11
" If water is bombarded with intense sound waves, under the right conditions, then air bubbles can form which quickly contract and then suddenly disappear in a flash of light. The conventional explanation of what is being seen here is that a shock wave, a little sonic boom, is created inside the bubble, which dumps its energy, causing the interior to be quickly heated to flash point. But a more dramatic possibility, first suggested by the Nobel prize-winner Julian Schwinger, has been entertained. Suppose the surface of the bubble is acting like a Casimir plate so that, as the bubble shrinks, it excludes more and more wavelengths of the zero point fluctuations from existing within it. They can't simply disappear into nothing; energy must be conserved, so they deposit their energy into light. At present, experimenters are still unconvinced that this is what is really happening, but it is remarkable that so fundamental a question about a highly visible phenomena is still unresolved. "
― John D. Barrow , The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe
15
" Bindu is used to describe the most insignificant geometrical object, a single point or a circle shrunk down to its centre where it has no finite extent. Literally, it signifies just a 'point', but it symbolises the essence of the Universe before it materialized into the solid world of appearances that we experience. It represents the uncreated Universe from which all things can be created. This creative potential was revealed by means of a simple analogy. For, by its motion, a single dot can generate lines, by whose motion can be generated planes, by whose motion can be generated all of three-dimensional space around us. The bindu was the Nothing from which everything could flow. "
― John D. Barrow , The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe
17
" Non-Euclidean' became a byword for non-absolute knowledge. It also served to illustrate most vividly the gap between mathematics and the natural world. Mathematics was much bigger than physical reality. There were mathematical systems that described aspects of Nature, but there were others that did not. Later, mathematicians would use these discoveries about geometry to discover that there were other logics as well. Aristotle's system was, like Euclid's, just one of many possibilities. Even the concept of truth was not absolute. What is false in one logical system can be true in another. In Euclid's geometry of flat surfaces, parallel lines never meet, but on curved surfaces they can. These discoveries revealed the difference between mathematics and science. Mathematics was something bigger than science, requiring only self-consistency to be valid. It contained all possible patterns of logic. Some of those patterns were followed by parts of Nature; others were not. Mathematics was open-ended, uncompleteable, infinite; the physical universe was smaller. "
― John D. Barrow , The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe
