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Comment by dugluak | Hacker News Reader

>> Are we sitting in a ball on some gigantic alien's coffee table?

sometimes I have the same question but quite opposite. What if there are miniscule worlds right on our coffee table.

On being given the planetary model of an atom I think it's relatively common to consider that maybe atoms are mini star systems. That was one of my early "aw shucks, someone else had that idea already!?" deflationary moments.

That was exactly the early thought and why the commonly accepted image of an atom with a nucleous and orbiting electrons looks just like a solar system.

Of course that’s not at all what atoms look like or how they behave.

Do you have a source for that?

AIUI Rutherford's model focussed the mass in the nucleus based-on/inspired-by Nagaoka's Saturnian model. Then Bohr's model specifically put electrons in orbit but they were there to explain atomic emission spectra and so needed to move between orbits - not at all like planets.

I think the thought was that electrons orbited a nucleus in a "planetary" way, rather than them being actual nano-scale planets.

Or both...we can simultaneously exist on some aliens coffee table while they simultaneously exist on your coffee table.

There are. Look into a microscope.

Horton Hears a Who

Both.

Men in Black and Horton Hears A Who: Both true tales that future generations will understand as visionaries slipping a little reality under the door of our current narrow-minded and backwards prejudices.

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