Is a perfect vacuum something or nothing, is empty space a thing?
481372
nothing. even the vacuum of space has energy flowing through it. So, in theory, a perfect vacuum is nothing.
380924
A perfect vacuum (on earth) equals (-)14.7 psig.  You can not produce a stronger vacuum.  For example, when you press a suction cup against glass, you must pull with a force of 14.7 pounds for every multiple or fractional square inch of effective surface of the suction cup.  If it has an area of one square inch you must pull with 14.7 pounds of force, against the pressure of the atmosphere, to pull it free.  At the bottom of a swimming pool you would have to pull that much plus the weight of a column of water one square inch in cross-section times the depth.\n\nFor your vacuum cleaner you can easily determine its suction "power" by using it to suck water up a long clear plastic tube.  A perfect vacuum would suck up a water column about 34 feet high (depending on barometric pressure) but a typical vacuum cleaner would likely produce a column about six feet tall.  If you measure the column in "inches of water" you will have your vacuum rating, e.g., 72-inch w.c. (water column) and can use the procedure to rate various vacuum cleaners.  Caution: the tube must be tall enough to avoid sucking water into the vacuum cleaner (and shorting it out?) and let the water out with the vacuum off (if the tube is on the ground the water will suck right into the vacuum cleaner!).  Also do not run the vacuum cleaner too long without air flow which cools the motor or you will burn out the motor.  Good luck.
422869
depends on what your definition of "nothing" is...\n\nnice wordplay!
1148896
this is one of phylosophical questions i really like! but i also don't know the answer for sure. just according to my logical mind, i think the answer is YES. if it's not something, people will not be willing to find a word to describe it. and the space is not nothing because without it everything will be crazy.
564057
It's an interesting question.  'Nothing' is an idea, not an object or a place.  By its very definition, it can't be something, because then it would not be nothing, so your sense of a physical space that we could call nothing is linguistically impossible.\n\nNot every culture has or had a word for 'nothing,' so in a sense, you could say that 'nothing' was an idea that someone invented at some unknown point in the past.  You can think of it as the absence of something, or as a philosophical abstract, or a mathematical starting point.  I think the oldest language with a word for 'zero' was Arabic.  Incidentally, this is why there was no year 0, and 1 B.C. is followed immediately by 1 A.D.  When the priests who were writing the calendar system that is the basis of the calendar we use today, they had never heard of the word/number/idea of zero.  How could they have missed this? Who knows?  It seems impossible to us now.\n\nAs for the 'no matter within a space' part of your question, the answer can be found in a common physics equation that I am sure you know: E=mc^2.  Energy and mass are equivalent.  If there is no 'matter,' or really, mass, within a particular volume of space can you really say that there is nothing there?  No.  On the quantum level, there is really no nothing.\n\nBecause there is still energy in any given space, there is the potential for mass there at any time.  Energy is not really a concept that can be localized or zeroed out- because of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle we know that it is impossibile to measure exact position and speed at the same time, and we have never been able to achieve absolute zero (the temperature at which all kinetic energy becomes zero)- it's probably impossible.  The average temperature of the universe is known to be 3 degrees Kelvin, due to the cosmic microwave background radiation, an after-effect of the Big Bang.  Basically what I'm saying is that if the 'energy' within a space can't be zero, on a quantum level, then the mass can't be, either.\n\nAnother way of thinking about it from a quantum mechanics perspective is wave/particle duality.  This is a concept that even physicists have trouble wrapping their minds around, but essentially the point is that particles have wavelike qualities and waves have particlelike qualities.  It's back to the Heisenberg uncertainty again.  Until they are measured, particles do not exist in any one place, they exist in all places simultaneously with different probabilities.  For any particular particle, there may be an infinitesimal chance that it is inside the space you are looking at to find emptiness, but if you add it all up, it is incredibly likely that some particle is there at all times.  \n\nOnce a particle's position is measured, the system collapses and the particle has a location, but you cannot measure every particle at once and any particle you have just measured can go back into its quantum state afterwards, and again be anywhere with some probability.\n\nThanks for the interesting question- a chance to flex my brain this afternoon.
251659
Space is a 'fundamental' property of nature, which is a fancy way of saying that there is nothing more basic than Space as a medium of measurement.  Space is defined only as a relative porportion of distance when you compare at least two, very real, objects.  In this sense, space is not exactly nothing.\n\nAs a matter of fact, space as we now understand it, is filled completely with a very low level of energy called 'background radiation' which is most definitely something, even if it is very, very spread out.\n\nOne seemingly very odd property of Space is that it apparently is growing very fast, faster than the speed of light even, especially where it is the least 'filled up' with stuff.
826041
The answer to your question would depend on (1) whether "empty" means a "perfect vacuum" or filled with air? (2) how is this 1 joule of energy initially distributed inside this box? (3) how large is this box? (4) how much time is allowed to elapse before the termperature is determined? (5) can energy leak out or into the box? (6) is the box under the influence of a gravitational field?\n\nThe temperature of an object is proportional to the average kinetic energy of the molecules in it. In a pure vacuum, there are no molecules. There is nothing to measure the kinetic energy of, and temperature is undefined. If a thermometer were placed in a vacuum, the reading would be a measurement of the internal temperature of the thermometer, not of the vacuum which surrounds it. So having 1 joule of energy inside a box containing pure vacuum would have NO temperature. And if it contained air, then we would need to know the initial temperature, pressure of the air inside the box and also the volume of the box. Then we can approximate the air as an ideal gas and use the following equation to compute the temperature:\n\nPV=nRT\n\nwhere T is the temperature, n is the number of moles of gas and R is the gas constant. Since we know the initial temperture and pressure, and the volume of the box. Then\n\nP(i)V(i)/T(i) = P(f)V(f)/T(f)\n\nT(f) = T(i) [P(f)/P(i)]\n\nSince pressure is dfined as P = F/A (force per unit area) and\n\nE = Fd (force times distance), then\n\nP = E/Ad, where Ad = V volume of the box (here we are assuming that the 1 joule of energy is uniformly distributed inside the box and the volume of the box does not change)\n\nHence, T(f) = T(i) [E/P(i)V(i)]
626622
The universe is an indefinite entity.It is bounded by 'nothing' even in the strict sense of modern physics.
944397
No.\nNot even space itself, in which "entities" exist, is stationary -- it's continually expanding, carrying along those things that are in it.\nMotion is the rule in the universe, nothing stands still.
714173
There cannot be a true vacuum in quantum mechanics. There are always spontaneous creation-annihilation events of subatomic particles (mostly positron-electron events). Any matter bounding the vacuum emits radiation (light) and that will rapidly form a photon gas in your vacuum. This is simply inevitable.
861922
It is not a vacuum.  The density of space is 0.1 - 1000 atoms/cm3.\n\nPlanets are made of condensed interstellar matter.
12959
the answer to this question is not really well-known by the scientific community.  there are a number of competing models for explaining the energy  of empty space.  a good place to start learning about it would be to look up the cosmological constant, which is incorporated into general relativity.  it can be measured and is proportional to the energy density of empty space.  see the link below for more details.
1097658
"Space air"?\nIt is really hard to decipher what you are trying to ask.\n\n"Space" is pretty close to being a vacuum (for all intensive purposes for us here on Earth), thus there is no "air" in space.\n\nThe concept of there being some type of medium in space which everything travels through (the idea of an "aether", the material which allowed light to propigate through empty space) has since been disproven over well 100 years ago by the Michelson-Morley experiment.
297208
As my education impressed on my mind; there is no empty space.  What we think of as "space" is not empty but a constant dance of virtual particals (protons/antiprotons, etc) constantly appearing out of the vacuum travelling a short distance, then touching and annihilating into nothing once again.  \n\n"Empty" space is filled with these interactions which I believe are known as vacuum fluctuations.  The law of "convservation of energy" is really something that holds on average.  Another principle called the uncertainty principle states that we cannot measure simultaneously the energy and time of a (system of particles?) more accurate than a constantant called h or hbar (a very small but finite number). \n\nSo in theory the universe can "borrow" energy from nowhere as long as that energy is returned before the h bar uncertainty in time runs out.  And thus "empty" space is filled with these vacuum fluctuations and is not really empty after all.  Of course I don't think I explained that too well.  See "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat" by John Gribben for a more coherent description
401773
Absolute nothingness can mean two things: absolute vacuum or as in there's completely nothing, not even space.\n\nThis very hard to have this idea to be understood. That's because we cannot think of anything outside of our universe. We live and think in a 3-dimensional universe and therefore cannot correctly think in higher dimensions (let alone proving it). We do not know and cannot prove if either meanings of absolute nothingness actually exist.\n\nThe things you hear about what's outside the universe or what's not (including absolute nothingness) are only theories, not facts. Not even close. We can only make theories to what things there are that are dimensionally outside the universe.\n\nTo answer your question, we really don't know and if it does exist, we cannot see it or live in it. There wouldn't even be darkness if absolute nothingness exist.\n\nOh, and one more thing:  Black holes are not absolute nothingness. Just a very very very very very very very very dense (did I mention very?) matter that its gravity is SO strong that light can't even escape it, materialistically or relatively (as in, Einsten's theory of relativity, where a huge mass will make such a curve in the space-time plane and a blackhole will make such a huge one that light will forever spiral in it towards the center).\n\nAnywho, blackholes are not nothingness. Just that light can't even escape it, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing there.\n\nPS Penguins!!!\nPSS I have used the 3-dimensions reason to a lot of questions like these, but that's always the reason when it comes to things that are about anything outside the universe (physically, dimensionally, theoretically, and/or mentally).
361693
Nope.  A vacuum (not "vacume") means that there's not any air to begin with, and because a fan cannot produce air, only move it around, no air will be given off.
217070
Nothing is nothing. Energy is something.\n\nIf there is nothing in a universe then is it even a universe?  No, it is not, it's nothing.