For me it is the fact that our blood contains iron. I earlier used to believe the word stood for some ‘organic element’ since I couldn’t accept we had metal flowing through our supposed carbon-based bodies, till I realized that is where the taste and smell of blood comes from.
We can’t touch objects, ever. Most of the space “occupied” by an atom is emptiness (which is another rabbit hole I’m not willing to go down), and when we “touch” an object, it’s just a force field pushing the atoms apart. It’s the same reason why we don’t fall apart into atoms - some invisible force just really wants our atoms to stay together.
So how does cutting an apple in half work? The knife must be touching the apple to cut it, right?
The apple was never whole… it was simply tightly grouped and a subgroup has been severed from another
And it was severed by a thin slice of atoms that used their force field as a wedge to force them apart.
You can kind of visualize it as wire EDM manufacturing. Although not a fully accurate depiction, but it fractures the connection between the two sides.
That analogy relies on the reader having any idea what wire EDM manufacturing is. ;) Not exactly an everyday topic.
“So what I’m trying to say, your honor, is that no, I did not inappropriately touch this child”
That’s just semantics. For any real definition of “touch”, we do touch objects.
“to put the hand, finger, etc., on or into contact with (something) to feel it”
The electromagnetic fields of your hand come in contact with those of the object, and you feel it.
It’s taking semantics from one frame of reference and trying to apply them in the frame of reference of an entirely different scale, realizing that it doesn’t work the same way, and then claiming that it is therefore “wrong”.
The only thing I took away from this (when I learnt it years ago) is that telekinesis is possible and we do it daily, we just need to improve its range.
The “empty space” description of an atom is a simplification that’s often linked to an outdated model of how atoms work. That space isn’t really empty, it’s just that matter acts really weird on an atomic scale and even weirder when you start considering the subatomic physics that cause effects like “particles having mass” and “things not just phasing through each other”.
Atoms are bits of matter and, more importantly, fields of force that keep themselves separated from each other.
If you ever see a picture of an atom with a bunch of electrons neatly stacked in rings around a core, you’re looking at a gross simplification that only teaches you that atoms are made up of electrons, neutrons, and protons.
This post explains there’s actually not really a good way to visualise atoms. This video has some more accessible explanations.
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