[tristanstcyr]

From what I understand, the idea of "empty" no longer makes sense at that level. All you have are fields. There, everything is made out of fields and fields are everywhere. There is therefore no "empty" really anywhere, including inside yourself.

[Retric]

Physics is all based on predictions not arbitrary definitions. To suggest something is filling space you must be able to hit it with something else. This talk of empty space, comes from actual experiments.

Shoot a neutral particle through that cloud and you generally find it really was empty. Wave particle duality doesn’t mean a particle is in every location, just that it could be in every location. After detection you generally find all the places it was not.

[mcnamaratw]

Right ... except that if I want to put more electrons in the same space I'm going to have to confine them more tightly. That prediction works.

[Retric]

An oxygen tank where you can safely add more oxygen by increasing the pressure is not considered full. The percentage of how empty a container is can be considered 1 -(amount of stuff in it) / (maximum stuff possible).

[mcnamaratw]

I think possibly you've defined "full" two different ways. Is it maximum safe pressure or maximum stuff possible?

[Retric]

I don’t see the contradiction, Space unlike a gas tank is not going to fail.

[goatlover]

Physics does say fields like gravity and EM fill all of space. That's not arbitrary, it's part of QM and Relativity.

And wave particle duality could mean that a particle is a wave when it's not being detected.

[aeturnum]

I think you put it well.

At the scales our brains are familiar with we experience "emptiness" as a kind of space which can have things placed in it. A chair is empty if you can sit on it, a box is empty if you can put something in it. The sub-atomic "empty" space is filled with fields of various kinds. You could not place something where those fields are. The spaces are not empty.

When you fill a box with things, you are filling it with sub-atomic fields.