Where are Epicurus' atoms now?

Many times, even for years, I have thought about ‘What is this Universe I am part of’? Or even ‘Who am I, really’? Because I am aware that I am actually consisting of a set of atoms, I also read somewhere that an atom is mostly empty space, so basically I am not here at all, I am invisible. Obviously that’s not quite true, when I look in a mirror I see my reflection. And also I seem to be real because when I shave I can feel it and see the change in my complexion. Not so long ago I read something about Epicurus, a long ago Greek philosopher. About atoms. Now, we must remember that in those days there were no such things as microscopes, electron accelerators, we had never heard of quarks, not even about gravity! So how did Epicurus figure out about atoms? The word had no meaning except that in Greek it probably meant, ‘the smallest part’. Supposedly the thinking went something like, you take an apple, cut it in half, cut in half again, and again, and again. Eventually you will arrive at the part you cannot cut anymore or even see. That’s his atom. But it is not quite true because that smallest part would still be apple! He would not have had the power at hand to split the molecule into its atomic sub-parts or even power to split the atoms themselves! However, Epicurus thinking went further. He also considered the following – considering what he saw around him he felt that matter could not come into existence out of nothingness. Because if matter could spontaneously come into existence where nothing existed before then it should happen everywhere and continuously. And we know from observation it does not. If nothing at all was needed for matter to start existing then we should expect that every point in the universe not already occupied by matter would have matter bursting into existence at every moment of time, since the conditions for such creation would be equally met everywhere. And again looking around we can see that this is not the case.

As we know you can add zero to zero as many times as you wish, the answer will always be zero! From that simple equation old Epicurus also deducted that the Universe was infinitely old, as all the matter that exists must always have existed! Plus that matter cannot dissolve into nothingness. Given that matter cannot emerge from nonexistence, it naturally follows that neither can it cease to exist. If it were so, then it would logically follow that, given enough time, no matter would be left.

So, going back to how we came to the idea of an atom, the idea of cutting something in half as many times as needed, then the question is – how many times can we do it? Remember that it has already been said that matter cannot be destroyed then even cutting things in half is not going to produce nothingness! Technically matter can become energy but energy can become matter, they are inter-related. In other words, NOTHING does not exist! Given that matter, by its nature, has size and occupies a quantity of space, anything that was composed of an infinite number of pieces of matter would necessarily have to be infinitely large.

It is easy to see that objects are not infinitely large. No matter how big the object you originally chose to cut might have been, it had an edge, and therefore was not infinite. Because all matter occupies space, anything that occupies finite space must be composed of a finite number of pieces of matter. The number may be incomprehensibly large, but it cannot be infinity. If things could be reduced infinitely, that would effectively be the same as matter dissolving into nothingness, which we already established could not happen. The answer as far as Epicurus was concerned is that there was an end to the division and that part he called an atom. Today we know that even an atom consists of different parts, electrons, neutrons, protons. And electrons consist of quarks. The truth is, as we cannot see those, only that we have deducted they must exist from experiments. But there could be many more divisions. The result of these thoughts and I agree, is that the Universe is infinite, has always existed and always will. The amount of matter and energy is also always the same. That is what is meant by eternal! What can change is the balance between matter and energy. But the answer will always be 1. Matter 0.5, energy 0.5 or it could be, matter 0.2 and energy 0.8. Somebody might work it out. Well, all have to decide for themselves what they believe the truth is or could be. (With thanks to Epicurus and Tom Robinson (Quora).