Much ado about nothing -- How empty is an atom? -- Space -- Waves in what? -- Travelling on a light beam -- The cost of free space -- The infinite sea -- The Higgs vacuum -- The new void.

"'Nature abhors a vacuum', or so it was believed. From early efforts to create a perfect vacuum, the exploration of nothingness has driven scientists towards a deeper understanding of the nature of matter, space and time. From this striving came the development of the concept of fields, and the idea of the 'aether', which was thought to permeate all space, and was blown away by Einstein's work on relativity. Subsequent developments show that nothingness may be richer still, a seething vacuum full of virtual particles appearing and disappearing, and something like the old aether may be making a comeback as the 'Higgs Field'. The structure of even spacetime itself may be far more complex than meets the eye." "In this book, particle physicist and writer Frank Close tells the story of scientists' efforts to understand the Void. It is an account that begins with the ancient Greek philosophers and takes us through to the frontiers of modern science; from the absolute zero of temperature to the unimaginable heat of the Big Bang; from quantum uncertainty and curled up dimensions to the vastness of the cosmos. We are discovering that by seeking to understand the nature of the Void, we are confronting the enigma of why anything should exist at all."--Jacket.