Thread: Outer space
View Single Post
  #3  
Old December 14th 16, 11:05 PM posted to sci.space.history
David Spain
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,901
Default Outer space

On 12/10/2016 6:26 PM, wrote:
If nature abhors a vacuum, why then is space pretty much a vacuum?Just got
thinking about it last night.

That's an old saying based on early experiments having to do with
entropy. Usually as applied when a vacuum chamber is exposed to a
pressurized chamber. As Jeff points out there is far more vacuum than
"non-empty" space-time, ie non-gravity well space-time. Thus it's fair
to say space-time or our Universe, *is* for any reasonable definition of
"is", a vacuum*.

However, there is some truth to it beyond the conventional wisdom, but
only in the quantum extreme. I suggest you Google the term "Zero Point
Energy" if you are not already familiar with that phrase.

Here's a reasonable starting point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy

Also lookup the phrase "Casimir Effect" for further mind distortion. ;-)

Dave

*Speaking of gravity wells, for those fortunate enough to live in the
proximity of the center of a dense star cluster where spherical gaseous
formations are dense enough and hot enough but not too radioactive to
provide a livable atmosphere even for rocky bodies that are not
typically dense enough to hold their own atmosphere, the inhabitants of
such bodies might start out with a very different view of space-time,
until they developed telescopic techniques that would demonstrate
otherwise! What a shocker!