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| As for the DNA that conveys our genetic code, there is six feet of it inside each cell or our bodies. The body has many trillions of cells, so every person contains several billion miles of DNA.
| The "spin" of electrons is so powerful it can suspend railway locomotives in the air (in "maglev," or magnetic levitation, trains). Electrons of most atoms are in balanced pairs with opposite spin, so the atoms have no magnetism. But ferrous atoms have a few electrons that aren't balanced, giving each atom a magnetic field. When an electrical current induces all the atoms in a piece of iron to align their polarity in unison, a strong electromagnet is created.
These amazing realities are profoundly important, yet when I try to discuss science with my chums in the news business or music circles or political groups, they look at me as if I'm babbling in the Unknown Tongue. They are highly educated people who know multitudes of facts, but they shrug at what I think are the most crucial facts of all.
If religion and philosophy are an attempt to comprehend the universe and the meaning of life, then science is the best portal. Every time I learn another rule of subatomic forces or cell behavior or galactic motion, I get an eerie sense of glimpsing the mysterious code underlying our existence. Physicists often apply the word God to this order, but they don't mean God in the church sense.
In a world of supernatural religions, mystical religions, guilt-based religions, violent religions, money-collecting religions, social club religions and cult religions, grasping the code of the universe is the most religious experience I know.
(from The Humanist, Sept-Oct 1988, reprinted in Haught's 2007 book, Honest Doubt)
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