[qijino1236]

Not sure if I should have put this in Materials Chemisty or Physical Chemistry...

Space

A question from someone else on Ask.com that I've wondered about....
If vast areas of outer space contain nothing, does that mean those areas contains no atoms either?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker
The "vacuum of space" refers to the relative lack of material in space.

The Earth's atmosphere doesn't really stop at a certain place and then "space" begins. The air gets thinner as you go up from the surface and the farther from Earth (or the Sun) you get the thinner it is. It gets thinner still if you leave our solar system and even thinner in intergalactic space. But it is always there.

In reality, no volume of space can ever be perfectly empty. A perfect vacuum with a gaseous pressure of absolute zero is a philosophical concept that does not exist in nature.
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Question 1a)So the does that mean if you were like at the darkest edge of the galaxy far, far away from any star and I some type of sci-fi apparatus that could see atoms...then every single part of the space would contain atoms?

Question 2) Or would there be places that contained no atoms? or is there always atoms everywhere?

The reason I brought this up is because of a video I just saw that talked about energy states and orbitals from Khan Academy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBrp8uvNAhI
He said that the further the electron is from the nucleus then the "energy" is higher and the atom will start to glow(or that is what I thought he meant).

If the answer to question 2 is "There is or could be places that contain no atoms":
What if we took a single atom to that place in space and then did this:
We somehow move the electron furthur and furthur away from the nucleus without it interacting with any other atoms since there is none in this specific place.
Would the atom's "energy" continue to increase as long as there is no other atoms around it as the electron moved furthur and furthur away?

From Wikipedia --->
Outer space, or simply space, is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth.[1] It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles: predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos. Observations and theory suggest that it also contains dark matter and dark energy. The baseline temperature, as set by the background radiation left over from the Big Bang, is only 3 Kelvin (K); in contrast, temperatures in the coronae of stars can reach over a million Kelvin. Plasma with an extremely low density (less than one hydrogen atom per cubic meter) and high temperature (millions of Kelvin) in the space between galaxies accounts for most of the baryonic (ordinary) matter in outer space; local concentrations have condensed into stars and galaxies. Intergalactic space takes up most of the volume of the Universe, but even galaxies and star systems consist almost entirely of empty space.

Question 1b)So the does that mean if you were like at the darkest edge of the galaxy far, far away from any star and I some type of sci-fi apparatus that could see atoms...then every single part of the space would still contain hydrogen or helium plasma atoms?

[vmelkon]

I'll attempt to answer :
Question 1a) Not necessarily. If the universe is an expanding bubble, then I imagine the outer edge of the bubble would be empty.

Question 2) That is pretty long so I'll just put the question here. "Would the atom's "energy" continue to increase as long as there is no other atoms around it as the electron moved furthur and furthur away?"

If you move the electron away from the nucleus, that takes energy.

Question 1b) Isn't this basically Question 1a except instead of atom, you say plasma?