NEW YORK — It was all much ado about nothing as physicists and thinkers came together to debate the concept of nothing Wednesday (March 20) here at the American Museum of Natural History.
Exerpt - a "deeper" nothing
But there is a deeper kind of nothing, argued theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University, which consists of no space at all, and no time, no particles, no fields, no laws of nature. "That to me is as close to nothing as you can get," Krauss said.
Holt disagreed.
"Is that really nothing?" he asked."There's no space and there's no time. But what about physical laws, what about mathematical entities? What about consciousness? All the things that are non-spatial and non-temporal."
Other speakers offered different ideas for nothing, such as a mathematical concept of nothing put forward by science journalist Charles Seife, author of "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" (Penguin Books, 2000). He proposed starting with a set of numbers that included only the number zero, and then removing zero, leaving what's called a null set. "It's almost a Platonic nothing," Seife said.
The theoretical physicist Eva Silverstein of Stanford University suggested a highly technical nothing based on quantum field theory that involved a quantum system lacking degrees of freedom (dimensions). "The ground state of a gapped quantum system is my best answer," she said.
AND SOME SAY MUSICIANS HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS... SHEESH!
blah, blah, blah.
Hey You Kids! Get Off My Lawn!
blah, blah, blah.
I woke up this morning with nothing on my mind. If I do nothing all day, I will have accomplished... you guessed it. NOTHING. I sat down to my guitar, and nothing came out. I forgot to turn the amp on! I guess the on/off switch is a nothing switch in the off position? Looking forward to doing nothing all day!
Just north of the Weird place, south of Georgetown
"You get up every morning from your alarm clock's warning
Take the 8:15 into the city
There's a whistle up above and people pushin', people shovin'
And the girls who try to look pretty
And if your train's on time, you can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
If you ever get annoyed, look at me I'm self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day
And I'll be taking care of business (every day)
Taking care of business (every way)
I've been taking care of business (it's all mine)
Taking care of business and working overtime, work out
It's as easy as fishin'; you could be a musician
If you could make sounds that are mellow
Get a second-hand guitar, chances are you'll go far
If you get in with the right bunch of fellows"
You see this here?
This is a bell jar hooked to a vacuum pump.
The job of this apparatus is to create a vacuum in the jar.
The pump obviously sucks all the air out.
What do you see left in the jar?
Do you see anything?
Without the pump, you'd assume there's air, but now you know that there's no air in there either.
So what are you left with?