Why "Seeing is Believing" Isn't Always Reliable

Image source: Pixabay

There's an adage that says "seeing is believing"; we tend to trust what we can see and question what remains unseen. Textbooks tell us that the human body is made up of 70% water, which is something we can see and touch, so we accept it as true. But if we say that our bodies are mostly empty space, would anyone believe that?

Remember the children's game of blowing soap bubbles? A solid piece of soap, when mixed with water and blown through a tube, can create large soap bubbles. This isn't surprising to us—it's just how it works.

Now, imagine we could magnify the human body by 100,000 times. We know that human cells are composed of countless molecules, which are made up of atoms. But just how big is the space between an atom's electrons and its nucleus?

According to Business Insider, electrons orbit around the atomic nucleus, and the gap between the electrons and the nucleus is more than 100,000 times the diameter of the nucleus. To put this in perspective, if the space where electrons exist defines the size of the atom, and we scale this up to the size of a baseball field, the atomic nucleus would be about the size of a peanut.

So, the ratio of the gap between the electron and the atomic nucleus is akin to the ratio between that peanut and the entire baseball field. Essentially, atoms are mostly "empty" at the microscopic level. These "empty" atoms form molecules, which then construct the cells that make up our bodies. From a microscopic viewpoint, our bodies are filled with vast empty spaces, rather than being as solid and seamless as they seem to the naked eye.

Scientists further explain that this microscopic emptiness makes up 99.9999999% of the entire body. In simpler terms, our bodies are practically "vacuum."

Considering the relationship between the size of atomic nuclei, electrons, and the spaces in between, if we removed all the gaps within us—meaning if electrons and nuclei were packed tightly together—how large would our bodies be? They would shrink to no more than a speck of dust, and the total volume of all humanity would be no bigger than a small sugar cube!

This fascinating concept isn't exclusive to the human body; all matter in the universe behaves similarly. If you think about a car in front of you, the spaces within its atoms are likely just as vast as those in the human body. The same applies to other objects.

The universe is truly "incredible" in this way. It's almost entirely "empty."

In the microscopic realm, where things aren't visible to the naked eye, everything is in a state of "unexpected" change. So, the phrase "seeing is believing" doesn't quite hold up. In a universe that resembles a "vacuum," there exists endless beauty and phenomena that humanity has yet to understand. How can we dismiss what we cannot see?