Well I'd like to take this time to thank the posters that answered the original question for giving it a go at what may seem like a simple topic on the surface but is more complex and less understood than it may seem.
I still feel a bit confused as to why some call this quantum field "nothing". Perhaps that is because it is nothing like anything else we know of?
I feel that if a mass is affecting this quantum field, and that the field in turn affects mass sitting in it and energy propagating through it, then it must be something right?
So far I'm picturing this quantum field, metric, space-time continuum, or whatever its called as something like an EM wave. Where you have this standing wave, and if you want you can modulate it (perturb it, send a gravity wave through it) and it will travel at the speed of light to affect other matter and energy within it. The difference of course being that the EM wave affects things electromagnetically and not gravitationally. Does this sound right? Make sense?
Although I see a problem with it already that the quantum field does not contain any energy and the EM field does. But other than that does it make sense to think of it like that?
Oh also I'd like to add that the way I see it, if it really were nothing, and I mean nothing at all, then why should any object affect another? For example I'm picturing a fictitious universe without this property, where it would seem to me one mass would not affect the other. There would be nothing to warp, so there would essentially be no gravity. Does this make sense?
In our universe, the fabric of space-time that gives rise to gravity is
something isn't it? Sure it may have no mass, no energy, no matter, but it does have some property to it which is being warped, and also propagates gravitational waves upon it, thereby perturbing everything in it. Yes?
Edited by Calypso, : No reason given.
Edited by Calypso, : changed something to make it clearer to understand