Everything is Made of Atoms (But It’s Mostly Nothing)

I want to start with a personal observation. Look at your hand. Then the wall. Both are solid, right? You can't stick your hand through the wall, but why not? This may seem like a simple question to answer; "Both are all solid surfaces". But how solid are they actually?

Atoms are the basic building blocks of all matter in the universe. You may remember that from grade school. You may also remember that atoms are made of a nucleus (protons and neutrons) and electrons that orbit around the nucleus. You may remember seeing models of this in grade school. It may have looked something like this

What many of us were not taught, or we may not remember, is the scale of atoms. Imagine the nucleus of an atom is the size of a tennis ball. On that scale, the nearest electron would be a mile away. Everything in between that mile would be empty space at this scale. Nothing....but space.

So why can't you put your hand through a wall? If everything is made of atoms and atoms are 99% "nothing", we should be able to do exactly that. Right? Obviously that is not the case, so what gives? It's called electromagnetic repulsion. Remember; we know that atoms have electrons. Those electrons carry an electric charge. When two atoms get close to each other, their electrons push away from each other. You've seen this before if you've ever played with magnets. When you try to push the same poles of two magnets together, the electrons repel each other. This invisible push is called electromagnetic repulsion. It’s the reason why when you try to shove your hand through a wall, the atoms in your hand and the atoms in the wall push back.

So basically, everything in the universe is made of 99% "nothing". That's not even where the story ends. Protons and Neutrons are made of quarks that are held together by gluons. The deeper we look, the more we see that everything in this so-called "physical universe" is actually made of vibrating energy that create the illusion of a solid physical place. Nothing is solid. Everything is 99% nothing.