Alice-in-Wonderland Reality—Part 2

Now that I've shrunk myself several million times in order to see these blobs of atoms, why not shrink even more, to see what's inside the atoms, in order to view those protons, neutrons, and electrons? So I shrink a few more thousand times.

Now that I'm even tinier, I'm astounded by the fact that that blob of an atom—that Greek “fundamental” building block—is mostly nothing! It is mostly empty! It is just as if I were many trillion times larger—big enough to allow me to take in the whole of our solar system—I'd also see that it is mostly empty space... mostly nothing. There's the heavy sun (comprising some 99% of the solar system's mass) sitting at the center, while the insubstantial planets revolve way out there, through mostly empty space. So much vacuum! So much void!

And that's what the atom is like! To me—who is now a few billion times smaller than when I began this adventure—this ever-so-minuscule atomic nucleus can be seen to be surrounded by a cloud of electrons. Virtually all the “substance” of the atom (just like the solar system) is contained within that tiny, central ball of protons and neutrons. The atom turns out to be 99% nothing! It's mostly empty space. In fact, the whole universe is mostly empty space! All matter—even the tree and the bird—is primarily a vacuum, with its vanishingly small nuclei scattered so far apart, that my tiny self can see only the closest atom. It's lonely down here!

But it gets even more amazing. In the last century or so scientists have delved ever deeper into the atom. Now they know that those protons and neutrons—the tiny things that contain virtually all of the atom's mass—are not unimaginably dense lumps of matter, but are themselves constituted from even smaller particles. Is there no end to it all? Maybe not.

Inside each proton and neutron in that nucleus is a trio of yet smaller particles. Yes, each proton and neutron is made up of three even tinier building blocks called quarks. Quarks are truly weird things that come in several varieties, to which quantum physicists have given eccentric names such as up, down, charm, top, bottom, and strange. It's as if this sub-subatomic world is so bizarre that scientists have given up trying to come up with sober names, but have let themselves go bonkers in this Alice-in-Wonderland fantastic world.

Well, I've shrunk a few billion times by now, so why not go a few hundred times more and see what a quark looks like? Dwindling even more, I peer inside the nearest proton. But maybe I've gone too far this time: I spot three sort of solid-looking entities that I take to be quarks, but the whole scene is pulsing and dancing. In addition to the bizarre trio of quarks, I see a soup of fuzzy things that look sort of like quarks, but are continually appearing and disappearing. Right before my eyes, things come into existence and then just as quickly pop out of existence! It's all unstable and causing me to feel a little nauseous.

Physicists on the cutting edge of quantum physics tell us that these exotic states of matter confound even them. It's a hotbed of current research that is so bizarre that it seems unreal. At these quantum levels matter is almost not matter. In fact, it's bubbling energy fields wherein we begin to lose all distinctions between matter and energy, as these particles slip in and out of existence or from one form of existence to another. Yikes!

My infinitesimal eyes are tired and blurry. My infinitesimal head is spinning, as if I too were popping in and out of reality. I close my eyes and, like Alice, take a pill and swell back up to my original size.

The bird has flown away, but the tree is still there—solid and substantial as can be. Whew! Gone is my fanciful ability to observe the quarks, protons, electrons, nuclei, atoms, and molecules. I'm back to my colorful and more sane world. Ooh, a bright red cardinal just flew in! Lying back, I let the hot water soften me a little more, as I thrill to my macroscopic, gorgeous world. Welcome home.

Alice-in-Wonderland Reality—Part 1

I'm sitting in my outdoor tub, gazing at a hairy woodpecker perched at the feeder, while I simultaneously admire a large sycamore tree behind it. I see the bird's striking shape and colorful feathers—all black and white and red. I see the tree's gray, smooth bark, punctuated now and then by chunks of peeling bark of a chocolate-brown hue. Glancing upward, I see pale green leaves just beginning their spring opening.

It's a peaceful, beautiful scene which I become absorbed into—as my mind wanders over the many attributes of these gorgeous denizens of my natural world. As I sink slowly into a puddle of flesh, the hot water working its wonders on my body and mind, I ponder the reality of what I am seeing. My eyes behold feathers and leaves, beak and bark—merely the surface features of the reality that's there.

But I'm aware that there is so much more to these beautiful things than meets my limited eye and my brain's ability to interpret. The tree's bark is made of billions of molecules that link together to bring me the overall image I see. The same is true of the bird's feathers. In fact, the colors I see in its feathers are really not there at all—I'm just noticing certain wavelengths of light that get diffracted from tiny structures in its colorless feathers. I know these things only because science, with its sensitive microscopes, has peered into the depths of them, and demonstrated the existence of molecules, atoms, and other (to my naked eye) invisible things.

I find myself wondering how these objects would appear, if I were able, in an Alice-in-Wonderland fashion, to shrink myself down a few million times—until I can begin to make out the fundamental, intricately-arranged and infinitesimal blobs of tree and bird matter that I know are atoms. When I do imagine myself getting that tiny, from my shrunken perspective, all features of the tree that I previously saw are now gone. The tree has “grown” so enormous that it's now too big for me to comprehend; it's as if, when we stare down at the ground under our feet, we try to imagine the whole planet Earth.

Now down near atomic size, I see no colors at all anymore—just the colorless blobs we call atoms. I'm excited. Now I can witness what some of the ancient Greeks presciently intuited: those things they called atoms, the fundamental building blocks of the universe. The Greek root of the word “atom” is a (meaning “not”) plus temnein (meaning “to cut”). That's a pretty good definition of fundamental: something you can no longer slice up. Those earliest Greeks (led by Democritus) posited that, although infinite in number, there are only a finite number of kinds of atoms, which can then combine themselves into countless shapes and objects. It's like having a big Lego set, with which one can build innumerable objects. Those old Greek guys did a fantastic job of developing an accurate image of the reality of matter.

But we moderns know that atoms are not fundamental. They can be split and sliced. A couple of hundred years ago some perceptive masters of science discovered that atoms are made up of even smaller building blocks: protons, neutrons, and electrons. And these scientists also showed us that the core, or nucleus, of an atom contains those protons and neutrons all balled up in a tiny central sphere, while the electrons whirl around, out at some distance. It is sort of like an infinitesimal solar system, with the nucleus like the sun and the planets like electrons.

More of Alice's Wonderland next time...