English

Something Called Nothing

The present book relates the history of views, the development of ideas, often ones that are still in the making. What does emptiness consist of? On the face of it, this question seems senseless. Emptiness is called emptiness precisely because it consists of noting. But this is not exactly so. Absolute emptiness "exists" only theoretically. Real empty space, however, is not a simple void. It is a physical vacuum, a complex intermixture of spontaneously appearing and immediately vanishing fields. The deeper we penetrate into the region of ultrasmall scales, the more complex and rich properties of does this void - the vacuum - become. If we descend farther and farther down, distances represented by decimal with 32 zeroes following the decimal point (10^-33 cm, a quantity difficult even to conceive), we shall find something entirely fantastic. Space resembles a sponge or a foamlike structure. It is a vacuum foam, undulating, continuously changing its shape and consisting of self-closing spatial bubbles. All of this is vividly and fascinating dealt with in this book by Soviet science writer Roman Podolny. Historical events and analogies, "crazy" hypotheses and rigorous conclusions of t

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