Via BigThink.com: 70-year-old quantum prediction comes true, as something is created from nothing

In our common experience, you can't get something for nothing. In the quantum realm, something really can emerge from nothing.

Whoever said, “You can’t get something from nothing” must never have learned quantum physics. As long as you have empty space — the ultimate in physical nothingness — simply manipulating it in the right way will inevitably cause something to emerge...

* There are all sorts of conservation laws in the Universe: for energy, momentum, charge, and more. Many properties of all physical systems are conserved: where things cannot be created or destroyed. * We've learned how to create matter under specific, explicit conditions: by colliding two quanta together at high enough energies so that equal amounts of matter and antimatter can emerge, so long as E = mc² allows it to happen. * For the first time, we've managed to create particles without any collisions or precursor particles at all: through strong electromagnetic fields and the Schwinger effect. Here's how. ...

Full article: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/something-from-nothing/