More weird science:
Two forthcoming research papers question whether or not the nature of a vacuum remains static.
In one paper, Marcel Urban from the University of Paris-Sud, located in Orsay, France identified a quantum level mechanism for interpreting vacuum as being filled with pairs of virtual particles with fluctuating energy values. As a result, the inherent characteristics of vacuum, like the speed of light, may not be a constant after all, but fluctuate.
Meanwhile, in another study, Gerd Leuchs and Luis L. Sánchez-Soto, from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, hypothesize that physical constants, such as the speed of light and the so-called impedance of free space, are indications of the total number of elementary particles in nature.
Vacuum is one of the most intriguing concepts in physics. When observed at the quantum level, vacuum is not empty, but rather, filled with continuously appearing and disappearing particle pairs such as electron-positron or quark-antiquark pairs.