Just a thought

One of the great things about not being in school is I get to read whatever I want. I've always loved reading, but when I'm in school I feel guilty if I read anything other than my textbooks. I have a lot of time to read in the evenings, and I try to take full advantage of it.

Currently I'm reading a book called The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs of 20th-century Science by Alan Lightman. Its a book I've been meaning to read for a while, and I finally have the chance to do so. The author has chosen 24 of the most important scientific papers of the 20th century and compiled them into one book. He prefaces each paper with his own essay which gives some historical background, a brief biography of the scientist and a summary of the paper if you don't feel up to reading the whole thing.

The book is organized chronologically and I'm about halfway through. However, I'm still not into the 1920s. Its amazing reading about the breakthroughs in the first quarter of the century, especially in physics. There were so many great minds then: Planck, Rutherford, Einstein and Bohr to name a few. I've read 11 or 12 of the papers and other than one on the discovery of hormones, all have been related to physics.

I study biology in university, but a little known fact is that in high school, I really wanted to be a theoretical physicist. I had read a couple books by Brian Greene and some books about Einstein and the subject fascinated me. I am now rediscovering this fascination.

The interesting thing is that a lot of these concepts are now taught in high school. I remember learning about the Bohr-Rutherford model of the atom in grade 9 science class. Both Bohr and Rutherford won Nobel Prizes for their work back near the turn of the century. At the time, it was cutting edge. Of course, I never learned the theory behind the model, and the math was far out of my league, but the concepts were accessible nonetheless. Its fairly common acceptance now that the atom consists of a nucleus (of protons and neutrons) with a cloud of electrons buzzing around it.

It may not be such common knowledge that atoms are mostly empty space. Lightman made an insightful analogy in his preface to Bohr's paper on the quantum model of the atom: If an atom is represented by a baseball stadium, the size of the nucleus would be equivalent to a pea in centrefield. We now know 99% of the atom's mass is found within the nucleus, so the electrons might be likened to specks of dust whizzing around the stands.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a little person living on an electron. Would you look out into the endless space around your spinning orb and ask, "Is there anyone else out there?" You might know you are orbiting around a nucleus and maybe you can detect other electrons, but they're too far away to know much about them. It would take a leap of faith to conceive that you were actually part of a larger organism. What if you were told that your atom was part of trillions of other atoms making a human brain, and that electrical signals consisting of your electron are creating complex thoughts, feelings and emotions in that person's head? Maybe those human thoughts and feelings are the same as the ones you are having. "Is there life outside of my planet? Am I a part of Something greater than I can comprehend?"