Most people assume the universe “just exists,” full stop. But when you look closely at physics, you discover something surprising: everything we observe — space, time, matter, energy, even the quantum vacuum — carries information. And information always needs a baseline, a place where distinctions begin. Our recent work argues that physics requires such a baseline: a perfectly uniform, perfectly featureless state beneath reality itself. We call it the void.
The void is absolutely not “nothing.” Nothingness is impossible — it has no identity, no stability, and no capacity to produce anything. You cannot get a universe from literal nothing. Instead, the void is the simplest possible form of existence: a state with zero entropy and zero distinguishability. It carries no structure of its own, but it’s stable, coherent, and capable of serving as the reference point from which space, time, particles, and energy can emerge as meaningful differences.
What makes the void compelling isn’t poetry — it’s physics. Independent clues from black hole thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, cosmology, information theory, gauge symmetry, and even the stability of matter all point toward the same conclusion: the universe can only make sense if there is a true S = 0 state underneath everything. Without such a substrate, time has no anchor, entropy has no zero, quantum states have no reference, and renormalization — the backbone of modern physics — becomes mathematically incoherent. The void isn’t an add-on; it’s the missing piece we’ve been circling for decades.
This is where physics and philosophy collide, and we make no apologies for standing on that boundary. The deepest physical questions are philosophical questions: What counts as a state? How does difference arise? Why is there structure at all? Physics has tiptoed around these issues for too long. The truth is simple: every pattern requires a canvas. Every distinction requires a baseline. And beneath the universe’s astonishing complexity lies the most elegant idea of all — a perfect, featureless ground from which everything rises. The void is that ground.