Further out, intellectually, were the theoretical physicists. These men—they were virtually all men—had set out to pry the universe open through the sheer power of their intellects, and their new science proposed a theoretical entity, the atom, that all matter was composed of. Atoms can’t be seen directly because they are too small to reflect light, but their existence was the only explanation for things that could be seen. And smaller still were the subatomic particles that spun around atomic nuclei like planets orbiting a star. There was nothing smaller in existence and understanding them
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