in essence the level of predictability of the universe. A clock tics, atoms vibrate, sound resonates, every system we use to measure or experience the universe even our own biology our brain, our hearts are cyclical in nature. This is unfortunately the difficulty with time because we measure it and experience it by comparing one systems predictability with anothers. Could we experience time if the universe wasn't predictable? If there were no level of predictability in the universe would measurement even be possible? How could anything be measurable if there were no predictablity in time? Without predictibility measurment would have no meaning and as such our ability to differentiate 'now' from the past or future would dissappear. In other words, in order for us to measure or experience time the universe must in fact, be predictable.
If we accept we exist and that we experience time we must accept that a past must exists and future must exist and that there is a level of predictability to the universe, else we must question the validity of our experience. Whether or not time is an illusion comes down to whether or not you trust your experience to be a represenation of reality or just an illusion.

Just my two cents.
 
  • #44
Ocularis said:
Without the past or future "now" is meaningless. Can you really say that we can experience time without there taking place some form of measurement or comparison? If there were only 'now' with no past or future, there would be nothing to experience.

Lets pretend I'm an all powerful demon and I created you this instant. When I created you I put in a whole host of 'memories' into you. These memories gave you a sense of what the future might be like. Then, demon that I am, I annihilate you in the very same second.

Would your experience of 'now' have been any different?
 
  • #45
JoeDawg said:
Lets pretend I'm an all powerful demon and I created you this instant. When I created you I put in a whole host of 'memories' into you. These memories gave you a sense of what the future might be like. Then, demon that I am, I annihilate you in the very same second.

Would your experience of 'now' have been any different?

Theres that reasoning again. An all-powerful demon could have created you in infinitely many ways. He chose to create you with memories that match those you would have if time existed. Since the existence of time imposes specific requirements on your memories, and the existence of an all-powerful demon does not, such memories should be taken as evidence of the existence of time given a lack of evidence to the contrary.

Again, your all powerful demon theory is unfalsifiable, the existence of time is not. Therefor, between the two, the existence of time is the default conclusion given some supporting evidence and a lack of contradicting evidence
 
  • #46
MaWM said:
Again, your all powerful demon theory is unfalsifiable, the existence of time is not.

Its not a theory. No one is advocating it, nor believes it to be true, no one is doing experiments about it. This is reasoning, not lab work.

Its a thought experiment that demonstrates the primacy of consciousness.

Whether time exists or not, is NOT EVEN THE QUESTION. You can't even discuss that question, until you acknowledge consciousness.

Now exists, we can't avoid this, based on our experience of now and our memories we can then derive a notion of what is 'past'. From that we can infer a future. We can make connections.

But I'm repeating myself and this is phil 101 type stuff... ah well.
 
  • #47
JoeDawg said:
Its not a theory. No one is advocating it, nor believes it to be true, no one is doing experiments about it. This is reasoning, not lab work.

Its a thought experiment that demonstrates the primacy of consciousness.

Whether time exists or not, is NOT EVEN THE QUESTION. You can't even discuss that question, until you acknowledge consciousness.

Now exists, we can't avoid this, based on our experience of now and our memories we can then derive a notion of what is 'past'. From that we can infer a future. We can make connections.

But I'm repeating myself and this is phil 101 type stuff... ah well.

Your distinction between how you know that now exists and how you know that the past exists is arbitrary. How do we know that now exists? Because of our senses? Because we can reason about it? That means by expirement; our senses are merely scientific instruments. Our senses could be tampered with, our reasoning could be tampered with just as easily as our memories could be tampered with. The way we know "now" is not significantly different than how we know the past. (And, if youre going to tell me that we know the past exclusively from memory, remember that "now" is long gone before I can process any information about it, since that processing takes time. That is to say, we know "now" entirely from memory as well.)

Without memory there could be now thought, and all data is past data.
 
  • #48
MaWM said:
Your distinction between how you know that now exists and how you know that the past exists is arbitrary. How do we know that now exists? Because of our senses? Because we can reason about it? That means by expirement; our senses are merely scientific instruments. Our senses could be tampered with, our reasoning could be tampered with just as easily as our memories could be tampered with. The way we know "now" is not significantly different than how we know the past. (And, if youre going to tell me that we know the past exclusively from memory, remember that "now" is long gone before I can process any information about it, since that processing takes time. That is to say, we know "now" entirely from memory as well.)

Without memory there could be now thought, and all data is past data.

Here's how to distinguish "now" from everything else. I'll use the Jello model because it is the easiest way to grasp what I'm saying.

There are two "nows".

"Now" number 1 is characterized by all the phenomena an individual experiences in their immediate environment.

"Now" number 2 is characterized by all of the phenomena taking place everywhere whether the individual experiences it or not.

"Now number 1" can be depicted as an isolated bit of jello with an event horizon of about a nanolitre.

"Now number 2" can be depicted as the infinite bowl of jello.

There's no mention of past or future. This is because those constructs are strictly subjective and relative to the position of "now number 1" as it stands in the rest of the "now number 2".

That's one aspec of "now"
 
  • #49
JoeDawg said:
I have no interest in people who make money from selling snake oil. Masters indeed.

True Reiki masters do not sell snake oil you dolt. Why don't you read it up and then come and blabber to me?
 
  • #50
PhysiksFreak said:
True Reiki masters do not sell snake oil you dolt. Why don't you read it up and then come and blabber to me?

So they don't charge, how noble of them. Still BS nonsense, though.
 

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