There are toothbrushes like this that play the radio when you brush your teeth. If you put a wobbly fork to your teeth in space wouldn't you still hear it that way?

> Space is typically defined as absence of "stuff". It has no volume, zero mass, zero momentum, zero electric charge. You can't push it around, or expand it, or do anything to it.

You have this completely wrong. The easiest thing I can point you to is that space itself is literally expanding. This has been known, demonstrated, and studied for a long while now.

> Particles do have mass, volume, momentum, electric charge, etc. They affect their surroundings.

This is also at least partially incorrect. Particles like Photons do not have mass for example.

> Your hypothesis changes depending if you define "space" as interstellar space or as a hard vacuum with all particles removed.

I suppose I'll supply this definition of space instead then to make it easier for you to understand the hypothetical:

> the dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move.

Moving forward this also shows your misunderstanding of my hypothetical when you try to rebut it with your own example:

> big container with rigid or flexible walls and absolutely nothing inside. You add one particle. Nothing changes. One particle isn't exerting force on anything, it's not pushing on anything, it's not interacting with your magical thought experiment walls. Nothing changes.

This is disanalogous, because your first sentence contradicts. If "Nothing" is inside, how is there an "inside" of the container at all? Saying there's an "inside" implies there's some amount of space within the container for something to be.

In fact this just inspires a better question: If you had a universe of absolutely nothing with no space/time/anything at all, and you add a particle to it, does this also add space to that universe?

> End result of your thought experiment is nothing changes.

I'm afraid your misunderstanding of the very nature of space (and consequently from that, you misunderstood, my hypothetical) led you to this conclusion.

> Depends on the walls of the container.

The 'walls' of my 'container' are the same 'walls' our universe would have at its 'edge' if it isn't infinite.

The space I'm describing is effectively its own universe, a small 1x1x1 sqft space of space, and that's all there is.

The ultimate end of my question rests on whether or not particles are a type of space. If they are, then they should have a measurable effect on the amount of "space" in an area when present. If they are not then no matter the amount of particles that are inside that space they won't have any impact on how much space is in this universe. (for instance, you could have the same amount of particles that our sun has in its sum total in that same small space and the size of the space would be unaffected completely by the presence of the gargantuan amount of particles).

> You will be compressing the tiny amount of particles inside the container.

This begs the question that I'm asking though, whether or not a particle is a type of space. If it is, then it stands to reason that it would cause a compression effect on the space around it. If not then it would only compress the particles around it and leave the space unaffected.

No. "Nothingness" implies the lack of space. When people talk about the vast distances between objects they talk about "empty space" but not a lack of space itself. Space is separate and distinguishable from nothingness.

> Nothing changes about the space in that area, since space literally is just nothingness

This goes against every paper I can find on Google scholar about the subject. Do you have a source for this?

> Space is just emptiness.

I know enough to know that this isn't even remotely true, which is what prompted my question to begin with.

Regardless, this also doesn't answer my question even if it was the case that it was just "emptiness". Since space is a dimension through which all things have relative positions/directions, does the distance across the cubic ft of area I outlined increase, or decrease, if we were to add a particle of matter to it?

If it's 1ft in distance across this space, does adding a particle also add a particles worth of distance to that space?

Hypothetical question

Imagine you had a 1x1x1 cubic ft area of nothing but space. This is all that exists. Now imagine you teleported in a particle into the middle of this area. Does the total amount of space inside the cube increase, decrease, or stay the same? Does the space inside "move out of the way" to "make room" for the new object?

EDIT: To make it a bit more clear, I'm changing the example from a bowling ball to just a single particle.