We all marvel at the planets, stars, and galaxies that fill our night sky, but what about the vast emptiness between them?
That dark, silent void—what is it actually made of? If space is truly empty, how did galaxies, stars, and planets form in the first place?
Surprisingly, it’s because of nothingness itself that the Universe as we know it exists.
And here’s the mind-blowing part: that nothingness isn’t really nothing at all.
The Big Bang and the Birth of Space
Most people imagine the Big Bang as an explosion, with the Universe expanding outward from a single point. But that’s not quite accurate.
Instead, the Universe underwent a dramatic inflationary period, where it expanded by a factor of 10^26 in less than a fraction of a second.
Think about that for a moment: one instant, the Universe was microscopic, and in the next, it stretched across distances beyond comprehension.
This inflation stopped just as suddenly as it began, and the Universe continued expanding—only this time at a slower pace.
That is, until about 5 to 6 billion years ago, when something strange happened: the expansion started speeding up again.
Scientists suspect this is due to dark energy, an unknown force that is now accelerating the Universe’s growth.
But how does this connect to the formation of galaxies and stars? To understand that, we need to rethink what we mean by ‘nothing.’
The Strange Nature of Empty Space
In everyday life, we think of everything as being made up of particles—atoms, electrons, protons, and so on.
But physics tells us a different story.
The leading theories in modern physics are field theories, which say that particles are just excitations of invisible fields that exist everywhere in space.
Imagine space as being covered in an ocean of invisible energy fields—one for each fundamental particle, like electrons, neutrinos, and quarks.
A particle only appears when there’s an excitation in its corresponding field—like a ripple forming on the surface of water.
This means that even in the darkest, most “empty” regions of space, there’s still something there: a sea of invisible quantum fields waiting to be disturbed.
The Fluctuations That Created Everything
Here’s where things get really weird.
Even if these fields seem smooth and uniform, they can never be perfectly flat.
Quantum physics tells us that they always experience tiny, random fluctuations.
When the Universe expanded during inflation, these microscopic fluctuations were stretched across vast cosmic distances.
Some regions became slightly denser, while others remained emptier.
Over time, the denser regions attracted more matter, eventually collapsing into gas clouds that formed stars, galaxies, and planets.
Without these fluctuations in what we call “empty” space, there would be no galaxies, no stars, no planets—and no us.
We Can Still See These Fluctuations Today
One of the most incredible discoveries in modern astrophysics is that we can still see the imprint of these quantum fluctuations in the leftover radiation from the Big Bang—known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).
This faint glow, detected by telescopes like the Planck satellite, shows tiny variations in temperature—evidence of the first ripples in the quantum fields of the early Universe.
These ripples were the seeds of everything that exists today.
Nothingness Is the Reason You Exist
The next time you feel insignificant, remember this: your very existence is a result of tiny quantum ripples in an invisible sea of energy fields that pervade the Universe.
Without those fluctuations, there would be no galaxies, no stars, no planets, and no life. So in a way, nothingness is the reason we exist.
And that’s a pretty incredible thing to think about.
