70 year old quantum prediction comes true, as something is created from nothing

You can't obtain something for nothing, as we all know. It is possible for anything to appear out of nothing in the quantum realm.

In theory, the Schwinger effect states that in the presence of strong enough electric fields, (charged) particles and their antiparticle counterparts will be ripped from the quantum vacuum, empty space itself, to become real. Theorized by Julian Schwinger in 1951, the predictions were validated in a tabletop experiment, using a quantum analogue system, for the first time. (Credit: Matteo Ceccanti and Simone Cassandra)

"You can't get something from nothing" must have been said by someone who has never studied quantum physics. No matter how you manipulate it, something will always come to light as long as you have empty space, which is the ultimate in physical emptiness. Other particle-antiparticle pairs may occasionally form when two particles collide in the void of empty space. If you attempt to tear the quark from the antiquark with a meson, a fresh set of particle-antiparticle pairs will be drawn out of the void between them. Furthermore, even in the absence of any beginning particles or antiparticles, a powerful enough electromagnetic field has the potential to tear particles and antiparticles out of the vacuum itself.

It was previously believed that these effects would require the highest particle energies possible, the kind that could only be achieved in severe astrophysical conditions or at high-energy particle physics experiments. However, in early 2022, using graphene's special features, strong enough electric fields were produced in a straightforward lab setup to allow for the spontaneous formation of particle-antiparticle pairs from nothing at all. Julian Schwinger, one of the pioneers of quantum field theory, made the prediction that this should be feasible seven decades ago. Now that the Schwinger effect has been confirmed, we can learn how the universe actually creates something out of nothing.

This chart of the particles and interactions details how the particles of the Standard Model interact according to the three fundamental forces that Quantum Field Theory describes. When gravity is added into the mix, we obtain the observable Universe that we see, with the laws, parameters, and constants that we know of governing it. Mysteries, such as dark matter and dark energy, still remain.

It is absolutely impossible to generate "nothing" in the universe we live in in a way that is suitable. At the most basic level, everything that exists can be divided into discrete units called quanta that are incapable of further dissection. Quarks, electrons, their heavier relatives (muons and taus), neutrinos, and all of their antimatter counterparts are examples of these elementary particles. Other elements include photons, gluons, and the heavy bosons (W+, W-, Z0, and Higgs). However, in many physical ways, the "empty space" that remains after you remove them all isn't really empty.

One is that quantum fields persist even when there are no particles present. We cannot remove the quantum fields that pervade the Universe from it, any more than we can remove the principles of physics.

For another, two long-range forces—gravity and electromagnetism—will continue to have an impact regardless of how far we relocate any sources of matter. In contrast to gravitation, where space cannot be "entirely emptied" in any meaningful sense, we can create ingenious configurations that guarantee the electromagnetic field strength in a location is zero.

Instead of an empty, blank, three-dimensional grid, putting a mass down causes what would have been ‘straight’ lines to instead become curved by a specific amount. No matter how far away you get from a point mass, the curvature of space never reaches zero, but always remains, even at infinite range.

You can do an experiment to show that empty space isn't really empty, even for the electromagnetic force, even if you zero out all of the electric and magnetic fields in a given area of space. Even if you construct a perfect vacuum with zero electric and magnetic fields and no particles or antiparticles of any kind, there is obviously something there in this area of what a physicist may refer to as "maximum nothingness" from a physical standpoint.

A set of parallel conducting plates placed in this area of space will accomplish the trick. The plates end up attracting by a far larger amount than gravity would suggest, despite your expectation that the only force they would experience would be gravity due to their mutual gravitational attraction.

The Casimir effect is a physical phenomena that was proven to be accurate by Steve Lamoreaux in 1996, forty-eight years after Hendrik Casimir first suggested and computed it.

The Casimir effect, illustrated here for two parallel conducting plates, excludes certain electromagnetic modes from the interior of the conducting plates while permitting them outside of the plates. As a result, the plates attract, as predicted by Casimir in the 1940s and verified experimentally by Lamoreaux in the 1990s.

Julian Schwinger, who was already a co-founder of the quantum field theory that explains electrons and the electromagnetic force, also provided a thorough theoretical explanation of how matter may be generated from nothing in 1951. He explained that this could be done by simply creating a strong electric field. Schwinger himself did the heavy effort to determine exactly under what conditions this effect should develop, even though others, such as Fritz Sauter, Werner Heisenberg, and Hans Euler, had first presented the notion back in the 1930s. Since then, it has been primarily referred to as the Schwinger effect.