Not everything that seems empty has nothing in it.
The universe is a constant boiling pot of quantum fields and subatomic virtual particles. Through our revolutionary advancement in technology, new theories are being developed at a rapid pace. Physicists have found evidence of light where none should exist. The question is, why is this “fake light” showing up during experiments?
And what exactly is this “fake light” recently observed while studying empty space?
How physicists have reshaped the world around us through their theories
The revolutionary theories that have been developed by physicists over the last century have enabled mankind to create extraordinary innovations.
Your phone’s GPS simply would not work without Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. His calculations show us that as GPS satellites are moving at incredible speeds and as they are further from Earth’s gravity, their clocks tick slightly faster than those down here on Earth.
Every single computer and smartphone can thank Quantum Mechanics for its existence.
Physicists studying the behavior of electrons in solids around 1947 led to the invention of the transistor. This seemingly unremarkable tiny switch would go on to replace massive vacuum tubes, enabling us to shrink room-sized computers into the small chips that dominate the CPU market today.
Physics has made the extraordinary just another day at the office
You can only imagine how scientists from previous generations would be salivating at the prospects for new studies that have emerged out of physics over the last few years and decades.
Such as the discovery of a mysterious proton that appears like a magician out of nowhere, only to vanish without a trace in an instant.
Even the revolution of the World Wide Web can be attributed to physics. Most people think that the internet was a tech invention, but we now understand that it was created by Tim Berners-Lee to enable particle physicists around the world to share massive amounts of data more easily.
Researchers have been studying the first light in the universe, only to discover a strange and unexpected twist that occurs.
This could be evidence of a hidden, unknown dimension that plays perfectly into the synopsis of films like Interstellar. In that particular movie, an astronaut traversed the universe through a hidden dimension that he found in a massive black hole.
A new and astonishing study, “A quantum mystery that stumped scientists for decades is solved,” published in ScienceDaily, has detailed a breakthrough in quantum vacuum fluctuations.
Study reveals that empty space isn’t actually empty at all
As quantum field theory has stated, empty space is not as empty as we might think.
Researchers have made remarkable developments by observing the tiny molecular point of life in recent years. Such as a recent experiment that saw a fly neuron being uploaded to a computer simulation, allowing the creature to live a digital life in a simulated world.
However, this research has been focused on studying what exactly is taking place in the empty space around us.
Virtual photons are shining a light on the empty space around us
The team of physicists found that even where no matter should exist, empty space contains “virtual particles”. These virtual photons have been found through the Dynamical Casimir Effect (DCE).
This refers to scientists who utilized a superconducting circuit to reveal that empty space has these “virtual photons” that seemingly pop up out of nowhere.
The experiment proved that they were actually there all along; we just weren’t able to see them. By observing the “virtual flashes” of light, we now know that the vacuum is a physical entity with energy in it, instead of just an empty void of nothingness.
So while the vast majority of the world is focused on the next era of space exploration, this development has proven that even empty space has energy whizzing around in it.