Is Space Really Empty?
So space can bend and drag; but is it really empty?
Don’t say there’s nothing there to a physicist. Space has a seething quantum structure to it. I like to think of it as a pot of water on the stove with bubbles coming out. Space is like that. It’s always bubbling. We could see it if we had a powerful enough microscope.
What exactly is bubbling up out of space?
It’s matter and energy. It bubbles up in a totally random and spontaneous way.
Theory predicts this, but can we measure it?
Yes, we can, through something called the Casimir effect. If you take two sheets of metal and separate them by the thickness of a sheet of paper, what happens is this bubbling goes on in the space around the plates. You have bits of matter and energy coming into existence and disappearing. But the short distance between the plates restricts this bubbling. It’s like having a pressure differential, so you can measure the force. It’s not just play.
The above excerpt comes from a Washington Post iterview with S. James Gates Jr., a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland. Read the rest of the interview here.
…
Painting by Pavel Tchelitchew via but does it float
0 Comments