Absolutely nothing
#09—Not so much a flex, but a mind torture.
Welcome to Mind Flexing, your weekly thought expedition to everywhere and anywhere. Strap on your boots (or put your feet up), take a deep breath, and let’s get flexing.
When it comes to self-torture, there’s one topic that’s guaranteed to drive me insane, and that’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. No-thing. Nada.
As common as the word ‘nothing’ may be in our lexicon, nothingness is hard to fathom—not when it applies to existence, like an empty space or void. In this sense of the word, nothing doesn’t exist. It just doesn’t! At least not in our known world. And given that everything we know is something, imagining nothing is really hard to do.
But let me not throw you into the hurt locker just yet. Let’s take a step back and look at an empty box. It’s sitting here on a table between us, and I look at you and ask:
“What’s in that box?”
And you reply:
“Nothing.”
And that’s an acceptable answer because no one’s really interested in being told the box is full of air comprising 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and trace amounts of neon and hydrogen, mixed together, sprinkled with dust molecules and softened with a little water vapour.
And so we say ‘nothing’.
But, there is something. Something exists in that space.
Even a vacuum contains something, and I’m not talking about the cleaner variety. In its perfect sense, a vacuum would be devoid of all matter—no particles or photons—but it cannot be achieved. Even in a vacuum’s closest state, space is believed to contain dark energy.
And so it is that within our universe, there is always something. There is no state of nothingness, and I’m quite content with that—no cause for an aneurism, yet.
Let’s set nothingness aside for a moment to contemplate another topic that causes my cortisol levels to rise, and that’s infinity.
Everything in our world is finite. It has a shape, a form, a boundary. Infinity is an abstract concept, useful in mathematics, but non-existent in a physical form. At least, not one that we can prove.
It’s unlikely we’ll ever know (and I say unlikely because I don’t like to use the word never, but those in the know seem comfortable with never), but the general consensus says our universe is infinite. It can’t be proven because the evidence lies beyond the observable universe, which stretches for 46.5 billion light years in every direction from Earth. We only see what’s believed to be a small part of the universe. To discern what, if anything, lies beyond it, we must trust mathematics.
And it’s about now that I have an aneurism.
~1495-1498Is it possible for the universe to be the only infinite thing in existence? Can there be a space with no end? Something that truly stretches on, and on, and on, forever? Mathematical calculations are one thing, but to visualise endless space hurts. I have no idea how astrophysicists, theoretical physicist and cosmologist remain sane. Perhaps they’re not.
What is true is that they have many theories about the universe: how it started; if it started; if it’s flat; if it’s not; if it’s infinite; and if it’s not.
Perhaps, after all, as some believe, the universe does have a boundary of sorts. You’d be mistaken for thinking that’s an easier concept to visualise. If anything, it’s harder! A universe, with a boundary, beyond which lies nothing. Absolutely nothing. We’re possibly here, right now, existing in our universe that is hovering in nothingness (except, it can’t hover, because it has nothing to hover in.) As Paul Sutter, author of Your Place in the Universe, puts it, “The universe simply is.”
He says:
“It is entirely mathematically self-consistent to define a three-dimensional universe without requiring an outside to that universe. When you imagine the universe as a ball floating in the middle of nothing, you're playing a mental trick on yourself that the mathematics does not require.
Granted, it sounds impossible for there to be a finite universe that has nothing outside it. And not even "nothing" in the sense of an empty void—completely and totally mathematically undefined. In fact, asking "What's outside the universe?" is like asking "What sound does the color purple make?" It's a nonsense question, because you're trying to combine two unrelated concepts.”
Nonsense, perhaps. And now I shall go lie down.
Things I’ve enjoyed reading on Substack this past week
The Plot—by Steve Fendt
What could possibly go wrong in a community garden? I’m up to Chapter 10 of Steve’s short story, and it turns out, a lot. This definitely isn’t your Gardening Australia variety garden.
How to Write Killer Prose—by Luke Jennings
If you’re not on Substack, you probably don’t know that Luke Jennings is publishing Killing Eve: Resurrection on the platform, and it’s free to read. He has just started a series of informative essays on writing, which will be behind a paywall, but not this one.
Thank you for Mind Flexing with me. If you enjoyed this essay, please subscribe, comment below, show some ❤️, or help me get this new publication off the ground by sharing it with someone you think would appreciate it.
I’ll be back next week. Until then, keep 💪.
That's nothing.....suppose we're living in a Simulation?
My brain hurts. lol