this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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And then the opposite, atoms are mainly empty space too. As Sagan said, matter is composed chiefly of nothing. But also as Feynman pointed out, when we feel something, like the arm of the chair that our hand can't go through, that's not actually matter touching, but the forces within resisting each other.
Reality in both directions gets weird if you start looking at it, and yes, we can understand the concept of scale, but to really "see" it is not possible.
Epic Spaceman did a video talking about the scale of the galaxy, and it's stuck in my mind since then. If the galaxy was the size of the US, our solar system would be just outside of Denver, and it would be the size of a thumbprint (the SOLAR SYSTEM). And even that requires you to grasp the true size of the US from coast to coast, which is itself difficult even knowing the distance.
@Rhaedas @The_Picard_Maneuver @EggInDisguise I was more referring to the fact that the visible universe is only a fraction of the actual universe. There is no way for us to properly estimate the actual number.