TFNR - A box full of nothing
Could we progressively remove all the contents until we achieve a state of Nothingness, of non-existence? What must be eliminated to reach such a condition?
Let's say right away that Nothingness is a "state/non-state" that cannot be created. Even with infinite knowledge, boundless energy, and all of eternity at our disposal, it would remain unattainable.
It is certainly not possible to create such a condition within a box, a box contained within the Universe itself. Inexistence and existence are mutually exclusive. They are incompatible conditions, and moreover, they are universal, all-encompassing, and total states. Reality either exists in its entirety, or it does not exist at all. Nothingness and the spectrum of partial or total states - be it Emptiness, Something, or Wholeness - are intrinsically self-exclusive. Either there is Nothing, or there is everything: a dynamic, evolving whole. This whole may vary in its extent, quantity, or degree of development, yet it remains the whole. The totality.
The only conceivable way to achieve Nothingness would be to eliminate the Source of Reality or cease its Action. This Source, through its uninterrupted activity, generates the Elementary Events that constitute the fundamental "substance" from which all that exists is formed. However, by eliminating or halting the Source, the entirety of Reality would vanish in an instant, leaving no conscious being to witness or be aware of it.
Just for the sake of it, even though we are fully aware that reaching the goal is impossible, let's attempt to imagine what we would need to remove from the box to get at least closer to Nothingness:
- objects and air (molecules and atoms) -> Forms (with their Mass, Motion, Charge, Spin and the more complex derived physical quantities, i.e. weak and strong nuclear forces / fields)
- some (maybe many) isolated sub-atomic particles: -> Structures of Information: Vortices (as above, Mass, Motion, etc.)
- electrons
- protons as "hydrogen nuclei"
- some neutron produced by the decay of some radioactive element present in the air, in the materials of the environment that hosts the box (the concrete of the walls of the lab, etc.), which passes through the walls of the box
- many neutrinos passing through the earth
- particles of cosmic rays coming from space, and all other (ordinary and exotic) particles formed by their interactions with the atmosphere
- electromagnetic radiation: -> Structures of Information: Waves (with their Motion, polarization, etc.)
- radio waves from the cosmos, from broadcasting stations, etc.
- micro waves of thermal radiation, from the sky, form the box, inside and outside the box, from everywhere...
- light waves
- ultraviolet waves
- x-rays, from physical phenomena
- gamma-rays, from physical phenomena, annihilations, decays, and rays from the cosmos, etc.
- dark matter / energy: -> Structures of Information: Vortices (with their mass, motion, charge, spin)
- the box, and the earth that hosts it, are part of a dark matter halo that includes the solar system, in turn included in a wider halo that includes this part of the Milky Way, included by the global halo that hosts the visible structure of our whole galaxy, included in huge halo that hosts the local group of galaxies, then more and more halos of the cluster of galaxies of which we are part, superclusters, and so on, a huge amount of dark matter, and the related counterparts of dark energy, which compose the dark sector turbulence of the cosmos
- dark radiation, the so-called gravitational waves -> Structures of Information: Waves (with their Motion, polarization, etc.)
- all the ordinary energy and the mass energy, and the related quantum information inherent to (owned / carried by) all the previous stuff (molecules, atoms, particles, e.m. radiation, dark matter / energy, g.w. radiation) -> Information = the correlations between the distributions of the Elementary Events
- all the interactions between all the previous stuff (metric, gravitational, kinetic, electric, magnetic, weak and strong nuclear interactions, etc.)
- Elementary Action in its Modes / Components: Perturbation, Translation and Rotation (Chirality and AxisOrientation) that supports all the above mentioned stuff: the inhomogeneities in the temporal distributions of the Elementary Events in their fundamental Modes corresponding to the Fundamental Principles of Evolutionary Dynamics: Uncertainty, Action and Reaction, Least Action -> the fundamental laws of Nature -> small and medium turbulence in the quantum fields -> space-time and virtual particles popping up and down in it
- Elementary Events: spatial fluctuations of the Elementary Field under the Action of the Fundamental Force, the internal interaction between the two aspects of the Source of Reality, the Primary Source -> the turbulent dynamics of quantum vacuum around the Planck scale
- Elementary Field: it is what fluctuates, in the space and time dimensions (space and time extensions are relative the intensity, density, power spectrum, dynamics of these fluctuations -> the quantum fields at their minimum potential energy
- Source of Reality, the Primary Source: the source of everything, it is not in the box (or, better, cannot be "only" in the box), it is everywhere and nowhere, transcendent and immanent at the same time (the Fundamental Force, the Source's active aspect being transcendent, the Elementary Field, its passive aspect being immanent) -> no such concept in conventional physics
Supposing we remove the acting / acted Source from the box, eliminating all Elementary Events and everything formed by their organization, and we, the observers of the box, the entire Universe, and the whole of Reality, would cease to exist, as if it had never been. Everything would be lost, and no one would remain to notice this end.
With no Source in Action, nothing would occur... only Nothingness would remain... only Nothingness would "exist." And this is precisely the condition of non-existence.
The absence of a Source in Action would be analogous to a scalar field in a state of complete and absolute homogeneity at every point (Space) for all eternity (Time). No Time, no Space, no Causality. An absolutely homogeneous scalar field, devoid of any Force in Action. No Source of Events. No Source. Nothing!
Links to the tables of contents of TFNR Paper
