Electrons, Ants and Nebulas

The tale of how our intuitions are not scale invariant

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Humans appear to live in a small bubble of intelligibility. We seem to have a good, intuitive grip of the world, as long as things are relatively close to our size and move relatively close to our speed. Otherwise, all of our common sense breaks down. I want to explore how reality manifests so differently at different scales. Moving from small to big, slow to fast, and from near to far — the impossible becomes possible.

Big and Small

After a long walk, on a quiet fall afternoon, you take a moment to rest on a bench. No birds chirping, no wind, no people — only silence. It would be easy to say: “Ah, the world rests in stillness.” Would you just magnify things slightly, you’d be witness to an astonishing battle. Insects fighting to the death — the cells in your body constantly waging war against intruders. The equilibrium you experience on the surface is a result of a dynamic interplay of opposites just below the surface. The world is teeming with activity, yet from our limited perspective, the forest is…