This question quotes Hawking saying:
[…] you enter a world where conjuring something out of nothing is possible (at least, for a short while). That's because at this scale particles, such as protons, behave according to the laws of nature we call "quantum mechanics", and they really can appear at random, stick around for a while, and then vanish again to reappear somewhere else.
Nowever, is empty space really nothing? is there a distinction between non-existence and the "nothingness" of space?
Perhaps space is something, we just cannot grasp exactly what it is. Anyone can shed light on whether space is something and what exactly that "something" is.
Best Answer
The physicist's 'nothing' is an example of something to the philosopher for which 'nothing' is well, let this philosopher explain in a review of "A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss: