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“Nothing” doesn’t exist. Instead, there is “quantum foam” (bigthink.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Can quantum particles be blocked or contained or otherwise impeded from entering a vessel?

Are they truly just appearing and disappearing or do they just move so fast (like, faster than C) that it only appears that way?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Nope, they actually appear and disappear. The idea is that even in vacuum there's a certain amount of background energy and that energy can randomly turn into matter-antimatter pairs in what is basically the inverse of matter-antimatter annihilation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

To a certain degree, as they mentioned in the article regarding the casimir effect. While one cannot keep out the quantum foam entirely, it can be restricted to specific wavelengths by altering the volume of the space.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

So with a sufficiently small volume of space, we would have an actual nothing again? Or the foam can go infinitely small?