If space is a vacuum....

[Mazzini]

If space is a vacuum, what contains the vacuum?

(My husband's question, not mine!!)

[CT]

The boundaries of space and time.

[qapmoc]

Hi Mazzini,  well if a vacuum is a volume of space with absolutely nothing in it then all of the vacuum (space) in the universe/multiverse does not need anything to hold it in.  All of the stars, planets, galactic dust etc... on the other hand need quite a lot of space to fit in. 

[Clanad]

Actually, there are no boundaries to space and time.  The second most momentous event (in my opinion) of the 20th century was that the universe had a beginning and is still expanding at amazing speed.  Additionally, space is a near vacuum... it does have a few million atoms of hydrogen in each square parsec, but close enough to be termed a near vacuum.  The gravitational effects that clumped together stars and galaxies have attracted all other matter in the last 14.5 billion years leaving the interstellar areas mostly devoid...

[loudickson71]

isn't a square parsec flat?

[loudickson71]

what was the most momentous event?

[Clanad]

loudickson71, it has to be the keyboards fault... I know I typed cubic parsec, but somehow it turned flat... Thanx!

[stevie21]

And the most momentous event???
<baited breath>

[fo3nix]

The truth is, we really don't know. If anything at all is.

[fantastical]

We do know that the universe is expanding, at increasing in speed over time! The "vacuum" is becoming a larger vacuum - relaitve to everything around it.

What contains the vacuum? Maybe dead space with other expanding vacuums (ie universes) in it. Or...there may be an infinite number of universe "clusters." In each cluster all universes are pushing against one another - some expanding into ones collapsing, and others collapsing as a result that their universe has reversed its expansion (what ours might do someday) and is consequently getting compressed by the matter from other universes that are expanding.

[tracymort]

As Stephen Hawkings said on R&J this week when asked what was there before the big bang (kind of similar to waht i've wondered since a child...if space is expanding, what is it expanding into?) he said "It's like asking what is north of the north pole...it's meaningless".

[qapmoc]

But surely the question of "what was before the big bang" is the most importent of all,  it goes right to the fundamental question of where do we all come from. is it just that they have no idea what to say so they say it was nothing before the bang,  in that case its just as easy to say God made it all, that solves the problem real quick.