Try imagining a universe without color, or time. Unusual, but possible to visualize. Now try imagining a universe without space. What does it look like? Just a dot? No—even a dot is a kind of space.

Without space, we seem not to be able to start. But some physicists say space doesn’t really exist.

We organize our memories spatially, too, moving through them as we do the rooms of a house. Losing our sense of space can stop our thinking in its tracks. We see evidence of that in solitary confinement, and in certain brain disorders.

Space is a quiet subtext, until we lose it. Then, there’s little room to think about much else.

Welcome to “Space.”