EIN AND ively unraveling tructure oftruggling to understand someto  in its as remote: tiny and ever- mysterious atom.

    t Caltec Ric if you o reducescientific ory to one important statement it oms.” titute every t is all atoms. Not just tables and sofas, but t you really cannot conceive.

    t of atoms is tin for “little mass”).

    A molecule is simply toms ogetablearrangement: add toms of o one of oxygen and you er.

    Cs tend to terms of molecules rats in mucers tend to terms of  letters, so it is molecules t, and to say t. At sea level, at a temperature of 32 degrees Fa, onecubic centimeter of air (t is, a space about tain 45 billionbillion molecules. And timeter you see around you. timeters tside your ake to fill t vie ake to build a universe.

    Atoms, in s, are very abundant.

    tastically durable. Because toms really get around.

    Every atom you possess  certainly passed tars and been part ofmillions of organisms on its o becoming you. e are eacomically numerous andso vigorously recycled at deat a significant number of our atoms—up to a billion foreac ed—probably once belonged to Sorical figureyou care to name. (to be orical, apparently, as it takes tomssome decades to become tributed; , you arenot yet one ions—t-lived ones. oms o find neoms, ically forever. Nobody actually kno according to Martin Rees it is probably about 1035years—a numberso big t even I am o express it in notation.

    Above all, atoms are tiny—very tiny indeed. osom is essentiallyimpossible to imagine, but ry.

    Start er, o athe scale of microorganisms.

    A typical paramecium, for instance, is about ters, o see er, you il it y feet across.

    ed to see toms in to make teen miles across.

    Atoms, in ot on a scale of minuteness of anotogeto getdoo toms, you o take eac into ten t’s tom: one ten-millionter. It is a degree of slenderness y of our imaginations, but youcan get some idea of tions if you bear in mind t one atom is to ter line as t of paper is to t of tateBuilding.

    It is of course treme durability of atoms t makes tininess t makes to detect and understand. tion t atomsare tically indestructible—and t all t occurred not to Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, as you mig, or evento  rato a spare and liged Englison, ered in ter on cry.

    Dalton rict near Cockermouto a family ofpoor but devout Quaker er t illiam ords Cockermoutionally brigudent—so very brig at t Dalton’s precocity, but per:  about time on’s Principia in tin and oture. At fifteen, stillscering, ook a job in toer t o Mancer, scarcely stirring from ty years of er ellectual eorology to grammar. Color blindness, a condition from onism because of udies. But it em of C establisation.

    t cer of just five pages (out of t encountered atoms in sometion. Dalton’s simple insig at t of all matter are exceedingly tiny,irreducible particles. “e migtempt to introduce a ne into tem or annie one already in existence, as to create or destroy a particle of hydrogen,”

    e.

    Neitoms nor term itself ly ne Greeks. Dalton’s contribution o consider tive sizes and cers oftoms and  togetance, t estelement, so  an atomic er consisted of sevenparts of oxygen to one of omic  tive erribly accurate—oxygen’s atomic een, not seven—but try and muc ofmodern science.

    ton famous—albeit in a lo P .J. Pelletier traveled to Mancer to meet tomic ierexpected to find taco some grand institution, so ounded to discover eacary aritic to boys in a small screet. According to tific orian E. J. ier, upon be man,stammered:

    “Est-ce que j’ai l’on?” for  t of European fame, teac four rules. “Yes,” said tter-of-fact Quaker. “ilt t do t about ic?”

    Alton tried to avoid all ed to ty against  pension. y tege stretcionary of National Biograp, rivaled inlengteentury men of science.

    For a century after Dalton made  remained entirely ical, and a fe scientists—notably t Ernst Maced tence of atoms at all. “Atoms cannot be perceived by the senses . .

    . t,” e. tence of atoms fully icular t it o  in t tical p, and atomic ent, Ludzmann in 1906.

    It ein rovertible evidence of atoms’ existence ion in 1905, but ttracted little attention and in any caseEinstein o become consumed ivity. So t realomic age, if not t personage on t Rutherford.

    Ruto parents land to raise a little flax and a lot of co parapeveneinberg). Groe part of a remote country,  as far from tream of science as it o be, but in 1895  took o tory at Cambridge University, o become ttestplace in to do physics.

    Ps are notoriously scornful of scientists from ot Austrian p olfgang Pauli left , aggered aken a bullfigood,” o afriend. “But a c . . .”

    It ood. “All science is eitampcollecting,”  imes since. tainengaging irony t physics.

    Ruto be a genius, but even luckier to live at a time ing and so compatible (imentsnotanding). Never again e so comfortably overlap.

    For all  an especially brilliant man and ually prettyterrible at matics. Often during lectures  so lost in ions tell tudents to  out for themselves.

    According to ime colleague James Cron, even particularly clever at experimentation. enacious and open-minded. Forbrilliance ituted sing out toiers, as far as  deal furt oted ractable problem, o  it  people and to be more receptive tounortions. est breakto spendimmensely tedious ting at a screen counting alpicle scintillations, as t of  o see—possibly t—t t in tom could, if o “make this old world vanish in smoke.”

    P made timid sold t Rut to make a radio broadcast across tlantic, a colleague drilyasked: “ of good-natured confidence. o  o be at t of a  I?” C. P. Snoy.”

    But botc theCavendish.

    1It ful period in science. In tgen discovered X rays at ty of ürzburg in Germany,and t year ivity. And tself  to embark on a long period of greatness. In 1897, J. J. tron t. R. ilson  particle detectortron there.

    Furtill in ture, James atson and Francis Crick ructure ofDNA at the Cavendish in 1953.

    In tinction—o transmit a crisp signal more t for time—but gave it up le future.

    On t t ter took a post at McGill University in Montreal, and teady rise to greatness. By time igations into tegration of ts, and try of radioactivesubstances,” according to tation) o Mancer University,and it , t  important ermining tructure and nature of tom.

    1ted matician and steel baron in Victoriar England. In 1870, y ￡6,300 to build an experimental lab.

    By tietury it  atoms s—tron ablis—but it  kno toget sook. Some ps t t atomsmigogetly  any edspace. t an atom  bun or aplum pudding: a dense, solid object t carried a positive c t udded ively crons, like ts in a currant bun.

    In 1910, Ruted by udent er invent tion detector t bears oms, or alpicles, at as of gold foil.

    2to Rutonis, some of ticles bounced back. It  rebounded into his lap.

    t not supposed to er considerable reflection ion: ticles t bounced back riking somet t of tom, om, Rutly empty space,  ter.

    t gratifying discovery, but it presented one immediate problem. By all tional poms s t.

    Let us pause for a moment and consider tructure of tom as  noom is made from tary particles: protons, rical crons, rical crons, rons are packed into trons spin aroundoutside. tons is om its city. An atom on is an atom of ons is ons is litime you add a proton you get a ne. (Because tons in an atom is alrons, you imes see it ten t it is trons t defines an element; it comes tot o me is t protons give an atom its identity,electrons its personality.)Neutrons don’t influence an atom’s identity, but to its mass. trons is generally about tons, but tly. Add a neutron or t an isotope. terms you odating teco isotopes—carbon-14, for instance, ons and eigrons (teen being two).

    Neutrons and protons occupy tom’s nucleus. tom is tiny—only onemilliontom—but fantastically dense, since itcontains virtually all tom’s mass. As Cropper  it, if an atom o t t a fly manytimes  ed roominess—t ching his head in 1910.

    It is still a fairly astounding notion to consider t atoms are mostly empty space, and tty s come togeter become a loyal Nazi, unatingly betraying Jewish colleagues, including many whohad helped him.

    real  often used for illustration—t actually strike eacimotively c for trical ct in a c actually sitting tlevitating above it at a  of one angstrom (a imeter), yourelectrons and its electrons implacably opposed to any closer intimacy.

    ture t nearly everybody om is of an electron or ts orbiting a sun. ted in 1904, based on littlemore t named aro Nagaoka. It iscompletely  durable just to note, it inspiredgenerations of science fiction ers to create stories of omsbecome tiny ined solar systems or our solar system turns out to be merely a mote in somemucion for Nuclear Researcs e. In fact, as ps o realize, electronsare not like orbiting planets at all, but more like to fillevery bit of space in ts simultaneously (but  to be everyrons are ).

    Needless to say, very little of tood in 1910 or for many years afterward.

    Ruted some large and immediate problems, not least t no electronso orbit a nucleus  crasional electrodynamic t a flying electron s of energy—in only an instant orso—and spiral into trous consequences for botons ive coget blo of tom apart. Clearly  governed by t applied in tations reside.

    As ps began to delve into tomic realm, t it  merelydifferent from anyt different from anytomic be isvery difficult to get used to and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone, boto to t.”  comment, ps ury to adjust to trangeness of atomic be must  to Rut was all brand new.

    One of tructure of tom, Boing t poned o e  see anytom, to try to  its structurefrom  beo it, as Ruticles at foil. Sometimes, not surprisingly, ts of ts were puzzling.

    One puzzle t ime o do rum readings of tterns s oms emittedenergy at certain  not ot  turning up at particular locations but raveling betand whis should be.

    It ion and dasitutions of Atoms and Molecules,” trons could keep from falling into ting t tain s. According to tron moving bets antaneously in anot visiting tum leap”—is of course utterly strange, but itoo good not to be true. It not only kept electrons from spiraling catastropo t also explained rons only appearedin certain orbits because ted in certain orbits. It ein received his.

    Mean Cambridge as J. J. tory, came up  explained  be offset by some type of neutralizing particles,  not easy to prove. Rute, James Ced eleven intensive years to ing for neutrons beforefinally succeeding in 1932. oo,  out in tory of t, tery of tron ial to t of tomic bomb. (Because neutrons  repelled by trical fields att of an atom and tiny torpedoes into an atomic nucleus, settingoff tructive process knoed in te, it is “very likely tomic bomb edly by the Germans.”

    As it rying to understand trange beron. t tron sometimes beicle and sometimes like a y drove ps nearly mad. Fort decade all across Europe t and scribbled and offered competingor de Broglie, tcertain anomalies in trons disappeared whem as waves.

    tion excited ttention of trian Ers and devised a em called  time t erner ing trixmecically complex t ood it,including  even knorix is ,” o a friend at one point), but it did seem to solve certain problems t Sco explain. t is t ping premises,t produced ts. It uation.

    Finally, in 1926, ed compromise, producing a ne came to be knoum mec t of it y Principle, es t tron is a particle but a particle t can bedescribed in terms of ainty around  ron takes as it moves t is at agiven instant, but  knoh.

    3Any attempt to measure one tle uncertainty about tainty in regard to ero es t several -ranslators, but t none quite equates to tainty.

    Frayn suggests t indeterminacy ter erminability terstill.

    disturb t a matter of simply needing more precise instruments; it is animmutable property of the universe.

    tice is t you can never predict  anygiven moment. You can only list its probability of being t it, an electron doesn’t exist until it is observed. Or, put sligly, until it isobserved an electron must be regarded as being “at once everywhere and nowhere.”

    If take some comfort in kno it ops, too. Overbye notes: “Boed t a person raged onfirst  quantum t understand  try.”

    So tom turned out to be quite unlike t most people ed. tron doesn’t fly around t around its sun, but instead takes on t of a cloud. tom isn’t some rations sometimes encourage us to suppose, but simply termost of tron clouds. tself is essentially just a zone of statistical probability marking tron only very seldom strays. tom, if you could see it,ennis ball tallic sp not mucer all, dealing  from the one we see around us).

    It seemed as if trangeness. For t time, as James trefil  it,scientists ered “an area of t our brains just aren’t ounderstand.” Or as Feynman expressed it, “ts delved deeper, tonly could electrons jump from one orbit to anot traveling across any interveningspace, but matter could pop into existence from not all—“provided,” in tman of MIt, “it disappears again  e.”

    Per arresting of quantum improbabilities is t tomic particles in certain pairs, even  considerable distances, can eacantly “knoicles y knoo quantum tyou determine ticle, its sister particle, no matter ant aely begin spinning in te direction and at te.

    It is as if, in ter Laical poolballs, one in Oant you sent one spinning tely spin in a contrary direction at precisely ts at ty of Geneva sent ponsseven miles in opposite directions and demonstrated t interfering antaneous response in ther.

    tc at one conference Bo tion   rate tuitive nature of tum in  om of a radioactive substanceattaco a vial of icle degraded  riggera mec . If not, t   kno to regard t as 100 percent alive and 100 percent dead at time. tepoucandable excitement, t one cannot “predictfuture events exactly if one cannot even measure t state of the universe precisely!”

    Because of its oddities, many ps disliked quantum t least certain aspectsof it, and none more so tein. ttle ironic since it imes like ion at t of tum tely, but  like it. “God doesn’t play dice,” he said.

    4Einstein couldn’t bear tion t God could create a universe in  a distance—t one particle couldinstantaneously influence anotrillions of miles aark violation of tivity. t notrace t andyet s insisting t, some tomic level, information could.

    (No one, incidentally, icles ac. Scientists  o t Yakir A tit.”)Above all, t quantum produced a level of untidiness t previously existed. Suddenly you needed ts of lao explain tum tivity for ty of relativity t at explaining ed suns or o cluster, but turned out to  all at ticle level. to explain  atoms togetrong nuclear force and rong forcebinds atoms toget’s ons to bed doogetasks, mostly to do rolling tes of certainsorts of radioactive decay.

    te its name, is ten billion billion billion times stronger ty, and trong nuclear force is more poill—vastly so, in fact—but tends to only tiniest distances. trong force reac only toabout 1/100,000 of ter of an atom. t’s edand dense and end to be so unstable: trong forcejust can’t o all tons.

    t of all t p large—leading quite separate lives. Einstein dislikedt, too. ed t of o searco tie up time to time  , butit alle pitied. Almost  exception, e Snoill t ed the second half of his life.”

    4Or at least t is  is nearly alual quote  seems o sneak a look atGod’s cards. But t elepat I cannot believe for asingle moment.”

    Elses  om at an extremely profound level—as too effectively demonstrated in August 1945 by exploding a pair of atomic bombs over Japan.

    By t ps could be excused for t t about conqueredtom. In fact, everyticle p to get a ed. But before ake up t sliging story,  bring anotrao date by considering an important and salutary tale of avarice, deceit,bad science, several needless deatermination of th.