You Are Not Mostly Empty Space
They say that atoms are mostly 99.99999% empty space. But quantum physics says otherwise.
If you were to look at what your body is made of, at smaller and more fundamental levels, you’d find a whole miniature Universe of structure inside you. Your body is made of organs, which are in turn made of cells, which contain organelles, which are composed of molecules, which themselves are linked-up chains of individual atoms. Atoms exist on extremely tiny scales, just 1 ångström across, but they’re made of even smaller constituents: protons, neutrons, and electrons.
The tiny sizes of the protons and neutrons making up each atom’s nucleus are known: just one femtometer apiece, 100,000 times smaller than an ångström. But the electron itself is indistinguishable from point-like, no more than 1/10,000th the size of a proton or neutron. Does this mean that atoms — and by extension, everything made of atoms — are mostly empty space? Not at all. Here’s the science of why.
In our normal experience, if you want to know how big something is, you just go ahead and measure it. For non-quantum objects, this isn’t a problem, as…