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The problem with these analogies (I will confess a fondness for the  
rats-at-the-Exploratorium), at least when they are used in earnest,  
is that they usually presume I have the ability to conceptualize  
really big or really small.....Last night I was dutifully watching  
Nova and a program called "Parallel Universes/Parallel Lives" about  
Mark Oliver Everett, musician and son of Hugh Everett, trying to  
better understand his father's theory - many worlds interpretation of  
quantum physics - as a means of discovering a man he didn't know very  
well in life.

One of Hugh Everett's colleagues was trying to explain some the  
concepts - and the narrator says of a pencil dot the colleague has  
just made, there are more atoms in that single dot than there are  
pencils in the world......great comparison but the problem is how on  
earth can I conceive of such a large number of pencils?  Put all  
together, would these pencils stack to the moon and back?  Would you  
be able to build the Eiffel Tower with them?

When one mixes orders of orders of magnitude - it is very difficult  
for most of us to visualize in a meaningful way...

(By the way...if you stacked a million nickels they would be taller  
than 5 Sears Towers stacked on top of each other (without the radio  
antennas)....

Before I end, let me say I enjoy thinking about such things, its just  
that most of the time, I don't 'get' it.....
	




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