/sci/ - Science & Math

>>6977217
nothing

Heavily dependent on the use of the word "nothing". In a sense lacking technicality, "nothing" can be attributed to the lack of significance associated with a certain object or event. Certain Greek philosophers would argue that "nothing" can not exist, as everything is composed of something and can not exist without a previously occurring event.


Linguistically, "nothing" is an indefinite pronoun, which is dependent on a different event, concept, object, etc.. "Nothing" in the Buddhist sense is the absence of diverting thought, or an attainable state of mind which allows absolute concentration. From a physics prospective, "nothing" merely denotes a lack of matter or fields though it is not absolute nothingness as it is not possible to have an area which lacks both fields and matter.

As far as we know, literally everything has had some cause. Except the big bang, which just burst into existence from nothing. "Before" the big bang our universe was infinitesimally small and space and time itself did not exist yet. We also know our universe expands. So what is the nothing that contained our infinitesimally small universe, and what is it expanding into?

the opposite of something

baby don't hurt me

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/

>>6977217
In the useless philosophical meaning: The absence of anything. Once there is anything, it's not nothing. We don't know if that is even possible.

In the physical meaning: No time and space.

I'm reminded of when I asked 'What is space?' and got a bunch of non-answers about it being where everything is, but not what space itself is. Fuck you, it has to consist of something ('it consist of space' is insufficient because the challenge is in defining space as a type of thing like matter or energy with actual properties) because it is, which is the opposite of not being.

Space can't be the absence of something because you don't just randomly encounter spots of not-space in space, objects don't displace space when entering it because they have to be in it in order to be at all as far as our universe is concerned. If I select a cubic metre worth of space, it contains space down to the last cubic goddamn nanometre.

Space HAS TO BE some sort of non-matter equivalent of substance.

>>6977308
How do you go about observing nothing?

>>6977314
Isn't it possible to locate celestial objects by observing how space is warped by their gravity, or did my brain just make up a bunch of nonsense?

>>6977319
What does that have to do with "nothing" in the sense of "no space".

How do you observe the absence of space?

>>6977269
> everything came from nothing
And you wonder why people laugh at scientists

>>6977324
I must've misunderstood the implication in your question.

>>6977217
Nothing is often used the absence of. From instance, you can say you're room is empty and describe the room there nothing in my room.

>>6977325
Because they can't understand science?

>>6977233
Meta

>>6977217
>What is nothing
>is
You were wrong from the beginning

>>6977355
Help me understand.
It's becoming more and more the ultimate question for me. To truly understand the concepts of nothing and infinity.

>>6977335
As opposed to pretending to understand it to feel smart?

>>6977361
>>>/lit/

>>6977236
other philosophers would argue that "nothing" cannot exist because once there is "nothing", "nothing" because "something" as it's described as "nothing", making it "something", therefore it isn't "nothing".

tl;dr we cannot know nothin

>>6977364
Yes science is elitism, you got us. We don't explore the universe, we just make complicated shit up to get money from the taxpayer.
People don't really need science, common sense explains everything and whenever you don't understand something then it's wrong. Palin for president btw.

>>6977217
A word.

>>6977377
Doubles of truth. Shut down NASA immediately!

>>6977361
Matter and radiation are generally what people consider "something." Particles (with or without mass) and waves, they are what people consider "something". However there is more to the universe than just particles and waves, there is also dimension and fields. Space and time are dimension, they are the degrees of freedom waves and particles have to move through, and are bothing "something". Fields are the classical and quantum potential that permiates all of space and time and means that even in the hardest vacuum in between galaxies where you would expect to find nothing, energy is produced due to quantum mechanics. Which means there is "something" everywhere in the universe.

Nothing would be the lack of something. No space, time, particles, waves, or fields. You cannot even think about it as the vaccuum of space because space is still something.

>>6977385
>waves [...] are what people consider "something"
Waves of what?

>>6977395
Photons, electrons, bosons, take your pick

>>6977217
Yes

your future

>>6977217

a closed spherical spacetime of zero radius.

pic unrelated.

>>6977580

>>6977674
What has science done?

>>6977269
>As far as we know, literally everything has had some cause.

Nope.
lrn2quantummechanics

absense of things

I really don't think science can answer these questions

>>6977948
>I really don't think
Agreed.

>>6977325
Find me where a serious physicist says everything came from nothing. You've bastardized their toughuts

>>6977217
A human concept. Nothing doesn't exist, it's nothing. Usually lexically it would indicate a lack of something, but "nothing" doesn't exist, because it's nothing.

>>6978366
Ya, but 'something' is a concept, too. So by your reasoning it doesn't exist either. Which is not to say I wouldn't agree with that reasoning, just pointing out the implication.

>>6977314
Send light through it and measure the speed. Only in vacuum will the speed be c

>>6977217
AHEM. Allow me to chime in. Theoretically, nothing is everything. There physically cannot be a lack of something, and, if you would like to get philosophical, the absolute lack of something to the point where there is none, means that it is everything in itself due to their not being anything existing.

>>6978411
>if you would like to get philosophical
hell no >>>/lit/ >>>/x/

>>6977217
philosophically? physically? literally speaking?

literally speaking nothing means that theres not a thing there

physically speaking its probably when theres not a thing left inside a 3D area (no atoms, no forces..)
>inb4 162 dimensions

mathematically speaking nothing = everything - everything

philosophically speaking oh who gives a crap


OP Please... dont make things harder than they need to be

Why can't black holes collapse into something even smaller?
When I was a kid it was "alright, black holes are the most compact shit," but now when I hear that there are black holes several light- hours or days wide.

Can't they go deeper?

a lack of something

Nothing doesn't exist

>>6977355
Pretty much this. "What" asks for the essence of the thing, but the only things that can have an essence also have being.

It's a hard thing to get clear on though, since the funny thing about nouns is that they always pretend to be substances, i.e., things having being. One theology teacher or mine once pointed out "nothing" as a proof that the standard high school definition of a noun as a person place or thing is wrong, because nothing is by definition none of those things.

>>6978483
The event horizon of the black hole is not a physical object related to the black hole. The singularity (if there is one) is infinitely dense in every black hole. The event horizon is just a way about specifying the radial distance away from the center of the black hole where the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light.

>>6978375
I'm not the poster you replied to, but here's a better way of saying what he said. Most concepts are derived from beings that exist on their own somehow, but some concepts are derived from the negation of other concepts. One example of this is the concept of 'One,' which is the same idea as being, really, but with the added negation of manyness. "Nothing" is the most extreme case of this sort of thing. It is therefore able to exist in the mode of understanding as the scholastics would put it, without having first existed according to the mode of being, i.e. actual independent existence.

>>6978577
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's all a bit tricky to talk about these things because of the structure of our language. I don't think you have to derive nothingness from negation of a 'real' thing, though. (another issue is that negation goes both ways, so it seems like a matter of choice/focus to put one side rather than the other as fundamental.) In a sense nothing and something go together like two sides of a coin. How could you even perceive an object without it having boundaries of what you might perceive as 'nothing'? Kind of reminds me of those optical-illusion pictures that are two different objects depending on where you focus. Quite a rabbit hole... (or a duck ;) )

filibuster

are atoms things?

>>6979031
Are words things?

>>6979053
Sometimes

>>6978483
That's just the event horizon. The hole itself is just a tiny speck of infinite or near infinite density.

>>6979053
only if someone was around to hear it

>>6977674
>zero radius
>radius implies circle
>circle implies diameter
how the fuck do you get circularity then if 0+0=0

>>6977217
the absence of anything

>>6977217
an unstable state

thus, le universe

>>6977217

You are asking of the paradox of non-being: to say of a thing that is not that it is not is to say that it is something, viz., a thing that is not, and so it is. The conclusion is acceptable, but the argument is valid.

(A) If X denies the existence of something, then X refers to what X says does not exist;

(B) Things which do not exist cannot be referred to or mentioned; no statement can be about them.

Thus,

(C) If X denies the existence of something, then what X says does not exist does exist.

It requires little more than transitivity of implication. We need only rephrase premise (B) to read

(D) If X refers to or mentions something, Ks, then Ks exist.

then taking "Ks" to be "what X says does not exist," we have

(E) If X refers to or mentions what X says does not exist, then what X says does not exist does exist.

And, from (A) and (E), by transitivity, we reach the desired conclusion (C).

A Russellian solution would be to assume that "x exists" is not a predicate, so:

"This exists" is a conjunction of at "least one thing presently is this" and "at most one thing presents is this". To deny "This exists" is to deny the conjunction or:

~(∃x)(K(x) * (∀y)(K(y) -> x = y))

If we deny the latter we deny "There exists at least one thing that is this".

>>6977381
BEST ANSWER.

>>6977217
nothing is an English word used to describe the state of absence .

>>6977233
/thread

>>6977381
language game/10 my friend

>>6977217
{}

>>6978400
>send light through it
>it

implies something

>>6977217

>>6979309
>>6979309
>>6979309
>>6979309

>>6977217
It's nothing. It's the absence of anything. Nobody here can even begin to explain it.

>>6977217
The opposite, or the lack of something.

>>6977217
Nothing is the only thing that doesn't exist in any form.

And definitions are the only natural exception to what is defined.


like: Everything is relative except this definition of relativism.

Nothing cannot exist and has never existed or anything.

>>6981050
holy shit

>jayden smith

>>6977288
it's the opposite of everything moron.

nothing is the absence of all things

>>6977217
the absence of anything