MadSci Network: Astronomy |
Dear Maddy, Actually, atoms don't "look like tiny solar systems." Not much at all. They aren't held together by gravity, and they don't have small, solid bodies circling a large center. Instead they have really fuzzy, smeared-out bodies (electrons) that exist as standing waves in the atom, like vibrations on a drumhead. maybe the little atoms that make up everything here are tiny little worlds, maybe with living things. And maybe we are just an atom on a giant clover Really, I suppose there's no particular reason to say that it can't be true -- but it would have to be supernatural. The scientific tests we can make say that it's probably not true that atoms are little solar systems; and as for the other direction, we can't really check that at all. Sorry! Dan Berger |
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