3 ms·

It's still so weird to me that stuff appears and disappears out of nothing. But experiments show it's really happening. The universe continues to surprise me.

uoaei 6y ago
"Nothing" is a colloquial stand-in for "things that don't readily react to sensory machines that we have access to". There's a lot of something in that nothing, otherwise nothing would be happening.
- mcswell 6y ago
  This is not the first time I've felt compelled to quote from Through the Looking Glass: -------- [the White king said:] ‘Just look along the road, and tell me if you can see either of them.’ ‘I see nobody on the road,’ said Alice. ‘I only wish I had such eyes,’ the King remarked in a fretful tone. ‘To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!’
effie 6y ago
That is not true. Casimir force is due to EM interaction between the objects (retarded London forces). EM field is not "nothing", it is a thing that is everywhere and has properties.
- findalex 6y ago
  Thanks for this. I was under the impression there was some difference between relativistic electron-electron dispersion and the Casimir force - after reading your comment I googled some recent papers and convinced myself. My first thought after knowing this was that maybe micro/nano-fabrication won't be as kneecapped by this force as I thought - as it is not an intrinsic/unavoidable property of the vacuum, but a tune-able property of the materials.
- bmitc 6y ago
  > That is not true ... EM field is not "nothing", it is a thing that is everywhere and has properties. I feel that slightly trivializes the unknowns of what fields actually are and is a bit pedantic in the context of the comment you replied to. If fields are not nothing, okay, point to one. Show me it. Yes, they are a thing in the sense that we can measure their effect on other things that we can see and point to, but I think it's a huge rabbit hole to try to answer just what fields are. In many respects, fields are just a mathematical model of effects we see.
  - effie 6y ago
    You are reading too much into my comment. I only asserted there is no need for "magical explanations". Of course fields are not a trivial idea.

uoaei 6y ago

"Nothing" is a colloquial stand-in for "things that don't readily react to sensory machines that we have access to". There's a lot of something in that nothing, otherwise nothing would be happening.

mcswell 6y ago
This is not the first time I've felt compelled to quote from Through the Looking Glass: -------- [the White king said:] ‘Just look along the road, and tell me if you can see either of them.’ ‘I see nobody on the road,’ said Alice. ‘I only wish I had such eyes,’ the King remarked in a fretful tone. ‘To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!’

effie 6y ago

That is not true. Casimir force is due to EM interaction between the objects (retarded London forces). EM field is not "nothing", it is a thing that is everywhere and has properties.

findalex 6y ago
Thanks for this. I was under the impression there was some difference between relativistic electron-electron dispersion and the Casimir force - after reading your comment I googled some recent papers and convinced myself. My first thought after knowing this was that maybe micro/nano-fabrication won't be as kneecapped by this force as I thought - as it is not an intrinsic/unavoidable property of the vacuum, but a tune-able property of the materials.
bmitc 6y ago
> That is not true ... EM field is not "nothing", it is a thing that is everywhere and has properties. I feel that slightly trivializes the unknowns of what fields actually are and is a bit pedantic in the context of the comment you replied to. If fields are not nothing, okay, point to one. Show me it. Yes, they are a thing in the sense that we can measure their effect on other things that we can see and point to, but I think it's a huge rabbit hole to try to answer just what fields are. In many respects, fields are just a mathematical model of effects we see.
- effie 6y ago
  You are reading too much into my comment. I only asserted there is no need for "magical explanations". Of course fields are not a trivial idea.