On the nature and substance of Space

[AnthonyR]

In the past I’ve thought a lot about “Empty Space” that exists all around us, inside us, and between planets and galaxies.  Having read and watched numerous astronomy programs, I’m familiar with gravitational waves, the space time curvature of gravity, time dilation, the mystery of dark matter and dark energy and such topics.

My inquiry relates very much to the nature of emptiness, the void, the space that surrounds us into which everything is contained.  There are times when I feel that this space or emptiness has some viscosity, very much like a medium of sorts that fills up the entirety of existence. And as we move through this space we disturb it in a very silent, non-reactive sort of way.  For example if I’m driving on the highway, I can almost feel the emptiness has this impalpable, but fluid like quality that surrounds my vehicle and flows around it, and the emptiness inside my vehicle moves along with me.  In the past scientists referred to this as the “Aether” as they needed an explanation for how light could travel through the void of space, but as we know, no evidence was found of such an aether.

However I strongly feel that this emptiness has to have a substance of sorts, albeit a substance of extremely low viscosity, but I’m sure many physicists would disagree with that thought. But then how would they explain how gravitational waves (through the merger of black holes) travel through the emptiness of space, if space is truly substance-less.  How is this space being disturbed, how does a black hole or even a planet like ours curve the space around it to simulate gravity?

Due to the very nature that space was “created” after the Big Bang, and just saying that it was created, postulates that it is very real - very physical - and it exists, but in an imperceptible way.  

Now having said that.  May we also wonder if this space is actual? Does it actually exist or is it just something we have created in our heads to make sense of reality, to distinguish and to segregate physical objects, which would otherwise be extremely difficult to separate with our five senses?

Perhaps space is an illusion, or perhaps I’m just deluding myself and space has always been here, even before the Big Bang, and it is a feature of Reality.

What about the space in 3D virtual environments, such as video games and CGI.  Do software designers use code to generate this space? What does that code look like? 

Apologies if this topic belongs in a more scientific forum, or is perhaps in the wrong section of this forum, but I just feel, there is something metaphysical in nature about this emptiness, like we’re definitely missing something.  If you will, this could be considered a “meditation on the nature of spacetime”

[Leo Gura]

It's all very simple: space is imagined within consciousness, just like everything else. The end.

The substance of reality is nothing.

[RichardY]

@AnthonyR Space-Time as a non-duality, does not exist at the microscopic level.

"Nature abhors a vacuum."