Well… Empty empty, I don’t think so; think about the whole issue of vacuum energy and the consequent virtual particle-antiparticle pairs, or the mere fact of the existence of quantum fields that permeate everything — like the field responsible for mass itself, the Higgs field.
That’s a simplification; a useful one, but a simplification nonetheless.
Also, an atom is mostly empty space. So there’s lots of room for an atom to increase its number protons/neutrons without increasing its size.
At that scale what is and isn’t “empty space” gets a little hazy.
If you zoom in far enough, there’s always some bullshit going on.
Well… Empty empty, I don’t think so; think about the whole issue of vacuum energy and the consequent virtual particle-antiparticle pairs, or the mere fact of the existence of quantum fields that permeate everything — like the field responsible for mass itself, the Higgs field.
That’s a simplification; a useful one, but a simplification nonetheless.