I still have lots of questions. Like, what is outer space? Is it real? Does it actually exist? Now, I’m defining “outer space” as all the emptiness outside all the other things in the universe. I’m eliminating all planets and stars and asteroids and all space junk and photons and atoms and molecules and gas and anything else that can exist out there. Including every neutrino and Higgs boson and all the graviton particles (if they exist at all) and, to put it as simply as possible, EVERYTHING! What are we left with? Nothing? Nothingness? No, we’re left with what we define more by distance from the Earth than by any other measure, as outer space. But does that mean outer space is a real thing? Does it actually exist as a real entity? Let’s look at the evidence.
I find myself wondering if outer space has to exist because the postulated “big bang” (more accurately called “inflation” when the universe as we know it, expanded out of a tiny point of almost nothingness into what it is today) had to expand into “something,” and that something is what we call outer space. If outer space didn’t exist, would inflation have taken place? Maybe outer space didn’t exist before inflation. If so, where did outer space come from? Did someone have to design it? Was inflation waiting for outer space to exist so it could go ahead and take place?
Einstein said that large bodies such as Earth warp outer space, and we see it as gravity, that is, as objects falling to Earth (or to the moon, if that’s where you happen to be). But if outer space isn’t a real “thing,” would gravity be able to exist? How could a large body such as a planet or star warp something if that thing didn’t exist in the first place? If big things are warping outer space, then that must mean that outer space is a real thing. It exists, as opposed to, say, nothingness. Could a large body in space warp nothingness? Warp something that isn’t there?
Holy mackerel, Kingfish.