Hola! I'm Alexa Guido, a young and curious woman passionate about science. Join me on an exciting journey to explore the wonders of the universe through the lens of physics.
Imagine for a moment a vacuum, a completely empty space. Is it a deep and endless black? Is it a pure and blinding white? What did you think of? Surprisingly, this concept of vacuum is related to how our universe was born!
While it might seem like a vacuum is just an empty space, the truth is far more fascinating. In fact, in the vacuum there will always be particles coming out of nowhere and popping in. There is a likelihood that the Big Bang began with this same phenomenon. This phenomenon is called vacuum fluctuations or “virtual particles”, and they are everywhere, this means that even in emptiness, there is a flurry of activity happening all around us!
Humans have been thinking about vacuums for thousands of years. Ancient philosophers called atomists argued that the world was made up of two elements: atoms and the void. Aristotle argued that nature would not allow a void to exist; particles around a vacuum would always move to fill it. And now, here we are!
Firstly, picture yourself in a library. Now put away all the books, shelves, chairs, desks, and everything inside. It feels empty, right? But that room even has light, cosmic radiation, sound waves, neutrinos, and dark matter. Let’s take out all that.
Now, we have a perfect vacuum, a quantum vacuum. At first sight, inside this “library,” there is NOTHING, what if we take a deeper look, let’s zoom it more and more and more. What do we find? Not nothing at all!
As we explore the intricate fabric of space-time, we can see that there are some popping-out particles, surely it is tough to detect them, however, these are the vacuum fluctuations in space, the amazing dance of particles, even the name sounds challenging, but simply put there are particles that appear and disappear in a fraction of a second, long enough to break some fundamental physics laws, but quick enough that these do not matter at all.
These are also called virtual particles because physics cannot directly detect them, yet the fluctuations can affect physical quantities.
It is an abstract topic, although they appear in matter-antimatter pairs in space and annihilate one another almost instantly. But they can interact with actual particles, which is how scientists find evidence of their existence.
Reflecting on the Big Bang, Edward Tryon, in 1917 at Columbia University, proposed a pioneering idea of how to apply quantum mechanics to the beginning of the Universe. He reasoned that if all that existed was a quantum vacuum, a bubble-like energy fluctuation out of this vacuum could have given rise to the Universe. Essentially, he proposed that the whole Universe is the result of a vacuum fluctuation, originating from what we could call quantum nothingness.
As our universe continues to evolve, we can genuinely admire the complexity of space and the contradictions between classic physics and quantum physics. The applications of these quantum fluctuations are vast, and the manners in which these quantum fluctuations affect our reality. Surely, our cosmos is an endless source of wonder and surprise!
This blog was a special topic because we are closing the Space Week outreach. We hope that you really enjoy exploring each concept of this Space Week hosted by Young4STEM! I was delighted to be part of this amazing project; please check the other space blogs, Instagram posts, YouTube webinar, and the special episode in the podcast! See you next year!
Sources:
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/our-imperfect-vacuum?language_content_entity=und
https://uvadoc.uva.es/bitstream/handle/10324/50719/TFG-G5385.pdf?sequence=1
https://bigthink.com/13-8/universe-quantum-fluctuation/
Images:
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/our-imperfect-vacuum?language_content_entity=und
https://sureshemre.wordpress.com/2020/11/28/how-do-we-know-vacuum-fluctuations-exist/
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