Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

That space in the absence of observable particles is effectively non-existent – which I think paraphrases post #2 and 3 – is, IMHO, correct. However, it’s important to note that modern physics doesn’t describe a perfect vacuum as truly being absent of particles, but rather consisting of a “sea” of usually undetectable virtual particles. Accordingly, the space that existed before the Big Bang (or whatever you want to call the beginning of our matter and energy-containing universe, if you believe it had a beginning) has never been absent of particles, so has in the formalism of quantum physics always “existed”. In theory (that is, according to one of the better accepted ones) the Big Bang was simply an unlikely (but, given enough time, inevitable) great fluctuation of the state of the virtual particles of the primordial vacuum.

It’s important to note that these particles are not merely intellectual abstractions, like the famous ”angels on the head of a pin” idea of middle ages theology. These virtual particle can and have been experimentally detected via experiments such as ones measuring the Casimir effect.

All this hints, to me, at a more fundamental theory of how the vacuum has virtual particles. Despite a couple of generations of pursuit of such theories producing arguable more literature and mathematical formalism than any one person could hope to master, these theories appear to me to be in their pre-infancies. We can only hope that we humans and our understanding-aiding tools are capable of successfully inventing such a theory, while being comforted that science shows no sign of becoming boring any time soon.