0.1 A Story of Getting Something from Nothing

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“Is it possible to get something from nothing?”

This question sounds easy because it’s clear and straightforward. Let's have some fun together and get the answer from our wise Mathematicians.

Long ago, a boy lived in a Mountain village of Somerfield which was covered with green plants, waterfalls, high and low slope, etc. Besides the environment of the valley was astonishing and something a little bit scary.

If you don't have enough time to read the story, then you can listen: 

Once when the boy was walking through a narrow path of the valley, suddenly he heard sounds- strange, low, melodies sounds from a cave. He was alone, so he became frightened. He thought it would better to run away at once, but he couldn't able to take a single footstep. After a while, he discovered that the mysterious sound was nothing much strange but a very familiar tone to him. It was only the unnoticed harmony of a number that is Zero, a unique and most powerful number in Mathematics, follows a circuitous and meandering route through 1, 500 years of human history.

Then the boy showed courage and concentrated to make a trip towards the voice. He entered into the cave bravely, discovered a big-beautiful-amazing Palace where there were ancient buildings, flowers garden, campy water vessel, and etc. Be going towards the Palace, he noticed something written in front of its gate. “Welcome to Your Forefather’s Palace.” He was astonished and delighted for some moments.

To enter through the gate, he first found an old, wise man who was a delegate of the Babylon civilizations. He said that people of Babylon developed two symbols and they used those symbols to write 1-60 unique numbers.

After leaving the place, he met with two learned men from Ancient Greeks and the Mayans were busy to argue with each other. They were pretending to the boy that their system is the most advanced. Though they both developed their own Number Systems and thought to have created their own rough concept of zero as a placeholder, they failed to define the concept.

At that time, some Indians strongly felt the necessity of something that would be able to clear the misconceptions of the calculation. Moreover, they used initially 9 number symbols, and then a small dot used to mark the absence of a number.

Then the boy encountered our talented mathematician Brahmagupta who first defined terms for zero in the 7th century. He used zero as a number of its own rights and described addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division by zero. For example,

Command (a sign b)	Result
1 + 0	1
1 -  0	1
1 * 0	0
0 / 1	0
1 / 0	undefined

Although Brahmagupta presented the most outstanding thought about zero, he struggled and confused whether it would better to use zero or not like other academics.

After completing a successful meeting with Brahmagupta, the boy was worried about how would be solved the confusion of Indian mathematicians.  Following the way, he went through here and there to resolve the problem. Then a man willingly came to him and said that wouldn't quit your thirsty of getting the answer, may God bless you. Before departing from the place, the man provided some pieces of erudition.

As maturing the foundation of Mathematics in India, the streams followed towards Eastwards to China to Westwards, influenced by the Islamic and Arabic cultures where it was instrumental in trade. But some years later, the Roman Empire held resistance to the growth of zero because they thought that the Hindu-Arabic system was opposed by the Roman Empire's established numeral system.

However, the boy was able to find our Italian mathematician Fibonacci who was championing the new number system and helping zero gain a solid foothold across Europe. The great man removed all the confusion of us about zero and built a strong base of the wonderful number.

This is how we got zero from the idea of empty space and a simple dot. But I won’t want to let you stop here. There are still some more interesting things about the asked questions. Let’s see.

1. In Chemistry, Zero plays a special role in the atomic number of the theoretical element tetraneutron. Resources have proved that a cluster of four neutrons may be stable enough to be considered an atom in its own right. So, it's possible to get an atom without no protons and no charge on its nucleus. 
2. In Physics, Absolute Zero is the lowest temperature of the thermodynamic scale that defines the freezing point of water. Further, the zero-point energy is the ground state of the Quantum Mechanical Physical System that represents the lowest possible energy. So, Zero has a value of demand.
3. In the aspect of computer science, zero represents the value for "OFF", which means no electricity flow in the binary system. On the other hand, zero means the value is false in programming languages.

By considering all the above information, won't you say, zero has the limelight to prove its worth and it isn't finally possible to get something from nothing?