Thinking about Nothing

“Nothing” is a topic that both physicists and philosophers argue about. One kind of
nothing, a chunk of space devoid of any matter or radiation, is a simple kind of
nothing. But there is another kind of nothing, where you also strip away the space
and time themselves. This second nothing is harder to imagine, so let’s start thinking
about just an empty piece of existing space and time. Imagine stepping into the
boots of a spacewalking astronaut and gazing into the universe. You might catch a
glimpse of the void of space. Peering into the nothingness might present us with an
unmatched sense of existential angst, but solace comes from the most unlikely of
sources: quantum physics. For even empty space itself seethes with particles
popping in and out of existence. These are called quantum fluctuations. 3 Particles
popping in and out of existence sounds like yet another weird concept dreamed up
by scientists to confuse everyone else. But the underlying structure of quantum
mechanics demands their presence, and while we cannot see them directly, we can
measure their influence on the world around us. Quantum fluctuations—as the name
suggests—are fleeting and fickle, but they have always been and thus will forever
be. In an eternal universe, the only constant is the never-ceasing movement of
quantum energy.4 Yet the very seeds of our understanding of these quantum
fluctuations were sown less than one hundred years ago. The first glimpse of
quantum mechanics—and quantum fluctuations—occurred on the treeless island of
Heligoland in the North Sea. There, escaping hay fever in his native Germany in
1925, theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg conceived the basic mathematics of
the newly developing quantum theory. Until then, physicists had struggled to explain
the latest experimental probing of the microscopic realm, crashing atoms into atoms
and sending beams of subatomic particles through electric and magnetic fields, with
the mathematics of Newton and Maxwell. Even with all its success, this
well-established set of theories and scientific laws— now called classical
physics—could not be contorted to fit the observations the experiments produced. As
all knew then—and we still know now—when we multiply numbers, it does not matter
in which order they appear. One times two times three is the same as three times
two times one. But this simple and seemingly obvious math did not fit what the new
experiments exploring quantum mechanics revealed.
Heisenberg’s bold idea was to use new, abstract mathematical objects that could be
multiplied together but such that the answer depended on the order in which they
were multiplied: A times B might not equal B times A. This of course looks strange
the first time you see it, but a quick calculation with tables of numbers produces an
undeniable proof. Such a table of numbers is called a matrix, and Heisenberg’s
mathematics became known as matrix mechanics. 5 It is simply known as quantum
mechanics now. By no means obvious to Heisenberg—or any physicists of the
day—was a consequence of this shift in mathematics. The outcome yielded an
extraordinary characteristic of quantum mechanics, that we can never precisely
know all the properties of an object, something now known as the uncertainty
principle. This is an excellent illustration of a recurring theme in quantum physics: the
mathematics states something that because of our preconceptions about the way the
universe functions, we are not ready to accept is true. In this case, Niels Bohr, one of
the fathers of quantum physics, suggested that the uncertainty principle implores us
to reject the very idea that things exist.6 When physicists talk about “things,” they are
usually thinking about a set of properties. A ball, for example, has a shape, a color, a
place in space and time. It’s these properties that quantum physics, through the
uncertainty principle, render undefinable in the quantum world. We just cannot say
that a ball has a definite set of properties. This means that there is no experiment
that can be performed that can definitively determine the properties of an object,
irrespective of the level of precision. This does not seem to bother us when thinking
about the abstract and imperceptible world of quantum particles. However, when we
extrapolate the conclusions up to the human scale, our minds start to tangle. As
Einstein frustratingly put it, “I like to think the Moon is there even if I am not looking at
it.” But it’s not that the Moon is not there; it’s that “there,” as a single, precise,
well-defined place, is not something quantum physics permits us to define. In our
everyday world and in the large movements of celestial bodies, the uncertainty
introduced by Heisenberg is too small to notice. Measuring the mass of a 150-pound
person is not going to be affected by whether the measurement varies by the tiny
mass of an electron. But at the extremes, in the microscopic world of atoms and
electrons, uncertainty and all its consequences reign supreme. And if energy cannot
even be defined in the vacuum of space, it may manifest itself with any value. As it
cannot be defined, it cannot be predicted and thus will fluctuate. As Einstein told us,
using the most famous equation in the world, E = mc2 , energy and mass are directly
related. Fluctuations in energy expose themselves as unending sequences of
creation and annihilation of particles (mass). We imagine particles spontaneously
popping into existence as pairs, a particle and an antiparticle. We’ll explore particles
and antiparticles more a bit later, but for now, know that the two quickly recombine
and destroy each other. Every so often, however, there is an interaction with other
particles. It is then that even a modern nonscientist would say, “Things just got real.”
Physicists often call these quantum fluctuations virtual particles, since they are very
short lived, existing only fleetingly before vanishing back into the vacuum. But when
an interaction interrupts the cycle, a virtual particle can become real. This opens up
the possibility of a host of interesting phenomena. Perhaps the most
interesting—certainly to the question at hand—is the possibility of a universe of
particles being born spontaneously out of the vacuum (or the closest thing quantum
physics allows to nothing). Even in the time it takes you to say the word nothing, a lot
can happen in the timescales as measured by the early universe. The first era of the
universe, as we currently understand it, lasted only about 10–43 seconds. That is
0.00, followed by forty more zeros, then a 1. That is:
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 An unimaginably small
chunk of time. What can we compare this to? How can we, as humans, get a sense
of such a small scale? Frustratingly, the answer is we can’t. This amount of time is
much, much smaller than any of our current theories of physics can explore. But
even if we cannot describe in every detail the physics of what happened in that first
instant, our current theories can still give us clues. After all, whatever the “correct”
theory ends up being, it must still be consistent with our current theories, at least
where they apply. Think of a map that depicts a flat Earth. Eventually determining
that the Earth was a globe did not instantly invalidate all maps. The smaller the area
of a globe you are looking at, the closer reality resembles the map—the two are
consistent in this regime. Similarly, Einstein’s general theory of relativity becomes
Newton’s gravity when gravity is weak, and quantum mechanics becomes
Newtonian motion when things get large. So we look to our current theories for
guidance. Or, in less principled-sounding words, when you all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail. Our hammer is the uncertainty principle, and the nail is
the question of creation.