Reality Unveiled

by Ziad Masri

In fact, it has been calculated that if you took the entire population of the Earth, all seven billion of us, and removed all the empty space from all of our combined atoms, the entire human race would fit into a single sugar cube. 4 Now if that doesn’t boggle your mind, then I don’t know what will—so much for a solid world. But if there is such an infinitesimally small amount of “solid” matter in the universe, then why does everything look and feel so undeniably solid to us? Our senses tell us that everything is solid. Just pick up a rock and try to understand how there’s actually nothing solid to it and that it’s all empty space in reality. It’s difficult to imagine. The secret is in the electrostatic field that surrounds the atoms (i.e., the orbiting electron cloud). When two atoms come close together, their electron clouds repel each other so that the nuclei never actually touch. But you, holding that rock in your hand, feel that it’s