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Atom emptiness is the key to white dwarfs, pulsars and black holes.
At the end of their life cycles, stars explode. Then, what's left of them collapses, and gravity pulls the collapsing material into incredible density. If the residue is small, compressed electrons in the seething stellar plasma of crushed atoms push back fiercely and resist further collapse. This produces a white dwarf that is nearly impossible to comprehend. The material of a white dwarf weighs around 10 tons per thimbleful. How could something the size of a thimble be so heavy that 100 strong men couldn't lift it? It might crush a house. A large crane would be required to pick it up.
But that's just the first step in removing the empty space inside atoms. A teenage genius, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, computed that, if a collapsing star has 1.4 times the mass of our sun, its gravity would be too great to be stopped by the resistance of the electrons. He didn't know it, but he was predicting pulsars, or neutron stars, which later were discovered. Their enormous gravity squeezes the electrons into the nucleus of each atom, where they merge with protons to form a solid mass of neutrons. This material weighs about 10 million tons per cubic centimeter. A c.c. is the size of a bouillon cube. Can you imagine a bouillon cube weighing more than the World Trade Center? But that's what matter is when the empty space is removed between the nucleus and the electrons of atoms.
If 10 million tons of actual substance is the size of a bouillon cube, how much real material is in a 180-pound man or a 120-pound woman? Not as much as a dust speck. Not enough to see with a microscope. Our five-foot or six-foot bodies, like all material things, are an illusion made of vacuum and whirling electrical charges.
It gets worse. Even the packed neutrons in a pulsar are not basic material. They, too, are empty and compressible. If the remains of a collapsing star are 3.2 times larger than our sun, the gravity is too strong to be checked at the pulsar level. The collapse continues until it passes the point of no return -- the Schwarzchild Radius -- and becomes a black hole, the ultimate pit of gravity, where everything is compressed to nothing.
If planet Earth were squeezed to its Schwarzchild Radius, it would be the size of a pearl. Can anyone imagine the matter of the entire Earth being reduced to fingernail size -- but retaining all its weight -- and continuing to shrink beyond that point?
This isn't Captain Marvel comics. Pulsars are real. So are black holes, the astrophysicists say. If they are actuality, then what is our everyday world?
The non-reality of matter is just one of many enigmas that science reveals. Consider these:
| As we lie "still" in bed, we are flying 67,000 miles an hour around the sun and 600,000 miles an hour around the Milky Way galaxy.
| When we see the North Star, we are looking back in time to the medieval era, because the light we see began traveling 680 years ago.
| Every second, the visible universe expands by a volume as large as the Milky Way.
| Peaceful atoms of rock, lying still for centuries, have a power in their nuclei that is beyond comprehension: Only as much matter as a dime was transformed into the energy that destroyed Hiroshima and killed 140,000 people.
| The smallness of atoms likewise is beyond grasping: A cubic inch of air contains 300 billion billion molecules, all moving at 1,000 miles an hour and hitting each other 5 billion times a second.
| Although atoms are generally indestructible, their electrons keep coming loose to produce lightning and the other electricity of the world.
| The light we see, the sun warmth we feel, the radio and television signals we receive, the X-rays we use -- all of these come from electrons. Electromagnetic radiation is emitted by excited electrons oscillating or dropping to lower layers in atoms.
| Most life on Earth comes from a tiny electric current: When sunlight hits chlorophyll molecules, excited outer electrons jump through a mosaic of molecules, and this energy drives plant processes.
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