Perspectives

It’s All About Size

The human take on protons, electrons: How can something be so small?

The Universe’s take on us humans: How can something be so small?

It is all a question of perspective, isn’t it? Astro-scientists tell us that the physical universe these days measures roughly 92 billion lightyears in diameter (yes, billion). This, of course, is a virtually inconceivable distance.

Lightyears.

Light, that makes it from our sun to our planet in eight minutes; light that can circle our Earth — at the equator — seven-and-change times in a single second. This selfsame light would take 92 billion (yes, again, billion) years to cross the universe. That is roughly twenty times the age of our planet. It is, in other words, a very, very, very (ad infinitum) long time.

Still, it all fits inside this one little word: distance. And it certainly can be relative: for a being the size of the universe, heck, it’s no size at all. It’s simply here and now. Hand to outstretched hand. End of story.

To a cell, the human body is inconceivably large.

To a water molecule — and there is a bunch of them sloshing about in us — the enormity of the body must approach the enormity of the universe as seen by us.

Still, it remains a question of perspectives. A lot of very smart people have pondered these questions and some of them have shared their musings.

Erwin Schrodinger, for one, in his book “What is Life?” pondered this size relationship between atoms and our physical bodies.

“To begin with,” he writes, “they [molecules] are very small indeed. Every little piece of matter handled in everyday life contains an enormous number of them.

“Many examples have been devised to bring this fact home to an audience, none of them more impressive than the one used by Lord Kelvin: Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water [say, paint them yellow]; then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter thoroughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas [and its various depths]; if then you took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean [yes, at any depth], you would find in it about a hundred of your marked [yellow] molecules.”

Oh, man. I knew they were small, but that small?

He goes on to explain, “The actual sizes of atoms lie between about 1/5000 and 1/2000 of the wavelength of yellow light. The comparison is significant because the wavelength roughly indicates the dimensions of the smallest grain still recognizable in the microscope. Thus it will be seen that such a grain [say, of sand] still contains thousands of millions of atoms.”

Schrodinger then goes on to ask not why atoms are so small, but why are we so big. Good point, no? His discussion takes off from there, but that’s a matter for another musing.

As we go about our daily lives, we don’t worry too much about these various sizes, neither the immensity of the universe nor the minisculeness of the atom, but I think we’re well served to reflect on this now and again, if for no other reason than to face the wonder, the miracle of the world now and again.

Perspectives.

© Wolfstuff

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