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What is Space

Category: Prime Stream
Posted on: August 30, 2007 7:11 AM, by Selva

Escher-ThreeWorlds.jpg I am sitting in the smallest room in the house and thinking, Space is crazy. Space is where Euclid's parallel lines never meet. Space is where Einstein's rays of light bend for gravitational winds. Space is almost all of everything there is. Compared to the volume of space around, even the largest structures in the universe that we know of are miniscule and insignificant. Furthermore, physicists tell us that an atom is mostly space. Show a physicist your clenched fist and she'll tell you your fingers aren't touching each other at all. Deep down, in the roaring whilrlwinds of the subatomic world, space, time, information, imagination and anything else there may be, are all appearing, disappearing, twisting and floating away like bubbles beaten up by an energetic child in a foaming bathtub. In such a world, kicking a rock and asking why it hurts could lead you into a world of mind-bending thoughts.

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Comments

1

Space is dark, it is so endless,
When you're lost it's so relentless,
It does not live, it does not die,
Space is neither truth nor lie.

[Hawkwind, Space is Deep]

Posted by: Dunc | August 30, 2007 10:08 AM

2

Space is big
Space is dark
It's hard to find
A place to park.
Burma Shave.

On a more serious note:

In fact, sometimes parallel lines do meet in space.... it depends what's nearby. The Universe as a whole has Euclidean spatial geometry, but on smaller scales (say, within the Solar System, or within the Galaxy), spacetime is curved, and some parallel lines will meet....

-Rob

Posted by: Rob Knop | August 30, 2007 10:20 AM

3

"Space is big - really big - you just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." - Zaphod Beeblebrox

Posted by: Adam | August 30, 2007 10:48 AM

4

Space is the final frontier.

Posted by: Tegumai Bopsulai, FCD | August 31, 2007 9:04 AM

5

None of you have answered the question: What is space?

We know space is vast and dark and a vacuum, but what is it exactly? It is part of the physical universe but is space itself something physical? What is it made up of? What is its physicality if I could look at it under a microscope? How can it be nothing if it is something?

And you are all confusing space on earth and outer space: they are different! We have air and resistance on earth!

Posted by: Dave | August 3, 2009 7:40 PM

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