What is Reality? - Guest Post From Author Richard Woodling

What is Reality?

Have you ever asked yourself what is real? Or have you ever wondered if something was real and if something wasn’t? Most people have; I know I have. But what is reality anyway? It’s a fundamental question and if you asked it to any group of people you would get a variety of answers. They would go something like this: I can see it so it’s real or; I can smell it or taste it so it’s real. One the most common answers you would likely get is I can touch it so it’s real. But can you rely on your body’s senses to let you know if something is real or not? Let’s take a closer look at this question. Let's dig way, way down.

On the subatomic level reality gets more than a bit fuzzy. In fact it gets downright weird. Let’s take a look at matter. All matter is composed of atoms. The periodic table, which is a table of all the elemental matter known to science, consists of 103 elements. These elements are the building blocks of everything around us. Each of these elements are composed individually of tiny groups of particles called atoms.

Atoms are composed of neutrons and protons at their core. A cloud of electrons surrounds the core of the atom. The atom’s protons have a positive charge; the neutrons have no charge. The glue that holds the protons and neutrons together is the strong nuclear force. This elemental force is so strong it is, on a human scale, incomprehensible.  Surrounding the core of each atom are electrons. Depending on the element the numbers electrons orbiting these particles varies from 1, which is Hydrogen to 103, which is the element Lawrencium. The electromagnetic force holds these electrons in their orbit.  When you touch something with your finger, say a tabletop, your brain says I can feel it so you conclude that it’s real. But is that what happened? In fact that’s not what happened at all. When you perceive you have touched the tabletop what really happened is the electrons in the atoms of your finger never touch. They just get very, very close to the electrons in the atoms of the tabletop and are then repelled. Your brain perceives this as touch. You can see how this repelling works by getting two magnets. Lay them side by side with the positive pole of one magnet pointing towards the positive pole of the other magnet. Then try to move them together.  They can never touch they are repelled by the electromagnetic force. So you can never ever come in contact with anything. Your sense touch and therefore you sense of what is real is just a mind trick.

The classic representation of an atom you saw in school textbooks was that of a circular space. At the center of the space were little balls that represented the protons and neutrons. A little bit out were little balls orbiting the protons and neutrons that represented the electrons of that atom.  Let’s take a closer look at this. If we look at the true scale of the simplest element, hydrogen, some very strange truths emerge. Hydrogen consists of one proton and one orbiting electron. If the proton were one thousand pixels wide the one orbiting electron would only be one pixel wide. The distance of the electron from the hydrogen proton would be, at that scale, eleven miles from the proton. I want to thank keithcom.com for this representation.

This now gets even stranger. The atom’s proton has no definite locality. It’s there and not there simultaneously. The same is true of the electrons. They have no locality. Orbiting electrons are basically a cloud of objects that are there and not there at the same time. The other fact of this Alice In Wonderland view is that the simple act of you observing matter interacts with the stuff being observed to make it observable; weird but true.

So what is real? The sunning answer is nothing is real! All matter is composed of stuff that is mostly composed of empty space, nothingness. The stuff that is real is in fact not even there. This reality, of course, all changes when you observe things. So the truth about reality is that life really is a dream. Who knew that when the classic do-wop tune “Life Is But A Dream” was released that the Harptones were in fact particle physicists masquerading as musicians.

Richard Woodling is the author of God, The Universe And Darwin, Make sure you pick up your copy!

Hi, I'm Richard Woodling. I was born in 1951 in Nagoya, Japan. That happened because my dad was in the Army Air Corps and was part of the occupation forces in Japan after WWII. During the war he flew B-17s in the 8th Air Force out of England.

When my dad finally retired the family ended up moving to Denton Texas a nice little college town north of Dallas. In school I was a very curious and was always interested in finding out the truth about things. I was also drawn towards both the arts and sciences.

My curiosity about the way things really worked is what prompted me to start writing. Over my life I had accumulated some very specific knowledge on a variety of subjects and decided to use it in a creative fashion. "God, The Universe and Darwin" is my latest effort. I have several more books in the works.

My Webpage

www.Richardwoodling.com