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Something to ponder on a day off.


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I don't believe a word of it. When I'm in a basment and I knock my head on a beam, I ain't hitting no miniscule electrons that are orbiting marbles that are a mile away from them. I'm hitting something hard.

So, if your fancy explanation is true, howcome when I push on a cinderblock with my hand, the hand and the cinderblock don't get all mixed up?

- Jim in Oregon

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So, if your fancy explanation is true, howcome when I push on a cinderblock with my hand, the hand and the cinderblock don't get all mixed up?

- Jim in Oregon

Ah hell, I don't actually understand any of this, I just find it fascinating. I have probably watched every science program shown on TV over the last 40 years or so having to do with stuff from atoms to the universe. I wish I could say I was the wiser for it, but my gray matter refuses to compute much beyond the basic concepts.

To answer your question, try this...

http://education.jlab.org/qa/atomicstructure_10.html

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Going from the very small to the very large, this may be even weirder...

The universe is at least 156 billion light-years wide!

I first heard this on a recent episode of the History channel's Universe series. I actually thought I had miss-heard it at first. But, it does seem to be the generally accepted size among astrophysicists. This made no sense to me. Even if it was expanding at the speed of light, how could the universe get that large if the big bang was only(?) 14 billion years ago.

You can find an "explanation" here...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/m ... 40524.html

I've read it more than once and my head spins after each time.

Did I mention I had the day off and the weather sucks?

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If you can get through "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene, some of this is a little more accessible.

Honestly, I wasn't able to get through the high intensity math parts in last portion, but the first several chapters are about as good for understanding this stuff as anything I've read.

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When one does not see what one does not see,

one does not even see that one is blind.

---Paul Veyne

We are literally blind to the many physical realities that exist all around, in, and through us. When the future generations begin figuring this stuff out, they will be looking to light, the electric wave of motion, that is the cause of all things. They will finally understand that effect and cause are often misinterpreted, or indistinguishable from each other.

Wish I could be there to see it......

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A great book to read or as listen to from audiobooks is Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" it makes you realize how insignificant we are in the scheme of things.

Here is a short review from Amazon

"Perhaps the Best Armchair Scientist Book I've Ever Read

I picked this one up expecting "good". Instead, I got one of the most delightful reading experiences in science that I have ever had. What a wonderful surprise.

Bryson tries to do what most school textbooks never manage to do, explain the context of science in a way that is relevant to the average person. At the beginning of the book, he recalls an event from his childhood when he looked at a school text and saw a cross-section of our planet. He was transfixed by it, but noticed that the book just dryly presented the facts ("This is the core." "This part is molten rock." "This is the crust.", etc.), but never really explained HOW science came to know this particular set of facts. That, he quite correctly points out, is the most interesting part. And that is story he sets out to tell in this book."

John Callan

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