What is space?

Im not talking about outer space. What I am asking is what is space between two objects? For example, im sitting in a room right now looking at a wall. What actually makes up the space between me and the wall?

I have seen scientist say that space is expanding. Well if space is expanding, is it expanding only at the edges or is it expanding everywhere? An example I see quite often is space is like a baloon being blown up all and points are expanding outward from each other. If this is the case and I am that spot on the baloon wouldnt in theory the space between me and the wall also be expanding?

If you actually knew what space was couldnt you manipulate it (take out the part between me and the wall) and have instant travel?

Well the space between you and a wall is air particles. When you take those particles to a sub-atomic level you have your protons/neutrons and electrons orbitting those. On a real-life scale if you took a Hydrogen atom and blew the proton up to roughly the size of a golf ball the electron orbitting it would be approx. 20 km away. (These are rough estimates, just to give you an idea) I think "space" is the distance between protons and electrons. But what is that space? It could be absolute nothingness or it could be made up of sub-sub-atomic particles... to my knowledge that hasn't been discovered yet but that is what scientists call "dark matter" (referring to the space between hydrogen atoms in space).

My personal beliefs (based on my logic, nothing scientific or proven) are that the space between the proton and neutron is just pure energy. But what is energy? What comprises energy? Protons and Electrons are essentially (to human knowledge) the simplest physical forms of energy connected by a magnetic attraction.

It's a very mind-boggling question haha. I don't think I answered anything but that's my contribution.

Captain Kirk said it was the Final Frontier.

I'm not a physicist, but I've been reading a lot of cosmology lately. My understanding is that the balloon analogy has limits, matter does not stick to space. Atoms, your wall, the solar system, the Galaxy do not increase their size. For very large scale structures, (superclusters of galaxies or bigger) loosely tied together by gravity, expansion does have an effect because their individual components move in inertial reference frames drifting away from each other.

Reminds me: We Are 99.9% Empty Space

We are basically nothing.

I think of space as the absence of matter.

An analogy is darkness. It isn't measurable. It is an absence of light.

JMWO*


*whackamole

[edit on 3-7-2008 by argentus]

I sometimes think that what NASA and Scientist tell us about space is a big lie just so we don't ask questions about moving to other planets and wormholes and such things.