Even when it becomes too small to actually divide it in practice, we presume that-conceptually at least-this could go on indefinitely. We assume that we could do that indefinitely-always dividing the remainder. If we take a length of string (or whatever) and cut it in half, we can take the remaining half and divide it again. We inherently assume that we can always divide any length, no matter how small. Our apparent virtual “reality” actually results from an electrical simulation!) (This justifies the view that space is “mostly empty”: the ostensible solidity of matter-the very chair you’re sitting on-simply results from the electrical collisions of the molecules involved. For the area covered, that length needs to be squared: (10 5) 2 for the volume involved, it must be cubed: (10 5) 3 or 10 15! The significance of this volume is extremely difficult for anyone to fully grasp: the nucleus of the atom has the same relationship to the space that the atom occupies as one second has to 30 million years! If you were making this model to scale, using a golf ball to represent the nucleus, the electron would have to be over three miles away!īut that’s not the whole story. The diameter of the atom, thus, is about 100,000 times larger than that of its nucleus. The ratio of these diameters is 10 -8/10 -13, or 10 5. Its nucleus is approximately 10-13 cm in diameter. The hydrogen atom is approximately 10 -8 cm in diameter. It is important, how-ever, for us to gain a glimpse of that scale. This diagram is, of course, not to scale. It is usually represented by a nucleus of a single proton, surrounded by a single electron. For example, let’s consider the simplest atom of all: that of hydrogen. We need to gain a grasp of the relative sizes of things in the subatomic world. Most astonishingly, it is the absence of “infinity” in the microcosm-the world of smallness-which is perhaps the most challenging of all. (We will explore some of the implications of our inability to grasp the enormity of the scale of this universe-and some of the myths that have thus resulted-in subsequent articles of this series.) We appear to be journeying within the interval subsequent to that initial singularity, commonly known as the “Big Bang,” and an ultimate thermodynamic heat death as the universe continues to drift into a uniformity of temperature in which no more work can be done. It may be expanding, but it is not infinite. The startling discovery of 20th century physics is that our universe is finite, not infinite as was commonly presumed. The concept of “infinity” is a mathematical concept that remains elusive in our exploration of the physical universe. This is the first of a series on “the Boundaries of Our Reality”: an exploration of some of the most relevant discoveries of modern science and how they impact our Biblical perspectives, as we continue on our adventure within this interval between the miracle of our origin and the mystery of our destiny.
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