Abstract:This book is a history of how it came to be that our best physical theories of particles, gravity, and spacetime are theories of the vacuum, of empty space. Today, physicists calculate “vacuum expectation values,” predict the influence of “vacuum fluctuations,” and describe universes and black holes composed of dynamic, yet empty, spacetime. More than this, vacuum physics seems paradoxical. Physicists depict the vacuum as by turns placid and roiling; as a rippling sheet and a crashing sea. More than Nothing pr… Show more
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