Nothingness and fullness

Can you do nothing or think nothing? Yes, if you live in a vacuum. Interestingly, vast tracts of emptiness lie between clusters of galaxies that occupy roughly 70% of outer space, according to cosmologists. Michael Vogeley and his team at Drexel University, Philadelphia, presented 'DeepVoid', a cosmic void detector that 'employs AI to wade through the flood of galaxy data from telescopes and chart the tracts of cosmic nothingness'. Mapping the empty space between galaxies will inform how and why it keeps stretching evermore.

Can something come out of nothing? Very unlikely. Because voids are more than nothing, explains Miguel Aragon-Calvo, Public University of Mexico, 'even voids have a very rich structure, with a whole cosmic web inside, made of filaments of matter and with their own mini-voids'. Why we think they are voids is because within the so-called voids, 'matter is so sparse that it does not appear in images taken with our current best telescopes. Computer simulations, however, suggest that these desolate regions of the cosmos contain some matter and a few galaxies, strung together in a wispy lace.'

In Indic philosophy, shunyata refers to the 'lack of inherent existence in all phenomena'. That is, things are empty of inherent existence because they are interdependent and constantly changing. A verse in the Upanishad says: 'All this is full./ All that is full./ From fullness, fullness comes./ When fullness is taken from fullness./ Fullness still remains.' So, there is no such thing called nothing.