Grapes, Atoms & Humans: A Macro-Micro Perspective

[Dezepar]

I once read that if we were to "magnify" a basketball to the size of the earth, that one of its atoms would be approximately the size of a grape. With that thought in mind, and begging the mercy of the gurus here :), Try this:
What fascinates me is the thought of a human being, for instance, being fundamentally a conglomerate of several hundred billion atoms, in a soup of potentially infinite atoms. (Or Quarks, or whatever if you're picky)I'm just curious to see what other people can conceptualize about what a human being might look like carrying out normal every day tasks, if its atoms were the size of say, a B-B in relation to us, and we, by some miracle could see it real time.

Apologies in advance if this is in the wrong place.



Sorry. I'm new!

 

[Stryker]

Intaresting thought.

Because you would still be big enough not to be affected by fundamental particle physics, I would think that everything would still be quite normal.

Now depending upon wether you shrunk or the atoms grew would matter, because if you shrunk than photons (or the wave if you want to get technical) would be to large for you to see anything.

 

[Dezepar]

(Again, advanced apologies, for length of this post and possible incorrect placement, as its probably more imaginative than scientific. I will not be offended if this post is moved, and I'm berated for it. Lol.)
Thank you Stryker for the prompt reply. You hit on part of what I expected in a reply to this.

Now depending upon wether you shrunk or the atoms grew would matter, because if you shrunk than photons (or the wave if you want to get technical) would be to large for you to see anything.

Obviously, 'Humans' have very limited perceptual abilitys, and we can liken our tools to stone knives in comparison to the grand scale of investigatable data. But even though our tools can't truthfully describe or define the subatomic universe, it still exists. That we have definitive proof of. There really are billions of conglomerates of grape sized atoms carrying on through everyday life. Humans, with our strictly governed senses, are living in a drastically altered reality. Which brings me to my next point. Light is thought of as a constant, c. No matter the relative position, or speed of the observing party. We study the behaviour of quantum universes stubbornly thinking that we will find an indivisible 'God Particle' that can be no smaller. We believe that we will find the 'absolute' in nature while the laws we obey to study and observe it are contradictary. For instance, "nothing can travel the speed of light or faster, except light." Because at the speed of light or near it, mass would be infinite. And infinite mass is impossible. "Nothing can be absolute zero." For this would mean particles would be at rest. Impossible. These ideas are by definition, infinitive. Now to tie in a part of Stryker's reply, that the photons would be 'too big' to 'see', just as it may be we are 'too big' to properly observe the subatomic universe, imagine that we could shrink ourselves to the point where atoms were the size of grapes. Wouldn't 'nature' simply adjust your relative perception of reality, and in turn, the 'grape sized' atoms would no longer be observable by the standards and tools that would be available to you in your shrunken state, nor would the subatomic universe that would be relative to your mass. In this state, you could build new laboratories, and particle accelerators, and all the tools your unshrunken colleagues would be using. But not really studying anything new. Same particle physics, different reality. In this light, the idea of matter, (and the lack of it) having the potential of being infinitely small or large, seems obvious. Modern science seems to shy away from things that are infinite, and expend great energy to disprove the infinitive. But from where I stand, it seems 'impossible' for infinity, amongst other modern day 'impossibilities' to NOT exist, thus making 'possibility' an absolute.
Preparing for immediate ejection from this forum...

 

[AHolico]

I think this would be a great idea, not just for the human body, maybe just for simpler molecules, or just to explore the surface of bulk materials, see phase transformations on real time. Maybe we will see something completely different of what we imagine right now. My "perception" of the behaivour of matter is strongly based on models that are created to "view" o simplify reality.

Utopic, but again, very interesting.

 

[Dezepar]

Utopic, but again, very interesting.

Utopic, yes. And no. 'Seeing' cellular mitosis (I'm guessing of course that the idea came before the discovery) at one time must have been thought of as utopic. I seem to view it as a 'possible' point of view that has yet to be realized. What weight would it have on science? Not sure. But to observe a complex being, or even just a molecule as you mention AHolico, in its atomic/subatomic state of existence real time, would be at minimum, astronomically helpful, if not scientifically weighty.

I have to actually berate myself here. This should probably be in philosophy.