Atoms are so small that around a million of them could fit across the width of a single human hair. A typical atom measures only about 0.1 nanometers across, making it one of the smallest building blocks of matter.
What makes atoms even more fascinating is that they are mostly empty space. At the center lies a tiny, dense nucleus, while electrons move around it. Despite their microscopic size, every star, planet, living thing, and object around us is made of atoms.
Credit: CERN / YouTube
This video elegantly encapsulates the "Winter" concerto by the musical genius Vivaldi, transforming his timeless classical melodies into deeply emotional and captivating visual movements.
If light has no mass, how is it affected by black holes?
The answer is: massive objects bend the "fabric" of space-time, so light travels along a different path than it would have if the massive object were not there.
[🎞️physicsgene]
🚨 THE PROTON YOU LEARNED ABOUT IN SCHOOL DOESN’T EXIST.
For decades after their discovery, protons (and neutrons) were considered the basic building blocks of atomic nuclei. But by the 1960s, deep inelastic scattering experiments firing high-energy electrons at protons revealed something shocking: protons are not fundamental.
Inside every proton is a dynamic, ever-changing swarm of quarks, antiquarks, and gluons. The three “valence” quarks we usually hear about are just the net excess. Most of the proton’s mass and structure comes from the constant creation and annihilation of particle-antiparticle pairs and the gluons that bind them.
Why this matters:
• It completely overturned the idea that protons and neutrons were the smallest units of matter
• It led directly to the discovery of quarks and the full development of Quantum Chromodynamics (the theory of the strong nuclear force)
• It showed us that even “simple” particles like the proton are actually complex quantum systems
The deeper implication:
What we call “matter” at the smallest scales is far more dynamic and chaotic than the neat textbook picture most of us were taught. The proton isn’t a solid little ball of three quarks it’s a boiling sea of particles and forces in constant flux. And every time we’ve looked deeper, we’ve found more layers.
We still don’t know if quarks themselves have substructure. But history suggests we should keep asking.
What do you think are quarks and gluons truly fundamental, or will we one day discover even smaller building blocks inside them?
Follow for more frontier particle physics and how we uncovered the true nature of matter.
A possible future of the universe.
The Big Rip is a hypothetical end of the universe scenario where accelerating expansion eventually tears apart galaxies, stars, planets, and even atoms. It is not the leading prediction today, but it remains one of cosmology's most intriguing possibilities.
A 3D model of the solar system, driven by the sun's gravitation pull.
The solar system does not look like a flat spinning mobile. The sun hold 99.8% of the mass in the solar system and it's gravity keeps every planet , asteroid and comet locked in orbit around it.