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Does Nothingness Exist?

The Joy of Why

CHAPTER

The Vacuum Energy

When we think of a quantum field, it's like think of a harmonic oscillator at every point and they're all jiggling with their zero point energy. And so the idea that like I have absolute nothingness, which would correspond to a field equaling zero everywhere, that's just not achievable. So when you try to add up the total amount of energy associated with all that jiggling, that's what comes out infinite. That would raise the question, even in quantum field theory, that are we even sure that the vacuum has that energy? Is there such a thing as the vacuum energy?"

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