Eli5: Could you create a vacuum stronger than space, and take a sample of the contents of space?
In: 4
Simply, space is close enough to perfect vacuum to not make a difference.
Better answer: vacuums work because particles push against each other. Think about people packed into a big room all trying to run around blindly as much as they can, bumping and pushing and shoving each other. When you open the doors they will start pushing each other out (because they’re pushing each other everywhere) and bouncing off of each other and probably make a mess. But you’re not pulling them out that door, you’re just giving them new empty space to move into.
But if you only have one or two people running around in your massive room, you can open the door and it doesn’t matter – they just won’t bump into each other enough for either of them to end up running out the door by random chance any time soon.
[This page](https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/DaWeiCai.shtml) quotes sources that range from 0.06-1000 atoms in a cubic centimetre. That’s basically nothing. Imagine two people running around an entire city, shoving each other when they met, and waiting for one to get shoved out of your doorway. Imagine ten people running blindly around a *country*. The atoms in free space just aren’t close enough together to make any kind of pressure to push into a vacuum, so it wouldn’t help you collect a sample of space any more than, say, swinging a plastic bag around out there would.
Latest Answers