Question
Asked 23 February 2024
  • Gloucester University, Gloucester, UK

What is the simplest definition of the vacuum?

Different ideas exist for defining the vacuum or empty space. In QM for example, vacuum is assumed to be able to lend you any energy provided you give it back in a short time. How can nothing gives you anything for any period of time- short or long. So, is it possible to define the vacuum in a simpler way yet preserve its essential attributes it it had any.

All Answers (3)

James Garry
Independent Researcher
Riadh,
The uncertainty relationship with respect to time and energy is beyond doubt - just as the measurements of the position and momentum of an object are conjugate.
We don't need to explain it - it's an observable quality of this reality. The Lamb shift is widely thought to be an excellent example of this conjugation: the virtual photons it invokes arise from the uncertainty in energy and time.
Just a proposal: vacuum is the interspace between masses with the potential of hosting masses and their energy equivalents, and which also provides electromagnetic properties enabling electromagnetic radiation.
Riadh Al Rabeh
Gloucester University, Gloucester, UK
I don’t subscribe to the QM idea of borrowing energy from the vacuum and returning it in a short time for example, but the fact that this is needed together with QM entanglement to explain real physical processes, points to something in the vacuum that needed to be addressed- even in the classical world.
It is clear that the vacuum contains nothing and the simplest proof is to look into an empty patch of the sky and find that it is impossible to tell how deep it is. That is even if we knew that it contained radiation. But the moment this radiation condenses to create rest energy and matter(like a star), we immediately manage to find the distance to that star. That is space is defined only if matter is present. Radiation condenses to matter via self-trapping by going round in closed loops in an electromagnetic soliton[1]. Time is created at this moment if we counted the number of rounds radiation makes, which was first described in the Dirac Zitterbewegung frequency. Distance is also created if there was another mass to send radiation to reflect back while counting such rotations.
Accordingly, both time and distance are created with mass and are not defined before that. The effects of empty space also appear after the creation of mass. It is in the form of a powerful property we call symmetry. It is not possible in an isolated system to move one mass to one direction without moving an equal to the opposite direction(at the same time). The space will ensure the symmetry of such movement on the smallest known mass- as that of the electron. Put another way, it is impossible to move the center of mass of a system by forces from within. This leads to the conservation of momentum and the action and reaction equality of forces. The inverse square forces of electricity and gravity then follow from momentum conservation and so are Maxwell type equations for electricity and Gravito-magnetism [1] upon taking the speed of light and gravity equal to ‘c’.
Thus empty space while empty, commands an immense power on mass and is also the source of all the laws of physics we know- via its strongly enforced symmetry property on any mass big or small. This must be what lead to the ‘entanglement’ property of QM. Many other properties of empty space are given in the ‘elements’ of Euclid. If we choose any three masses in empty space for example, we find that the sum of the internal angles is 180 degrees, and if we draw any plane circle around a point we create a ratio of π between the circumference and diameter- similarly for the volume and surface area of a sphere. And if we try to fill a plane with circles of the same size touching each other, only the number 7 is possible with six circles surrounding the seventh in the middle and so on[2]. So, while empty space contains nothing, it nevertheless contains plenty of remarkable properties.
Empty space also behaves as a medium. Einstein equation E=mc^2 can be written as; c=sqrt(E/m)=sqrt((E/V)/(m/V))=sqrt(e/ρ). This says that the speed of light in vaccuum is determined by the same formula used for the speed of sound in material media since e is a stress/pressure and ρ is the density. The question is how can vacuum emulate matter when it is devoid of matter. The answer is in the fact that it is the other way round. Material media is only a poor replica of empty space, since empty space forms 99.99999..% of matter. That is to say; matter properties are the slightly perturbed vacuum properties!!!

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