What is space
Space and infinity are some of my favorite ideas, and they seem to naturally go together when we consider the universe. If there were a limit to the universe we could go to the edge and point, asking "how far is that way?" It seems most natural to me to think of space as infinite. And actually it seems to be infinite in opposite infinite ways. There is no end to how small something can shrink. And if I hop towards a limit, there are always infinite sub-steps. So infinity as space seems to be the ground of everything and "what is finite itself" adds form to the chaos. In the end, the world will always seem paradoxical because it has a paradoxically at it's root. What I'd like to know is whether space existing in all possible place is just the mirror image of space being infinitely divisible
Comments (40)
Doesn't substance in space have space in the sense of extension? Spatial things in space. But if space was infinitely compact how could it expand or be anything other than it is??
While space as in outer space does evoke in us a sense of exploration, it comes not with the feeling of being set free but with that of being lost and alone in the cold and dark vastness of the void.
Infinity, I sense, is somewhere in there - as you get on the horse and look out and realize that the land stretches out as far as the eye can see and beyond...
My space is my freedom, My limitation is my [math]\infty[/math].
Space is also inherently continuous (inside), just as it captures all reality in its hands (outside). The community of all points forms finite spatial objects but space itself is only continuous by being differentiated by its points, which are nothing. Space and continuous mean the same thing to me. All space is infinitely dense, so maybe space naturally expands
There is no space as a place; the quantum fields exhaust reality.
Isn't space just an observable lack of things in a select parameter? I wouldn't see how its infinite malleability would affect its physical properties. I mean, I can divide a chocolate chip cookie infinitely.
That wouldn't necessarily mean its infinite, nor would that make the finiteness of its particles chaotic.
I wouldn't necessarily think so anyway.
Perhaps...
In 1D, points are an issue since they're zero dimensional. How can any number of nothings (points) add up to something ( length)?
In 2D and higher dimensions, space is less problematic as the boundaries of any given area/volume are not points but either lines/faces.
Is not the only thing conceivable as physically existing something that is spatial?
A finite piece of space is infinite in it's compactness. There can be space without matter but no matter without space. Objects are spatial and infinitely compact in their spatial element I'm thinking
The quantum vacuum with its overall quantum field is the One and Only, as the simplest state. Its field waves provide for extension into dimension, and it is everywhere because 'Nothing' cannot be. There's no non acting and unresponsive space background as a place, as Newton had it, whose only quantity is volume.
Matter is composed of field.
It is my understanding that the universe is generally seen as finite but unbounded. The analog often used is a sphere. If we were on the surface, which we are, we could walk forever without ever getting to an edge.
Quoting Gregory
It is also my understanding that the universe is hypothesized to be granular at a sub-sub-sub-sub atomic level. The planck length, 1.616255(18)×10?35 m, is considered by some to be the smallest meaningful dimension of space.
At the back it has to expand. But how can this be? How can space be distorted near mass? How can space expand? You can simply state that the metric is changing, but that begs the question. What Einstein offered no explanation for was how mass curved spacetime. It merely stated that it accompanies mass. The how of the metric change remains unclear, and even gravitons fail.
Quoting TheMadFool
This is just as problematic. How do you put an infinity of lines together to get a 2d whole? The problem lies in the decomposition itself. When you cut a line, a plane, a volume up, it will cost you an infinite amount of time before the cutting is done. After the cutting you have taken away an èssential part. The connection. If the cut is symmetrc, theCan one bring back the connection by simply putting the two pieces back together? Will they magically form a whole again? Can the cut be reversed? No. Every time you cut, be it a line, a plane, or a volume, you take away a point, a line, or a plane, and if you do that an infinite number of times you take away an infinity of points (which are the boundaries of closed pieces of lines, ?ike a line lies at the boundary of a 2d structure; the point is the only one in the family that has itself as a boundary). So if you cut a line than by definition the connection point is lost. It doesn"t belong anymore to the two pieces by symmetry. It can't belong to both so it belongs to neither. so it belongs to neither. So if you cut up a ?ine, you basicaly cut it away. You can add a point after each cut. But the cut isn't undone by that. It's permanent. Two pieces of line can't form a whole anymore. You need glue that doesn't exist. If it existed you would see the point where you fixed the whole. A point is the only dimension you can't cut up.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Fields need space though to express their totality. Even the virtual ones. That's why graviton fields offer problems, as they carry information about the very space they travel in.
Quoting T Clark
That's popular science, which is maybe the best suited for this forum.There is indeed a combination of physical constants (h, c, and G) that gives rise to that lengthscale but that doesn't mean space is not continuous beneath that scales. What would it even mean that it is not meaningful? That there are no sub-points? That volòme and surface have an arbitrary relation? ?ike fixed closed line can contain an infinity of areas, or a fixed area an infinity of containing lines? And what about time? Should that be granular too because of that?
What do you think is meant by "hard vacuum" here? Is that as distinguished from a "soft vacuum"?
That's the case according to loop quantum gravity. According to general relativity and string theory it's continuous.
I'm not sure what fields mean if they are not spatial. The very word implies space
Quoting Michael
I identified it as a hypothesis, not a fact. The explanation I found indicates that below that size, addition of energy, as would be required to take a measurement, would cause a black hole to form. My point was that it is not yet established that space is continuous at all scales.
Quoting Cartuna
Another good reason not to communicate with you any further.
"Hard vacuum and soft vacuum are terms that are defined with a dividing line defined differently by different sources, such as 1 Torr,[43][44] or 0.1 Torr,[45] the common denominator being that a hard vacuum is a higher vacuum than a soft one." :chin:
Can space by itself be distorted? Without its connection to time. :chin:
My question is to you and any other member who knows better.
Does Space actually exists? I mean out of human experience that we understand it, does it actually exist "on its own"? Or it's only an a priori human non empirical thing which allows us to form all of our experiences as Kant suggested?
In fact are there any scientific final answers for that supporting or rejecting Space definition of Kant? Or is it still an open issue?
I might did poorly research on the Internet but I didn't find any convincing scientific answer in favor or against that. I haven't been able to form an opinion about it yet.
This could be if our brains spatialize time into ‘space’ so that we can better navigate through the series of discrete nows. The brain’s re-presentation of the successives would add spatial dimension to the past nows, this spatializing showing up as a distance for what is really just back in time
Except that this inert absolute space of Newton's got the boot from Einstein, whose gravitational field essentially is space-time at the macro level. At the micro level, the quantum field would serve as 'space', although it is really just simple continuous stuff. One could still say that an elementary particle as a field quantum is in the field.
sounds like your talking about god
You seem to think that space is something that is there in the world which one can observe and talk about its properties, as a scientist might talk about star content or plate tectonics. But space has no observable properties, so when you make a move to "divisibility" it is not space, but an abstraction of space you are bringing up, a logically structured method of measurement formally called geometry. Its not space that is divisible at all, and the references to such divisions are really about the mind that adds the, as you say, form to chaos. But then, space isn't chaos either: this would take something observable, that can be out of order in the first place.
No, if you want to get at the heart of space philosophically, you have look to the language that is presupposed in an utterance: before one can even conceive of space in any way at all, there has to be a matrix of language, through which concepts can have any meaning at all. This is not Einstein's space, but what is there prior to Einstein, prior to even the mention of space as a theme of inquiry. Ask: can there be space without the logic to conceive it? Well, the ontology of space is only meaningful if one can posit space securely, and such a positing is essentially a logically structured event, a proposition. No matter how rigorous science gets, it is essentially propositional and therefore presupposes language.
So understanding language is the first order business in the understanding space at the level of basic questions (philosophy).
Or did you think when we observe the world, the world somehow simply intimated itself in the observation, and space presented itself to the brain as if wwe perceiving agencies were some kind of mirror? Look at a physical brain. Does this LOOK like a mirror?
The true beauty of this lies in the radical disillusionment of understanding that we, ourselves, and this world are entirely something Other than what is, well, "out there". And space is, as with all things, pure metaphysics, if there is such a thing (I think there is), at root.
What you're describing here is a continuum, so I guess that's also your answer.
My take: space is personal. Not just relativistic (fixed by reference frame), but rather each thing that exists has its own personal space. Interactions and correlations are couplings between these spaces that allow us to map one space onto another, approximately at least. These mappings enable a statistical projection of all these things going on in all these spaces onto a single hypothetical space constructed by the mind (or computer). So more like an infinite net, I suppose.
That space (and time) are metaphysical subjects is common knowledge. What I find interesting though is how space and time feature in everyday, ordinary conversation. The word "game" and the word "space" have Wittgenstein in common, roughly.
Lexicologists have a different opinion no doubt.
That's good. Each "thing" has space proper to it. Now how would you relate this to the concepts of chemistry and physics, within which, things move relative to each other? We cannot use an artificial coordinate system representing one "space", because this would be a false representation. Now each thing has its own space, within which it moves and changes, and that space needs to be related to the various "spaces" of every other thing. So we are left with a very complex problem. We need to determine the way that each type of thing moves within its own space, and also we need principles to relate the space of one thing to the space of another thing.
Let's take an object like a chair, or a rock for an example of a "thing". We can say that it has "a space" proper to it. We might define the boundaries of that space with reference to gravity. Now, lets proceed to a molecule, as a "thing" which conventionally is a part of that thing, identified by the example as a chair. The molecule has its own "space" defined by its gravity, and obviously the distinct "spaces" of the molecule and the chair overlap in terms of occupying the same place. What means would you propose for distinguishing the space of the molecule from the space of the chair?
I proposed that the boundaries of a thing's space be determined by a thing's gravity, but what kind of space would be proper to a thing which has no mass? This sort of problem would reveal two distinct types of space, the type of space proper to a massive object, and the type of space proper to something which has no mass. Since the space which is proper to things which have no mass seems to permeate all the spaces of massive things, maybe an understanding of this space could be used to relate all the other spaces of the massive objects to one another. In the case of massive objects, gravity is the defining feature of the space. What features should we look for to define the space of massless objects?
What you're describing is quantum chemistry :)
Not really, because quantum chemistry is energy based, while my description is mass based. This is a big difference because a molecule is understood to have distinct massive parts, therefore distinct "spaces" by my description. Even an atom is understood to have distinct massive parts. From the energy perspective, the interaction of electrons occurs in one space, rather than a number of different spaces according to distinct massive centers representing distinct spaces.
Although I don't know the history of the word, it seems to me that, before relativity, space was just an expression of common sense and classical non-relativistic physics. Without space there can be no distance. Without distance there can be no velocity. Without velocity there can be no acceleration. Without acceleration there can be no force.
Without distance there can be no volume. Without volume there can be no structure, no chemistry, no form. Can there be mass without volume? Does that mean that without space all there would be is a black hole with the mass of the entire universe.
"Space" and "Infinity" are not physical things that can be stretched or compressed or divided. Instead, both are ideas about things (i.e. their relationship). Astronomers are using a metaphor when they talk about the "expansion" of space, or when Einstein presented the notion of "Block Space-Time". For example, in imagination, you can take a knife and carve a chunk of Space into a million pieces, and they will all be the same size as the chunk : infinite or zero. That's because Ideas are Meta-Physical, not Physical ; Ideal not Real ; Relative not Absolute. :smile: