A simple word about atoms...

"In Shakespear's Hamlet, one of the more famous lines was, 'There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' In other words - how does this all work? And why does it work?" 

Okay. Please don't ask me why I have ventured down this rabbit hole. But I have. I think maybe one of the reasons, is I have been reading or watching stories about some of our newer materials development. Or newer computer chips. Or just about any other type of nanotechnology. To work on these developments, sometimes with material not much thicker than a single atom - blows me away. Why? A single gold atom for example, is 1/100,000th as thick as a human hair. Now that is tiny-small! 

But here is the thing which really blows me away about any atom in our universe. The why and the how. What keeps the protons and neutrons attached to each other? And what keeps the electrons, spinning away, without flying away? 

Here is what I mean about being a mind-blowing study. Bohr's Law. For a simple hydrogen atom, if you could magnify the atom where the nucleus would be the size of a basketball, and if the electron was also the same size (proportionally), it would be two miles away from its nucleus while spinning! That is a lot of space between the nucleus and the electron! But all atoms are like that. Lots of space between elements while keeping thing together. And yet, with all that space, most solids are still pretty solid.

In Shakespear's Hamlet, one of the more famous lines was, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." In other words - how does this all work? And why does it work? To me, what holds atoms together is more of a "spooky science" (sorry Albert), than gravity or quantum computing is. But atoms are held together by an invisible force. And many atoms together build molecules. And many molecules build matter. Build us. Build our world. Build the universe.

For those who are not believers - sorry (or not sorry) about what comes next. This unseen force, call it what you want, is a product of the intelligent design of our universe. On other words, the Hand of God. To me, all of these unseen forces that keep the universe together, are just part of the fingerprints of the Almighty. We can try to explain it away by using science and secular terms, but at the end of the day - it is God. 

If you have some extra time in the near future, take a peek down this rabbit hole called "atoms". To me, it is way fascinating. So small, and yet, they hold everything together. And atoms have been here, since the beginning of time, and will be here until the end of the age.