Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form

Two images here: The first shows the distribution of mass in the Universe, the second, the structure of an Atom.

Consider: According to my learning, the picture of an atom above -- the image most of us are familiar with in regards atoms -- is grossly out of scale. The example I heard: Consider an atom to be Westminster Abbey (or any really large building). The walls would be where the electrons buzz around. The nucleus, in this example, would be the size of a housefly. Thus, the vast majority -- approaching 99% - of an atom is empty space. The only thing that allows matter to act upon matter (to touch things, in other words) is the electrical fields generated by the electrons in each atom.

Now, consider the top picture: Astoundingly, average, everyday matter - stars, planets, gas clouds - only makes up at best 4% of the observable density of the Universe. The other 96%? We don't know yet. Maybe hadrons! But even most of this 4% is gas floating in the vast, vast expanses of space. The stuff we know best -- all the stuff on earth for instance -- makes up less than .05%. All the stars, all the rocks.... amount to basically nothing.


And there you have it. The space within us, and the space around us, is mostly -- up to 99% - empty. And yet is this less than a percent which makes up everything we'll ever know with our bodies.

Point? Life is a mystery, and we are merely sniffing at the questions.

Finally, consider: A drop of water contains 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of oxygen, and 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hydrogen atoms. One little drop.