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Are we really 99.99 % empty space ?
cook99
Explorer
Are we really 99.99 % empty space ?
1
Comments
Yes
So says science. If all the space were taken out of all the people on Earth it would be as big as a cube of sugar.
Another weird tidbit is that nothing ever really touches any thing else. As two objects get microscopically close the electromagnetic force generated by their atoms repel each other. If it didn't there is so much space in things that everything would simply pass right through everything else.
I think it is not same as our experience of the macroscopic however. There are no electrons 'there' rather there are fields of probability where the electron probably is.
One more time, how is empty space something? Something has to be nothing or nothing is something. If empty space doesn't qualify as nothing, what does?
Well, you have grosser and more subtle matter.
The part of us that is space would qualify as subtle, and whatever that may be it is not nothing.
I don't think we've ever really found anything that can be described as "empty space". We think there's all this space between the bits of an atom, but do we know there's nothing there? I'd say we're "porous" and leave it at that.
Empty space has properties and is still something. It's a misnomer because empty space is actually full of potential energy. Google potential particles in a vacuum.
It's like saying a porcelain cup is nothing because it is empty while forgetting about the porcelain.
If empty space was nothing there would be no such thing as empty space. Think about it.
Put simply, only nothing can qualify as being nothing but there is no such thing as nothing. It's just a concept.
I thought we were talking about the space between the particles. Which could be filled with smaller particles, but then it wouldn't be empty space.
Are we trying to prove the insubstantiality of self?
In my case yes. Mostly between the ears.
You're kinda right there. The space between particles is empty of anything tangible but full of energies and the potential for particles.
When trying to isolate a space and empty it completely, we find that virtual particles pop into existence and out again repeatedly, ensuring the space is never actually empty of all energy. They don't pop out of nowhere but from space itself.
Emptiness truly is form but nothingness is a non-quality that would deny the potential for anything if it were more than that,
The problem with the "realy" at the OP's question is that we will probably never know, since the only way we have to know is science and science never gets to the "realy" point.
Er....I think you'll find it often does.... or else, how would we know we're mostly space....?
Well ... we don't "know". It's a model that seems to work for us with the assumptions we make. But there could easily be something in that so called "empty space" that we are unable, as yet, to perceive. For years, scientists "knew" that there was no difference between organic and inorganic food. Then they discovered phyto-chemicals.
The discovery of Phyto-Chemicals would therefore be an example of Science getting to the 'realy' [sic] point, wouldn't it....?
When you say "getting to", you "realy" got it! Yet that doesn't mean they've got there. It's still only a model .... even if it's one that works. Problem is, we change things just by looking at them
... or so Science "knows"!
I'm a dumb-ass when it comes to science.
I tried to open my Physics/Chemistry Textbook at school one day, but all the pages had been glued together. I swear the book did it on its own, because it knew I was a total utter doofus.... "No way are you reading my pages! You keep thinking the page number is an element!"
One cannot know oneself without extremes of experience.
On this one page alone, are all elements that when brought together, illuminate the true nature of reality. It's all in the mind!
Your mind, my mind, and buddha mind!
Now back to loading the dishwasher!
I
doofuses (doofi????)
Yah. Hang on...ya know..... I'm not actually THAT bad...
Yes, we are mostly empty space and the universe is mostly empty space too. But if you drop a brick on your foot it still hurts.
No you aren't. It is a common misconception in which I also fell and many people fall for.
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/can-science-prove-anything/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200811/common-misconceptions-about-science-i-scientific-proof
>
Yes indeed. And the way to stop it hurting is not to focus on dependent origination, self/Not-self, kamma or the skandas. It's to merely realise that actually, there is space between the brick and your foot. Then, I am sure that the pain will never arise! Note, I have not yet tested this theory of scientific foundation, but if anyone would care to volunteer, I would be keen to hear the results of the tested theory... :disappointed_relieved:
Large bricks falling on feet hurt
but that's part of life
Pain killers and plasters help
Your thinking is too concrete here, but we come by it naturally. If you are interested at all, spend some time watching Youtube documentaries on the universe and it's components. Apparently 94% of the substance that makes up the universe is a substance called dark matter/energy that has no qualities we can identify. It is definitely there because it affects 'regular' matter in predictable and verifiable ways.
Besides, calling matter particles surrounded by 'empty space' is not exactly true. "Particles" is an inadequate description of the components of matter. The only reason 'particle' is used is as a kind of metaphor for the observable behavior of matter.
Matter can be described as particles or 'waves'. What is the space around a wave in the ocean? Is it empty around the wave? So the 'nothing' around the particle is DEFINITELY 'something', but we have yet to find a tool to measure it. What we CAN measure would amount to a sugar cube, that is really what is meant by that.
I havn't worked my way past Styrofoam yet but hey.
Thanks for that.
For my way of thinking which is not too complicated or advanced, studying particle physics would probably do more harm than good in terms of realizing emptiness.
@ourself said empty space is not nothing. I thought that if space is empty then something is not there. If something is not there, then can you say that nothing is there? The space is either empty or it's not.
So the arguement advances past my area of concern to "is there any such thing as empty space in the relative universe."
Emptiness really has nothing to do with empty space or nothingness. The word has been known to confuse people that way. It has more to do with everything being interdependent, with mutual causation, and that's closer to saying there's no such thing as empty space.
I guess in the Buddhist sense (oh, I don't like going there either but...) space is empty like everything else and subject to change but also emptiness is precisely form.
However, space cannot be devoid of absolutely everything because it has properties of its own. If it has properties, it couldn't be considered "nothing".
Nature abhors a vacuum and space depends on everything else just like everything else does.
I could be wrong but the o/p here seems like a classic case of mistaking emptiness for nothingness. I'd like to see if that's the case before I go further.
^ I did not see this in the OP, that the video narrator is talking about nothingness rather than emptiness. I found the video part elementary, but part explicatory. I'd certainly give it an "A" if I were grading it.
I'll have to watch it in the morning.
My bad, thanks @Nirvana!
Yes emptiness in science and Buddhism are not the same thing. For example outer space with no gravitational objects is neither more or less dependently originated than space within a black hole having great gravitation. Words like 'space' come into play because there is an intuition about reality in saying 'space'. We can understand that our minds are dependently originated with the intuition of 'space'. But 'outer space' or 'space in an atom' is not proof of a Buddhist notion of dependent origination.
The emptiness this video refers to is not empty space with no force-fields. Indeed, near the end of the first video there are two paragraphs by Einstein dealing with the "new matter" consisting of energy fields. This video is more into what Thich Nhat Hanh calls "Interbeing;" that is the interconnectivity or oneness of the universe.
I realize that different schools of Buddhism have different intellectual understandings of sunyata, but I have always found paradigmatic approaches a lot more salutary than ideas people tend to want to defend. Hence, I commend the OP.
What the scientists have found is that the unformed matrix in which we find ourselves depends on an observer as to whether things are essentially self-contained or are "everywhere all at once," as they would be according to the wave paradigm in quantum mechanics. The observer is the definer. That "field of potential in which every possibility arises," as the narrator puts it, is paradoxically only realized through a consciousness (ours) which did not itself create it and from which it springs. A Paradox: That's what the structure of the universe is: The very word existence is a paradox if taken to mean "independently extant." To say, "I exist" is to say that I exist outside myself in a world or a sphere that is not Me. My being does not end at my fingertips if I still be alive. I think that the essential drift or meaning of the Teaching of sunyata/suññata is one of FLUIDITY: that we should neither take ourselves, our opinions, or our possessions too seriously (Of course, the arahant would have few if any possessions.). In other words, I believe these were moral teachings. I also believe if we intellectualize them too much we do both them and ourselves some real harm.
"What appears to be solid reality," the narrator relates, "is actually just one side of two underlying aspects of reality —that of waves and that of particles." It just depends on the observer.
"A particle's quality is not predetermined, but is defined by the very mind that's perceiving it." To things we give name and form:
1 Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
2 Emptiness is not separate from form, neither is form separate from emptiness.
3 Whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form.
I think there must be a better way to translate the original language of this sutra. I don't have a clue about the first line, but line 2 seems to be in accord with the OP. Maybe, for the 3rd line: "wherever you find form, you find emptiness and where you find emptiness, can form be far behind?" would work? That would certainly be true of the Tao.
For my way of thinking which is not too complicated or advanced, studying particle physics would probably do more harm than good in terms of realizing emptiness.
You are fortunate to have 'not to complicated' thinking, trust me on that. Since you are obviously intelligent, I dunno, you might enjoy some of the Cosmos-type series, that's the ones I've watched, I'm a nurse not a physicist. And for some reason, learning more about the world we live in as discovered through science has enriched what understanding I do have of the Dharma. On the surface there seems little in common between them, but not anymore.
As for emptiness, to me its one of those things that is apprehended directly, not puzzled out rationally. I think so much of what is most baffling about Buddhism, or seems bizarre, are things that one must experience directly or else we're getting it mostly wrong. Emptiness is one of them, so is not-self, so is compassion for all living things.
Matter being composed of smaller and smaller parts is consistent with the notion of dependent origination. So protons are made of quarks and presumably quarks could be divided into even smaller parts.
Quarks are 'supposedly' composed of 'strings' @Jeffrey. No one has ever even seen a proton, much less a quark. The presence of these little thingies are determined mathematically. Imagine that, using mathematics to 'see'
Fascinating stuff!
With protons, neutrons, and electrons radiation was used to figure out how their properties are.
Guys'n Girls
why do not you go back to kinder and start to read Alice in Wonderland
No one has ever even seen a proton, much less a quark.
I'm pretty sure these things have been "seen" in the sense of being detected - so they're not just mathematical predictions.
I would imagine there are smaller quantities of matter but we can't tell at this point. Actually, I doubt we will ever find the smallest of the small without finding the biggest of the big since one may not exist without the other.
http://phys.org/news/2014-12-quantum-physics-complicated.html?utm_content=buffer9b801&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Great link @Jeffrey I was surprised that something so basic about QM was still out there to be discovered. I can't really say that I know what it means but it sounds like this breakthrough could lead to even more discoveries.
For a 99.99% empty space, you sure talk too much.
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It is very much like kindergarten and Alice in Wonderland when dealing with quantum level reality. We are starting to enter a new way of thinking. Going through two places simultaneously as in the double slit experiment. Knowing that emptiness is form, however formed the emptiness seems . . .
Or as Lewis Carroll put it: