Instead of creating vacuum in chambers on earth, why can't vacuum be brought from outer space in chambers? Outer space pressure ranges from $10^{-6}$torr to $10^{-17}$torr very very low. Is it possible at all?
[Physics] Can “vacuum be brought” from outer space
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There have actually been cases of (accidental!) exposure to near-vacuum conditions. Real life does not conform to what you see in the movies. (Well, it depends on the movie; Dave Bowman's exposure to vacuum in 2001 was pretty accurate.)
Long-term exposure, of course, is deadly, but you could recover from an exposure of, say, 15-30 seconds. You don't explode, and your blood doesn't immediately boil, because the pressure is held in by your skin.
In one case involving a leaking space suit in a vacuum chamber in 1965:
He remained conscious for about 14 seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2 deprived blood to go from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not reach a hard vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds. The subject regained consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent altitude. The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil
(emphasis added)
UPDATE: Here's a YouTube video regarding the incident. It includes video of the actual event, and the test subject's own description of bubbling saliva.
Another incident:
The experiment of exposing an unpressurized hand to near vacuum for a significant time while the pilot went about his business occurred in real life on Aug. 16, 1960. Joe Kittinger, during his ascent to 102,800 ft (19.5 miles) in an open gondola, lost pressurization of his right hand. He decided to continue the mission, and the hand became painful and useless as you would expect. However, once back to lower altitudes following his record-breaking parachute jump, the hand returned to normal.
If you attempt to hold your breath, you could damage your lungs. If you're exposed to sunlight you could get a nasty sunburn, because the solar UV isn't blocked by the atmosphere (assuming the exposure happens in space near a star). You could probably remain conscious for about 15 seconds, and survive for perhaps a minute or two.
The considerations are about the same in interstellar or interplanetary space, or even in low Earth orbit (or a NASA vacuum chamber). The major difference is the effect of sunlight. As far as temperature is concerned -- well, a vacuum has no temperature. There would be thermal effects as your body cools by radiating heat, but over the short time span that you'd be able to survive, even intergalactic space isn't much different from being in shadow in low Earth orbit.
Reference: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html
Strictly speaking vacuum is the state of lowest energy. That means no matter or radiation (photons or any other particles).
Note that space is not a perfect vacuum. Also note that, technically, a gas of planets and comets etc. has a pressure (there is usually little reason to care about it though). There is also radiation pressure due to the photons.
People often use the term vacuum loosely to refer to anything less than atmospheric pressure. This is the sense people use when they say space is a vacuum.
EDIT (Re the comments):
Yes, there is a minimum energy. Imagine that you start with vacuum. There is nothing there by definition. Now create some particle. This necessarily takes some energy (at least $mc^2$ where $m$ is the mass of the particle), so the state with a particle in it has more energy. Now the value of the vacuum energy is a subtle thing. Without gravity only energy differences matter, so you can always set the vacuum energy to zero. But with gravity it is tricky, because all energy gravitates. Indeed, physicists now believe that empty space has an energy density, now known as dark energy.
Now people will tell you a big song and dance about quantum fluctuations and zero point energy, but this is only one side of the coin, and only comes in when you try to actually calculate the vacuum energy from a more basic theory (quantum field theory). The basic picture is really simple though: vacuum energy is just a number - some physical constant that we could go out and measure. Now if you check very carefully all the laws we know then you'll find that gravity is the only place the vacuum energy comes in, so for most purposes you can forget about vacuum energy. (People also mention the Casimir effect around this point, but that is another thing entirely.)
On the other question: whether true vacuum is achievable theoretically. Well, it depends what you mean "theoretically." If you mean "in the mind of a theoretical physicist" then sure, it's possible. ;) But if you mean there is some way to build a box and make a perfect vacuum inside of it then no, you can't, because the box will always have some finite temperature and hence blackbody radiation will fill the cavity. You can make it arbitrarily close to true vacuum by cooling the box, but you could never actually reach it.
Best Answer
A lot of things are possible if you want to throw a lot of money at it.
Is it practical? No.
First, I would estimate that a rocket would be thousands of dollars. Low Earth orbit would get you the high range ($10^{-6}$ torr), high Earth orbit would possible get $10^{-9}$ torr. The next difficulty is to have the container returned to Earth (it needs to be shielded from the heat of re-entry) and retrieved from where ever it landed (several thousand more dollars).
Of course, the container needs a good seal since air will be trying to find its way in.
A good vacuum system (about \$2000) can reach $20\cdot 10^{-9}$ torr for a small chamber in about 30 minutes. I have one for the mass spec at work.