A calculation

a reflection on what may or may not exist

The atoms in our body are mostly empty space.

If the typical atomic radius measures 10^-10 meters

Its nucleus occupies an infinitesimal radius of 10^-15 meters

So the ratio of nuclear radius to atomic radius will be

r_nucleus / r_atom = (10⁻¹⁵) / (10⁻¹⁰) = 10⁻⁵

By cubing this ratio, we have the ratio of the nuclear volume to the atomic volume

(10⁻⁵)³ = 10⁻¹⁵.

Why do we care?

If all atoms in the human body were compressed to nuclear density, the resulting volume would be about 10⁻¹⁵ of the body’s current volume, which is 0.0000000000001%.

Which means: your matter takes up about one quadrillionth of the space your body occupies.

Fields

I am space, empty, alive

I stand on space, empty, solid

I look out on space, clouds, amber fields of grain

Domains separated by fields

Form assembled in the space where our mind resides.

But the mass will still be there. The invisible speck will weigh what you weigh now.

If we cremate our bodies, the residual ash will only be about 3.5-4.5% of your original body weight; no longer an invisible speck but all that weight will be lost, poof. Why? How does the inferno of the crematorium achieve what we spend most of our lives attempting?

Burning breaks the bonds, the electromagnetic framework that holds our atoms together and releases 94-97% of our mass as moisture gas and flame. The ash is a relic of our skeletal remains.

Is it the electromagnetic scaffolding that houses our consciousness?

Forces

Why am I held aloft?

Shouldn’t I merge with the earth, the sun?

My echo persists in the flight

Of atoms and visions

Confused with memories.

In ancient Egypt, the mirror was a sacred object, the connection between earthly and spiritual worlds. In China and East Asia, it was used to repel evil, reflect truth, and connect to cosmic order. In Mesoamerica obsidian mirrors were portals used by shamans for divination, trance work, and communication with gods or ancestors. We use mirrors to gauge appearance, direct the tweezers, lament the loss. Physicists wonder why the mirrored universe refuses to play by the same rules as the universe beyond the mirror.

Mirrors

In the mirror I cannot see the emptiness

Only an image, the power of electromagnetism

My instruments bring me into communion

With illusion

Our fantasy of self.

Neuroscientists inform us that our sight, hearing, feeling, feed into our synaptic machine in fragments and waits to patch together bits and pieces, until it can synthesize an approximation of what we think we are seeing, hearing, feeling. As we wait, we move on, confident crossing the street, charging the enemy, planning for the next day.

Erasure

Why does the world change?

The things I saw and cherished in childhood

Vanished into the emptiness that spawned them

And I am left to pick among the ruins

Empty things, empty space.

Religion, neuroscience, philosophy, the physical sciences speculate that consciousness is the source of all matter, energy and time, that it is possible our own consciousness is connected to a universal consciousness and that death is an illusion—the ultimate, final and only illusion.

The Undoing

I know the universe will end

That the insanity we take for reality

Will shake, rattle and roll

Until we come to understand

There is nothing worth understanding.