Photographs of atoms and molecules. The first image of the orbital structure of the hydrogen atom. Individual atoms can be manipulated
PostScience debunks scientific myths and explains common misconceptions. We asked our experts to comment on popular ideas about the structure and properties of atoms.
Rutherford's model corresponds to modern ideas about the structure of the atom
This is true, but in part. The planetary model of the atom, in which light electrons revolve around a heavy nucleus, like planets around the Sun, was proposed by Ernest Rutherford in 1911, after the nucleus itself was discovered in his laboratory. By bombarding a sheet of metal foil with alpha particles, the scientists found that the vast majority of the particles passed through the foil, much like light through glass. However, a small part of them - about one in 8000 - was reflected back to the source. Rutherford explained these results by the fact that the mass is not uniformly distributed in matter, but is concentrated in "clumps" - atomic nuclei that carry a positive charge that repels positively charged alpha particles. The light, negatively charged electrons avoid "falling" into the nucleus by spinning around them, so that the centrifugal force balances the electrostatic attraction.
After inventing this model, Rutherford is said to have exclaimed, "Now I know what an atom looks like!" However, soon, following the inspiration, Rutherford realized the inferiority of his idea. Rotating around the nucleus, the electron creates around itself the variables electric and magnetic field. These fields propagate at the speed of light in the form electromagnetic wave. And such a wave carries energy with it! It turns out that, rotating around the nucleus, the electron will continuously lose energy and fall on the nucleus within billionths of a second. (One might wonder if the same argument could not be applied to the planets solar system Why don't they fall on the Sun? Answer: gravitational waves, if they exist at all, are much weaker than electromagnetic waves, and the energy stored in planets is much greater than in electrons, so the "power reserve" of the planets is many orders of magnitude longer.)
Rutherford instructed his collaborator, the young theoretician Niels Bohr, to resolve the contradiction. After working for two years, Bohr found a partial solution. He postulated that among the possible orbits of an electron, there are those on which the electron can stay for a long time without radiating. An electron can move from one stationary orbit to another, while absorbing or emitting a quantum of an electromagnetic field with an energy equal difference energies of two orbits. Using the initial principles of quantum physics, which had already been discovered by that time, Bohr was able to calculate the parameters of stationary orbits and, accordingly, the energies of radiation quanta corresponding to transitions. These energies had by that time been measured using spectroscopy methods, and Bohr's theoretical predictions almost perfectly matched the results of these measurements!
Despite this triumphant result, Bohr's theory hardly brought clarity to the question of the physics of the atom, because it was semi-empirical: postulating the existence of stationary orbits, it did not explain them in any way. physical nature. A deep explanation of the issue required at least another two decades, during which quantum mechanics was developed as a systematic, integral physical theory.
Within the framework of this theory, the electron is subject to the uncertainty principle and is described not material point, like a planet, but a wave function, "smeared" over the entire orbit. At each moment of time, it is in a superposition of states corresponding to all points of the orbit. Since the distribution density of mass in space, determined by the wave function, does not depend on time, no alternating electromagnetic field is created around the electron; there is no energy loss.
Thus, the planetary model gives a correct visual representation of what an atom looks like - Rutherford was right in his exclamation. However, it does not provide an explanation of how the atom works: this device is much more complex and deeper, something that Rutherford modeled.
In conclusion, I note that the “myth” about the planetary model is at the very center of the intellectual drama that gave rise to a turning point in physics a hundred years ago and to a large extent shaped this science in its modern form.
Alexander Lvovsky
PhD in Physics, Professor at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Calgary, Head of the Scientific Group, Member of the Scientific Council of the Russian Quantum Center, Editor of the scientific journal Optics Express
Individual atoms can be manipulated
This is true. Of course you can, why not? You can control different parameters of the atom, and the atom has a lot of them: it has a position in space, speed, and there are also internal degrees of freedom. The internal degrees of freedom determine the magnetic and electrical properties of an atom, as well as its readiness to emit light or radio waves. Depending on the internal state of the atom, it can be more or less active in collisions and chemical reactions, change the properties of the surrounding atoms, its response to external fields also depends on its internal state. In medicine, for example, the so-called polarized gases are used to build tomograms of the lungs - in such gases, all atoms are in the same internal state, which makes it possible to "see" the volume they fill by their response.
It is not so difficult to control the speed of an atom or its position, it is much more difficult to select exactly one atom for control. But this can also be done. One of the approaches to such isolation of an atom is implemented with the help of laser cooling. For control, it is always convenient to have a known initial position, it is quite good if the atom does not move at the same time. Laser cooling makes it possible to achieve both, to localize atoms in space and cool them, that is, to reduce their speed to almost zero. The principle of laser cooling is the same as that of a jet aircraft, only the latter emits a jet of gas to accelerate, and in the first case, the atom, on the contrary, absorbs a stream of photons (light particles) and slows down. Modern methods laser cooling can cool millions of atoms to walking speeds and below. Further, various kinds of passive traps come into play, for example, a dipole trap. If a light field is used for laser cooling, which an atom actively absorbs, then to keep it in a dipole trap, the light frequency is selected away from any absorption. It turns out that highly focused laser light is able to polarize small particles and dust particles and draw them into the region of the highest light intensity. The atom is no exception and is also drawn into the region of the strongest field. It turns out that if the light is focused as strongly as possible, then only exactly one atom can stay in such a trap. The fact is that if the second gets into the trap, then it is so strongly pressed against the first that they form a molecule and at the same time fall out of the trap. However, such sharp focusing is not the only way to isolate a single atom, you can also use the properties of the interaction of an atom with a resonator for charged atoms, ions, you can use electric fields to capture and hold exactly one ion, and so on. It is possible to completely excite one atom in a rather limited ensemble of atoms into a very highly excited, so-called Rydberg state. An atom, once excited into a Rydberg state, blocks the possibility of excitation of its neighbors into the same state and, if the volume with atoms is small enough, will be the only one.
One way or another, after the atom is caught, it can be controlled. The internal state can be changed by light and radio frequency fields, using the desired frequencies and polarization of the electromagnetic wave. It is possible to transfer an atom to any predetermined state, be it a certain state - a level or their superposition. The only question is the availability of the necessary frequencies and the ability to make sufficiently short and powerful control pulses. Recently, it has become possible to more effectively control atoms by keeping them in the vicinity of nanostructures, which allows not only to "talk" with the atom more efficiently, but also to use the atom itself - more precisely, its internal states - to control light flows, and in the future, perhaps , and for computational purposes.
Controlling the position of the atom held by the trap is quite a simple task - it is enough to move the trap itself. In the case of a dipole trap, move the beam of light, which can be done, for example, with moving mirrors for a laser show. Speed can be given to an atom again in a reactive way - to make it absorb light, and an ion can be easily dispersed by electric fields, just as it was done in cathode ray tubes. So today, in principle, anything can be done with the atom, it is only a matter of time and effort.
Alexey Akimov
Atom is indivisible
Partly true, partly not. Wikipedia gives us the following definition: “Atom (from other Greek ἄτομος - indivisible, uncut) is a particle of matter of microscopic size and mass, the smallest part chemical element, which is the carrier of its properties. An atom is made up of an atomic nucleus and electrons.
Now any educated person represents the atom in Rutherford's model, succinctly represented by the last sentence of this generally accepted definition. It would seem that the answer to the question/myth is obvious: the atom is a composite and complex object. However, the situation is not so clear cut. Ancient philosophers invested in the definition of the atom rather the meaning of the existence of an elementary and indivisible particle of matter and hardly connected the problem with the structure of the elements of the periodic table. In Rutherford's atom, we really find such a particle - this is an electron.
Electron in accordance with modern concepts that fit into the so-called
«> Standard Model, is a point, the state of which is described by position and speed. It is important that the simultaneous assignment of these kinematic characteristics is impossible due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, but considering only one of them, for example, the coordinate, one can determine it with arbitrarily high accuracy.
Is it then possible, using modern experimental techniques, to try to localize an electron on a scale much smaller than the atomic size (~0.5 * 10-8 cm) and check its punctiformity? It turns out that when trying to localize an electron on the scale of the so-called Compton wavelength - about 137 times smaller than the size of a hydrogen atom - the electron will interact with its antimatter and the system will become unstable.
Pointedness and indivisibility of the electron and others elementary particles matter is a key element of the principle of short-range action in field theory and is present in all fundamental equations describing nature. Thus, the ancient philosophers were not so far from the truth, assuming that indivisible particles of matter exist.
Dmitry Kupriyanov
Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor of Physics, St. Petersburg State polytechnic university, head Department of Theoretical Physics, St. Petersburg State Pedagogical University
Science does not know this yet. The planetary model of the atom, proposed by Rutherford, assumed that electrons revolve around the atomic nucleus, like planets revolving around the sun. In this case, it was natural to assume that electrons are solid spherical particles. Rutherford's classical model was self-contradictory. With all evidence, moving accelerated charged particles (electrons) would have to lose energy due to electromagnetic radiation and eventually fall on the nuclei of atoms.
Niels Bohr proposed to ban this process and introduce certain requirements for the radii of the orbits along which electrons move. Bohr's phenomenological model gave way to the quantum model of the atom developed by Heisenberg and the quantum but more visual model of the atom proposed by Schrödinger. In the Schrödinger model, electrons are no longer balls flying in orbit, but standing waves that, like clouds, hang over the atomic nucleus. The shape of these "clouds" was described by the wave function introduced by Schrödinger.
The question immediately arose: what is the physical meaning of the wave function? The answer was suggested by Max Born: the square of the modulus of the wave function is the probability of finding an electron at a given point in space. And here the difficulties began. The question arose: what does it mean to find an electron at a given point in space? Shouldn't Born's statement be understood as an admission that an electron is a small ball that flies along a certain trajectory and which can be caught at a certain point on this trajectory with some probability?
It was this point of view that Schrödinger and Albert Einstein, who joined him in this matter, adhered to. They were objected to by the physicists of the Copenhagen School - Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, who argued that between the acts of measurement the electron simply does not exist, which means that it makes no sense to talk about the trajectory of its movement. Bohr and Einstein's discussion on interpretation quantum mechanics entered history. Bohr seemed to be the winner: he managed, although not very clearly, to refute all the paradoxes formulated by Einstein, and even the famous “Schrödinger’s cat” paradox formulated by Schrödinger in 1935. For several decades, most physicists agreed with Bohr that matter is not an objective reality given to us in sensations, as Karl Marx taught, but something that arises only at the moment of observation and does not exist without an observer. Interestingly, in Soviet times, philosophy departments in universities taught that such a point of view is subjective idealism, that is, a trend that runs counter to objective materialism - the philosophy of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Einstein. At the same time, in the departments of physics, students were taught that the concepts of the Copenhagen school were the only correct ones (perhaps because the most famous Soviet theoretical physicist, Lev Landau, belonged to this school).
At the moment, the opinions of physicists are divided. On the one hand, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics continues to be popular. Attempts to experimentally test the validity of this interpretation (for example, the successful test of the so-called Bell's inequality by the French physicist Alain Aspe) enjoy almost unanimous approval from the scientific community. On the other hand, theorists quite calmly discuss alternative theories, such as the theory of parallel worlds. Returning to the electron, we can say that its chances of remaining a billiard ball are not very high yet. At the same time, they are different from zero. In the 1920s, it was the billiard model of Compton scattering that made it possible to prove that light consists of quanta - photons. In many problems related to important and useful devices (diodes, transistors), it is convenient to consider an electron as a billiard ball. The wave nature of an electron is important for describing more subtle effects, such as the negative magnetoresistance of metals.
The philosophical question of whether there is a ball-electron between the acts of measurement is of little importance in ordinary life. However, this question continues to be one of the most serious problems of modern physics.
Alexey Kavokin
PhD in Physics and Mathematics, Professor at the University of Southampton, Head of the Quantum Polaritonics Group of the Russian Quantum Center, scientific director Mediterranean Institute of Fundamental Physics (Italy)
An atom can be completely destroyed
This is true. Break not build. Anything can be destroyed, including the atom, with any degree of completeness. An atom in the first approximation is a positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons. The first destructive action that can be performed on an atom is to strip electrons from it. This can be done in different ways: you can focus powerful laser radiation on it, you can irradiate it with fast electrons or other fast particles. An atom that has lost some of its electrons is called an ion. It is in this state that atoms are in the Sun, where the temperatures are so high that it is practically impossible for atoms to save their electrons in collisions.
The more electrons an atom has lost, the harder it is to pull off the rest. An atom has more or less electrons depending on its atomic number. The hydrogen atom generally has one electron, and it often loses it even under normal conditions, and it is hydrogen that has lost its electrons that determines the pH of water. The helium atom has two electrons, and in a fully ionized state is called alpha particles - such particles we already expect more from a nuclear reactor than from ordinary water. Atoms containing many electrons require even more energy to remove all the electrons, but nevertheless, it is possible to remove all the electrons from any atom.
If all the electrons are torn off, then the nucleus remains, but it can also be destroyed. The nucleus consists of protons and neutrons (generally hadrons), and although they are quite strongly bound, an incident particle of sufficient energy can tear them apart. Heavy atoms, in which there are too many neutrons and protons, tend to fall apart on their own, releasing quite a lot of energy - nuclear power plants are based on this principle.
But after all, even if the nucleus is broken, all the electrons are torn off, the original particles remain: neutrons, protons, electrons. Of course, they can also be destroyed. Actually, this is what it does, which accelerates protons to huge energies, completely destroying them in collisions. In this case, many new particles are born, which are studied by the collider. The same can be done with electrons, and with any other particles.
The energy of the destroyed particle does not disappear, it is distributed among other particles, and if there are enough of them, then it becomes impossible to quickly trace the original particle in the sea of new transformations. Everything can be destroyed, there are no exceptions.
Alexey Akimov
Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Head of the Quantum Simulators Group of the Russian Quantum Center, Lecturer at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Fellow of the Lebedev Institute, Researcher at Harvard University
An atom (from the Greek “indivisible”) is once the smallest particle of matter of microscopic dimensions, the smallest part of a chemical element that bears its properties. The constituents of the atom - protons, neutrons, electrons - no longer have these properties and form them together. Covalent atoms form molecules. Scientists study the features of the atom, and although they are already quite well studied, they do not miss the opportunity to find something new - in particular, in the field of creating new materials and new atoms (continuing the periodic table). 99.9% of the mass of an atom is in the nucleus.
Don't be intimidated by the title. The black hole, accidentally created by the staff of the National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC, turned out to be only one atom in size, so nothing threatens us. Yes, and the title black hole” only remotely describes the phenomenon observed by researchers. We have repeatedly told you about the most powerful X-ray laser in the world, called
Ever seen atoms? We are one of them, so in fact, yes. But have you ever seen one single atom? Recently, an amazing photo of just one atom, captured electric fields, won the prestigious competition of scientific photography, awarded the highest award. The photo entered the competition under the quite logical name “Single Atom in Ion Trap” (One atom in an ion trap), and its author is David Nadlinger from Oxford University.
The British Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has announced the winners of its national science photography competition, with a photo of a single atom winning the grand prize.
In the photo, the atom is represented as a tiny speck of light between two metal electrodes spaced about 2 mm apart.
Photo caption:
"A small bright dot is visible in the center of the photograph - a single positively charged strontium atom. It is held almost motionless by the electric fields emanating from the metal electrodes surrounding it. When illuminated by a blue-violet laser, the atom quickly absorbs and re-radiates light particles, due to which conventional camera could have photographed it with a long exposure."
"The photo was taken through the window of an ultra-high vacuum chamber containing a trap. Laser-cooled atomic ions are an excellent base for studying and exploiting the unique properties of quantum physics. They are used to create extremely accurate clocks or, in this case, as particles for building quantum computers of the future that will be able to solve problems that overshadow today's even the most powerful supercomputers."
If you still failed to consider the atom, then here it is
"The idea that you can see a single atom with the naked eye struck me to the core, being a kind of bridge between the tiny quantum world and our macroscopic reality," said David Nadlinger.
As you know, everything material in the Universe consists of atoms. An atom is the smallest unit of matter that carries its properties. In turn, the structure of an atom is made up of a magical trinity of microparticles: protons, neutrons and electrons.
Moreover, each of the microparticles is universal. That is, you cannot find two different protons, neutrons or electrons in the world. All of them are absolutely similar to each other. And the properties of the atom will depend only on quantitative composition these microparticles general structure atom.
For example, the structure of a hydrogen atom consists of one proton and one electron. Next in complexity, the helium atom is made up of two protons, two neutrons, and two electrons. A lithium atom is made up of three protons, four neutrons and three electrons, etc.
Structure of atoms (from left to right): hydrogen, helium, lithium
Atoms combine into molecules, and molecules combine into substances, minerals and organisms. The DNA molecule, which is the basis of all life, is a structure assembled from the same three magical building blocks of the universe as the stone lying on the road. Although this structure is much more complex.
Even more amazing facts are revealed when we try to take a closer look at the proportions and structure of the atomic system. It is known that an atom consists of a nucleus and electrons moving around it along a trajectory that describes a sphere. That is, it cannot even be called a movement in the usual sense of the word. The electron is rather located everywhere and immediately within this sphere, creating an electron cloud around the nucleus and forming an electromagnetic field.
Schematic representations of the structure of the atom
The nucleus of an atom consists of protons and neutrons, and almost the entire mass of the system is concentrated in it. But at the same time, the nucleus itself is so small that if you increase its radius to a scale of 1 cm, then the radius of the entire structure of the atom will reach hundreds of meters. Thus, everything that we perceive as dense matter consists of more than 99% of the energy connections between physical particles alone and less than 1% of the physical forms themselves.
But what are these physical forms? What are they made of, and how material are they? To answer these questions, let's take a closer look at the structures of protons, neutrons, and electrons. So, we descend one more step into the depths of the microcosm - to the level of subatomic particles.
What is an electron made of?
The smallest particle of an atom is an electron. An electron has mass but no volume. In the scientific view, the electron does not consist of anything, but is a structureless point.
An electron cannot be seen under a microscope. It is observed only in the form of an electron cloud, which looks like a fuzzy sphere around the atomic nucleus. At the same time, it is impossible to say with accuracy where the electron is located at a moment in time. Devices are capable of capturing not the particle itself, but only its energy trace. The essence of the electron is not embedded in the concept of matter. It is rather like an empty form that exists only in and through movement.
No structure has yet been found in the electron. It is the same point particle as the quantum of energy. In fact, an electron is energy, however, this is its more stable form than the one represented by photons of light.
At the moment, the electron is considered indivisible. This is understandable, because it is impossible to divide something that has no volume. However, there are already developments in the theory, according to which the composition of an electron contains a trinity of such quasiparticles as:
- Orbiton - contains information about the orbital position of the electron;
- Spinon - responsible for the spin or torque;
- Holon - carries information about the charge of an electron.
However, as we see, quasi-particles have absolutely nothing in common with matter, and carry only information.
Photographs of atoms of different substances in an electron microscope
Interestingly, an electron can absorb energy quanta, such as light or heat. In this case, the atom moves to a new energy level, and the boundaries of the electron cloud are expanding. It also happens that the energy absorbed by an electron is so great that it can jump out of the atomic system and continue its movement as an independent particle. At the same time, it behaves like a photon of light, that is, it seems to cease to be a particle and begins to exhibit the properties of a wave. This has been proven in an experiment.
Young's experiment
In the course of the experiment, a stream of electrons was directed onto a screen with two slits cut into it. Passing through these slits, the electrons collided with the surface of another projection screen, leaving their mark on it. As a result of this “bombardment” by electrons, an interference pattern appeared on the projection screen, similar to that which would appear if waves, but not particles, passed through two slits.
Such a pattern occurs due to the fact that the wave, passing between the two slots, is divided into two waves. As a result of further movement, the waves overlap each other, and in some areas they cancel each other out. As a result, we get many stripes on the projection screen, instead of one, as it would be if the electron behaved like a particle.
The structure of the nucleus of an atom: protons and neutrons
Protons and neutrons make up the nucleus of an atom. And despite the fact that in the total volume the core occupies less than 1%, it is in this structure that almost the entire mass of the system is concentrated. But at the expense of the structure of protons and neutrons, physicists are divided in opinion, and at the moment there are two theories at once.
- Theory #1 - Standard
The Standard Model says that protons and neutrons are made up of three quarks connected by a cloud of gluons. Quarks are point particles, just like quanta and electrons. And gluons are virtual particles that ensure the interaction of quarks. However, neither quarks nor gluons have been found in nature, so this model is subject to severe criticism.
- Theory #2 - Alternative
But according to the alternative unified field theory developed by Einstein, the proton, like the neutron, like any other particle of the physical world, is an electromagnetic field rotating at the speed of light.
Electromagnetic fields of man and the planet
What are the principles of the structure of the atom?
Everything in the world - subtle and dense, liquid, solid and gaseous - is just the energy states of countless fields that permeate the space of the Universe. The higher the energy level in the field, the thinner and less perceptible it is. The lower the energy level, the more stable and tangible it is. In the structure of the atom, as well as in the structure of any other unit of the Universe, lies the interaction of such fields - different in energy density. It turns out that matter is only an illusion of the mind.
1. But we will start from a completely different side. Before embarking on a journey to the depths of matter, let's turn our gaze upwards.
For example, it is known that the average distance to the Moon is almost 400 thousand kilometers, to the Sun - 150 million, to Pluto (which is no longer visible without a telescope) - 6 billion, to the nearest star Proxima Centauri - 40 trillion, to the nearest large galaxy of the Andromeda Nebula - 25 quintillion, and finally to the outskirts of the observable Universe - 130 sextillion.
Impressive, of course, but the difference between all these "quadri-", "quinti-" and "sex-" does not seem so huge, although they differ from each other a thousand times. The microcosm is quite another matter. How can so many interesting things be hidden in it, because it simply has nowhere to fit there. So common sense tells us wrong.
2. If at one end of the logarithmic scale we put off the smallest known distance in the Universe, and at the other end - the largest, then in the middle there will be ... a grain of sand. Its diameter is 0.1 mm.
3. If you put 400 billion grains of sand in a row, their row will circle the entire globe along the equator. And if you collect the same 400 billion in a bag, it will weigh about a ton.
4. The thickness of a human hair is 50–70 microns, that is, there are 15–20 of them per millimeter. In order to lay out the distance to the Moon with them, it will take 8 trillion hairs (if you add them not in length, but in width, of course). Since one person has about 100 thousand of them on their heads, if you collect hair from the entire population of Russia, there will be more than enough to the moon and even more.
5. The size of bacteria is from 0.5 to 5 microns. If we increase the average bacterium to such a size that it fits comfortably in our palm (100 thousand times), the thickness of the hair will become equal to 5 meters.
6. By the way, a whole quadrillion bacteria lives inside the human body, and their total weight is 2 kilograms. There are, in fact, even more of them than the cells of the body itself. So it’s quite possible to say that a person is just such an organism, consisting of bacteria and viruses with small inclusions of something else.
7. The sizes of viruses differ even more than bacteria - almost 100 thousand times. If this were the case with humans, they would be between 1 centimeter and 1 kilometer tall, and their social interaction would be a curious sight.
8. The average length of the most common varieties of viruses is 100 nanometers, or 10^(-7) degrees of a meter. If we again perform the approximation operation so that the virus becomes the size of a palm, then the length of the bacterium will be 1 meter, and the thickness of the hair will be 50 meters.
9. The wavelength of visible light is 400-750 nanometers, and it is simply impossible to see objects smaller than this value. Trying to illuminate such an object, the wave will simply go around it and not be reflected.
10. Sometimes people ask what an atom looks like or what color it is. In fact, the atom does not look like anything. Just not at all. And not because we don’t have good enough microscopes, but because the size of an atom is less than the distance for which the very concept of “visibility” exists ...
11. Around the circumference of the globe, 400 trillion viruses can be densely packed. A lot of. Light travels this distance in kilometers in 40 years. But if you put them all together, they can easily fit on your fingertip.
12. The approximate size of a water molecule is 3 by 10^(-10) meters. In a glass of water, there are 10 septillion such molecules - about as many millimeters from us to the Andromeda Galaxy. And in a cubic centimeter of air there are 30 quintillion molecules (mainly nitrogen and oxygen).
13. The diameter of the carbon atom (the basis of all life on Earth) is 3.5 by 10 ^ (-10) meters, that is, even a little more than water molecules. The hydrogen atom is 10 times smaller - 3 by 10 ^ (-11) meters. This, of course, is not enough. But how little? The amazing fact is that the smallest, barely distinguishable grain of salt consists of 1 quintillion atoms.
Let's go back to our standard scale and zoom in on the hydrogen atom so that it fits comfortably in the hand. Viruses will then be 300 meters in size, bacteria 3 kilometers, and the thickness of the hair will be 150 kilometers, and even in a lying state it will go beyond the boundaries of the atmosphere (and in length it can reach the moon).
14. The so-called "classical" electron diameter is 5.5 femtometers or 5.5 by 10^(-15) meters. The size of the proton and neutron is even smaller, about 1.5 femtometers. There are about the same number of protons in a meter as there are ants on planet Earth. We use the magnification already familiar to us. The proton lies comfortably in our palm - and then the size of the average virus will be equal to 7,000 kilometers (almost like the whole of Russia from west to east, by the way), and the thickness of a hair will be 2 times the size of the Sun.
15. It is difficult to say something definite about the sizes. They are supposed to be somewhere between 10^(-19) - 10^(-18) meters. The smallest one - a true quark - has a "diameter" (let's write this word in quotation marks to remind us of the above) 10 ^ (-22) meters.
16. There is also such a thing as neutrinos. Look at your palm. Every second, a trillion neutrinos emitted by the Sun flies through it. And you can not hide your hand behind your back. Neutrinos will easily pass through your body, and through a wall, and through our entire planet, and even through a layer of lead 1 light year thick. The “diameter” of a neutrino is 10 ^ (-24) meters - this particle is 100 times smaller than a true quark, or a billion times smaller than a proton, or 10 septillion times smaller than a tyrannosaurus rex. Almost as many times the tyrannosaurus itself is smaller than the entire observable universe. If you increase the neutrino so that it is the size of an orange, then even a proton will be 10 times the size of the Earth.
17. And now I sincerely hope that one of the following two things should strike you. First, we can go even further (and even make some meaningful assumptions about what will be there). The second - but at the same time it is still impossible to move deep into the matter infinitely, and soon we will run into a dead end. That's just to achieve these very "dead-end" sizes, we will have to go down another 11 orders of magnitude, if we count from neutrinos. That is, these sizes are 100 billion times smaller than neutrinos. By the same amount, a grain of sand is smaller than our entire planet, by the way.
18. So, on the dimensions of 10 ^ (-35) meters, we are waiting for such a wonderful concept as the Planck length - the minimum possible distance in the real world (as far as it is commonly believed in modern science).
19. Quantum strings also live here - objects are very remarkable from any point of view (for example, they are one-dimensional - they have no thickness), but for our topic it is important that their length is also within 10^(-35) meters. Let's do our standard "magnifying" experiment one last time. The quantum string becomes a convenient size, and we hold it in our hand like a pencil. In this case, the neutrino will be 7 times larger than the Sun, and the hydrogen atom will be 300 times the size of the Milky Way.
20. Finally, we come to the very structure of the universe - the scale at which space becomes like time, time becomes space, and various other bizarre things happen. There is nothing more (probably) ...
There is no “missing link” in human evolution
The term "missing link" has fallen out of circulation in scientific circles, as it is associated with the erroneous assumption that the evolutionary process is linear and goes sequentially, "along the chain." Instead, biologists use the term "last common ancestor."
Interesting facts about the solar system
