Is the idea of "nothing" impossible?

At first sight the idea of 'nothing' appears straight-forward, being simply the absence of any thing. Yet for centuries philosophers and scientists have grappled with this unexpectedly perplexing idea. Nothing is an absence so absolute that even defining it is problematic. We might imagine it as the void, the empty vacuum of space. But to be true nothingness it would need to lack time, space, matter, energy, and relation to the rest of the universe. In addition, in contemporary physics 'nothing' is nowhere to be found.  In quantum mechanics, even the vacuum of space is teeming with quantum fluctuations.  While in general relativity, empty space still retains energy.  Meanwhile philosophers from Hegel to Sartre have placed nothing at the centre of their philosophical accounts of the world but at the same time by making it unfathomable.  

Should we conclude that nothing is impossible, and if so something is inevitable?  Can the paradoxes surrounding nothing be written off as a logical mistake as Russell maintained?  Or can we solve the nature of nothing and with it perhaps the origin of the universe as well?

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