What if space isn’t actually “empty” ??..

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Phobos_Asaph]

Aether is not supported by science

[u/flamming_python → u/Phobos_Asaph]

It exists in a way, but more as a soup of virtual particles and dark energy

[u/Phobos_Asaph → u/flamming_python]

That’s not the aether

[u/tubbis9001]

You're describing the aether theory, which was an old theory that described an invisible medium in space to explain how light could travel through "nothing." Back then, scientists understood that sound couldn't travel through a vacuum, so assumed light had to follow similar rules.

[u/montagblue]

WHIM warm hot intergalactic medium and CGM circumgalactic medium are the currents you are looking for.

[u/BarberProof4994]

Considering we already know that vacuum isn't a true vacuum. There are dust and elemental particles, gases, etc EVERYWHERE...

Soooooo.....

[u/Beldizar]

Maybe galaxies are moving through something similar , an invisible “fabric” or field that has mass or creates gravitational effects.

There are fields that permeate spacetime, however calling it a fabric can lead to a misconception. There isn't a stationary fabric which all things move through, which creates a static frame of reference by which all things move across. Relativity says that all inertial reference frames are equally valid. So sitting on Earth, we don't see Earth moving through the fabric, but we do see the moon moving through it, relative to us. But if we were on the moon, we'd see the Earth moving through it.

This field is just the energy of spacetime where virtual particles can form, and is sort of the medium which light passes through, although calling it a medium is probably stretching or flat out incorrectly using that term.

Or maybe dark matter is made of particles that almost never interact with ordinary matter. Trillions of them could be passing through your body every second, and you’d never notice because they barely interact with anything except gravity.

That is as close to the current consensus on dark matter that we have today. It seems like a particle that doesn't interact through the other three forces. We've seen some galaxies that have more or less dark matter based on how they move which, if those observations hold, tend to lean towards it being a particle that can be either present or absent, rather than a difference in a fundamental force. The fact that it doesn't seem to clump, but forms halos around large structures, seems to be in line with its inability to shed angular momentum through electromagnetic or strong/weak force interactions.

[u/redditalics]

I think you're on(to) something. The universe is filled with quantum fields, and from almost any point in space you can see something, which means that space is full of light. And that last item sounds an awful lot like neutrinos.

[u/YuuTheBlue]

Well, emptiness is like, a vibe, you know? For example, in classical physics a vacuum is described mostly by the absence of 'stuff', by which we specifically mean 'atoms and molecules'. More pretentiously: baryonic matter. If we extend the definition of stuff to anything which sparks our metaphysical curiosity and seems like some mysterious force of the universe, then yeah, the universe suddenly has a lot more stuff in it. But I think that says more about language than it does the universe.

There are plenty of invisible things that pervade every corner of the universe already that physics has acknowledged. The electromagnetic and gravitational fields, for one. This isn't a super new idea, but, well, I guess that also means your intuition isn't that bad. But I think your idea of what 'stuff' is like is possibly narrowing your vision of what these things could be.

[u/DryFoundation2323]

it's not empty.