Sunday, January 7, 2024

mostly, and in several ways

   

  



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'Does it change the way the world feels?' i ask [Christopher Toth]. 'Knowing that 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second, that countless such particles perforate our brains and hearts? Does it change the way you feel about matter — about what matters? Are you surprised that we don't fall through each surface of our world at every step, push through it with every touch?'

Christopher nods. He thinks.  

... 'At the weekends,' Christopher says, 'when I'm out for a walk with my wife, along the cliff tops near here, on a sunny day, I know our bodies are wide-meshed nets, and that the cliffs we're walking on are nets too, and sometimes it seems, yes, as miraculous as if in our everyday world we suddenly found ourselves walking on water, or air. And I wonder what it must be like, sometimes, not to know that.'

He pauses, and it is clear that he is thinking now beyond the confines of the salt cavern, beyond even the known limits of the universe. 

'But mostly, and in several ways, I'm amazed I'm able to hold the hand of the person I love.'

—Robert Macfarlane
—Christopher Toth, physicist
Underland, from Chapter 3, Dark Matter




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