I send out a “Thought For The Week”<\/a> and this week’s thought is as follows: <\/p>\n \u201cThe range of sizes, distances or speeds with which our imaginations are comfortable is a tiny band, set in the midst of a gigantic range of the possible, from the scale of quantum strangeness at the smaller end to the scale of Einsteinian cosmology at the larger\u201d. Now, as regards “quantum strangeness”, it happens that right now I’m reading a book by John Gribbin called “In Search Of Schr\u00f6dinger’s Cat”<\/a> and subtitled “Quantum Physics And Reality” (if you don’t know about Schr\u00f6dinger’s cat, check out the paradox here<\/a>). I send out a “Thought For The Week” and this week’s thought is as follows: \u201cThe range of sizes, distances or speeds with which our imaginations are comfortable is a tiny band, set in the midst of a gigantic range of the possible, from the scale of quantum strangeness at the smaller end to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Richard Hawkins in \u201cThe God Delusion \u201c (2006)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nNow one of the things Gribbin manages to do is convey some idea of the smallness of the atom. He explains that a typical atom is about 10 to the power of minus 10 metres across. That is, 0.0000000001 metres.
\nThink that’s small? Try this then. At the heart of an atom is the nucleus (which contains the protons and neutrons). The size of a nucleus is about 10 to the power of minus 15 metres across. That is, 0.000000000000001 metres. That means that a nucleus is 10 to the power of 5 times smaller than an atom. That is, 100,000 times smaller.
\nSince volume is proportional to the cube of radius, it is more meaningful to say that the nucleus is 10 to the power of 15 times smaller than the atom. That is, a thousand million million times smaller.
\nNow that’s small<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"