Are We on a Grain of Sand?

... or maybe we're dust:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koBWtYVRf-0

Hmmm. Are you talking about the old 'An Atom is like our Solar System' idea?

In our solar system (a quantum realm), the planets orbit the sun at a determinable rate, in a set direction and in line with the sun's equator. This so determinable that the Mayan's were able to calculate the exact location (pretty close, anyway) of all the known planets 2000 years ago.

In an atom (a macroscopic realm), electrons aren't little balls uniformly circling the nucleus of an atom. They are little bundles of energy that have the potential to exist in a range of locations about the nucleus. They are instead "clouds of probability" (probability clouds?). The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle has a lot of influence on my understanding of an electron cloud.

The rules for a quantum realm and a macroscopic realm are entirely different.

So, there really are not any similarities between an atom and a solar system. By the time most of us are exposed to atoms in science class, the plastic solar system models have been shown to us for a number of years. There is a general resemblance, it is familiar and graspable to a twelve year old, so that is what we are told.

I hope this is the type of answer you are looking for. I also hope most of this is correct... there are many members who will be glad to poke holes in my story.

I only hope it is not in a litter-box somewhere....

No, we are carbon based bags of salt water.

Closer to the ocean than the beach actually.

If the analogy is meant that the earth is like a grain of sand on a beach, that didn't work for me: Where are the adjacent grains?

However, the various links were delightful, with much to contemplate. Thanks for an interesting thread.

that is so interesting... although I wanted more from the ending. (or perhaps I just needed that bath... lol)

excellent. did you write it?

Chris

hard to believe they could do graphics like that in the 70's.. excellent. ga.

and if space is curved (einstein) and I think it possible that ultra large connects to ultra small behind the curtain...

Chris

I saw this marvelous piece when it made it's debut. Thanks for sharing that.

Has this film since been re-made using modern techniques? It should be, IMO, both for cinematic impact and to incorporate promising theories and discoveries made later. I would like to see a version that takes the lower end of the scale all the way down to the Planck length (~10^-35 m, which would necessarily involve a considerable amount of artistic license, QM being what it is) and all the way up to encompass the entire universe (the visible part - the part containing matter and radiation - spans only ~13.7e9 light years, 1.3e26 m, and may actually constitute a minor portion of the whole of spacetime, est. around ~5e26 m). Such a film, if made, would span around sixty-one orders of magnitude.

~Grog

Were you to place three grains of sand in a cathedral, that cathedral would be more densely packed with sand than space is with stars.

~Grog

Where were you in the 60s? I thought we got all this sorted out way back then. Or at least the pot-heads in my dorm had it all hashed out.