Space

Space Research

Below I present the research I’ve done on the theme of Space. I chose it for research because I find this topic interesting, and because of its close relation to the theme of time.

Scientific Perspective

  • Space is the vast, mostly empty part of the universe that lies beyond Earth’s atmosphere. It’s an almost perfect vacuum with extremely low pressure and very little matter.
  • Sound cannot travel there because there aren’t enough particles to carry pressure waves.
  • From Earth, space is often said to begin at the Kármán line (around 100 km above sea level) – a conventional boundary where the atmosphere becomes very thin.
  • The observable universe extends almost 13.8 billion light-years, limited by how far light has traveled since the Big Bang.
  • Space contains celestial bodies that include stars, planets, galaxies, nebulae, and others, but most of it is empty.
  • Even empty areas contain solar wind (charged particles), cosmic rays, and the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is leftover radiation from the early universe.
  • Dark matter makes up much of the universe’s mass but isn’t visible and is detected only by gravitational effects.

Philosophical Perspective

Relationism

Space is not an independent “thing” – it’s just the network of spatial relations between objects. For example, if everything in the universe shifted one meter to the left, nothing would observationally change – this implies that space might just describe how objects relate to each other.

Substantivalism
  • Space is a real entity or “container” that exists independently of objects.
  • Material bodies exist in space and move from one point to another.

Sources

Howell, E. (2017). What is Space? Space.com. Available at: https://www.space.com/24870-what-is-space.html.

Anthology, 1000-Word P.A.I. (2022). Philosophy of Space and Time: What is Space? 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. Available at: https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2022/08/03/what-is-space/.

Mind Map I made on the theme of Space
Prompts I came up with to help me broaden my research (the last one referred to the theme of money)

Link to the 4 Themes Research Presentation I gave in class: https://sites.wsagames.com/ms22g23/week-3-3/

Money →