Nowhere is nothing.

I couldn't decide where to start with the stimulus package, so I figured I'd go back to science. There were a few occasions when I learned something in school that absolutely blew my mind and forever changed the way that I think about the universe. One of these was when I learned about what is known as vacuum energy.

Vacuum to a scientist is empty space. There's actually a whole science around creating a vacuum in a lab, though we can never quite suck every single particle out of a given space. Nature does a better job; outer space is an excellent vacuum averaging only 1 hydrogen atom per cubic meter.

I'll start explaining vacuum energy by the idea that microscopic particles behave like waves. This leads to the conclusion that a particle can never have absolutely no energy. If there is no energy, you have no wave, or no particle since it essentially has all the properties of a wave. This may seem a little strange, but it's a pretty well established idea in chemistry and physics.

The really strange part for me was when quantum physics showed that the same properties applied not only to particles, but also to what are called fields (ie gravitational and electromagnetic). This means that any place a field can exist (which is everywhere), it is impossible to have absolutely no energy. So even in the most extreme vacuum of space, where there is no matter at all, there is still some mysterious energy hidden somewhere. Blows my mind, but maybe that's because I'm a physicist.

The picture shows an experiment where they succeeded in measuring a force that results from vacuum energy known as the Casimir Effect. Experiment confirmed yet another bizarre prediction of quantum mechanics.