This is the third book in the series that included 'The Theory of Nothing' the "The Universe Revealed.' My purpose in this new book is to more fully explain how science is actually done and how science fits into our culture along with religion and p...
I talked about the concept of nothing in my first book. I though it was time to refine the discussion a bit.
In my first book I concluded that there can be nothing because even space has particles and energy fields. This idea is based on the concept of the material world. Nothing would mean the absence of anything, anything being matter or energy.
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However, nothing can have a more profound meaning, one that we use everyday. The act of doing nothing is the epitome of laziness. In this sense, there can be nothing, meaning no action. One place that this is used is in programming a computer. Assembly language is the very basic form of computer programming in which bits and bytes are manipulated down at the register level of a processor chip. There is a common Opcode (Operations code) NOP, which means No Operation. Essentially it tells the processor to skip a beat and do nothing. Here, nothing has a very important meaning. This illustrates the problem with language in general. An given word can have several meanings.
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Even in the world of physics, nothing does have a theoretical meaning. There is the quantum physics idea of quantum vacuum state, which is a state of the lowest possible energy. However, even this state is not empty because it has quantum particles popping in and out of existence. A pure quantum vacuum state would be nothing, but this is only a theoretical concept.
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And of course, nothing has meaning in mathematics. Zero is used to indicate nothing. The Arabs first used this concept extensively. Romans didn't have a zero in their number system. The problem with the math zero is that it's considered not only a digit but an even number, which would suggest that's it's not really nothing. However, it is used to express the absence of stuff.
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Chemistry and physics use zero in the concept of absolute zero, a state where molecular motion ceases. It's the lowest possible temperature, but it's only theoretical because no one has ever achieved that temperature. It's not even absolute zero in space.
All of this suggests that the concept of nothing has been nefarious and troublesome throughout history. Philosophers have argued about it and scientists have stubbed their toes on it. I suppose we could say that it's just an annoying concept that will never be completely understood.
