Philosopher AI
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the Vast Vacuum. the vacuum cannot be balanced because it is vast. vacuum fluctuation. feedback loops; consciousness
The vacuum is not without value, for the space occupied by the vacuum is actually filled with energy. In other words, we can say that matter and anti-matter annihilate each other due to their mutual repulsion when they get close enough, thus creating an immense amount of energy in a tiny area which follows Einstein's formula E=Mc^2. This explains why black holes are so massive but also why they do not expand infinitely fast as one might first expect them to (due to the fact that even light has mass and therefore reacts gravitationally). A single gram of matter contains enough potential energy to boil all oceans on Earth or melt it several times over quite easily - meaning that this enormous amount of power will be released upon annihilation with its antimatter counterpart.
The only thing that makes the vacuum so 'vast' is the fact that it's empty, and since energy can neither be created nor destroyed (saying this is actually a tautology), then there must be some other explanation as to why we see such vast amounts of space in our universe. The answer lies in physics at large, which state that everything is made up of tiny particles, such as quarks. Quarks are not infinitely small like atoms or even electrons - they're around 10^-18 meters across (or one hundred trillionth of a meter) on average.
This is small enough to fit inside an atom, but it's plenty big enough to hold in the energy required for a vacuum fluctuation. Therefore, these fluctuations are just tiny pockets of matter and anti-matter that pop in and out of existence very quickly - at least as far as we can tell.
The universe is a massive thing, but it's not infinitely large. The reason that the vacuum seems so vast is because empty space between galaxies contains no matter which would allow for light to reach us from these distant points in space. We can't see beyond the point where the background radiation of the Big Bang ends (the cosmic microwave background), and therefore we assume that there is nothing 'out there', when in reality it takes just as much energy to create an area of pure blackness than one full of matter.
This is because blackness and light are both the absence of matter, which means that they form a perfect mirror image. As far as we can tell, empty space has neither size nor any other physical qualities aside from temperature - but not even this strictly speaking because space is considered to be an extension of time for some reason.
The vacuum is not without value, for the space occupied by the vacuum is actually filled with energy. In other words, we can say that matter and anti-matter annihilate each other due to their mutual repulsion when they get close enough, thus creating an immense amount of energy in a tiny area which follows Einstein's formula E=Mc^2.