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Originally Posted by Interpreter This assumes that the total mass of all of the energy would not be stable. In it's maximum stable form the 'lump' of energy would consist of all of the energy less that single electron. Unless of course there are multiple examples of the 'Big Bang' in existance in different parts of space at the same time.
The simplified example that was often quoted when I was studying physics was that if you imagine a proton the size of a football sitting on your diningroom table, then there would be an electron the size of a small orange a hundred yards or so away, in orbit around it. In between the proton and the electron would be nothing. So solid material consists mainly of nothing. |
Which is a simplified example as if it was really in orbit then you would have a charge spinning in a em field which means that it would have to radiate energy. If it radiates energy the atom would collapse as it loses energy. Of course if it was static then it would collapse as the EM field would drag the electron into the nucleus. It's perhaps more accurate to regard the electron as merely having a probability of being somewhere around the nucleus. So in the classical model the atom is a largely empty space with a few orbiting electrons while in a quantum model and atom is a grey fuzzy cloud of probabilty.
Of course at the astronomical scale space is largely empty anyway.