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CHAPTER IN THE PREVIOUS FIGURES, I used quantum time to describe waves. In the past fifty years, up to the early twentieth century, the scientific community was convinced of the existence of some intangible ether in which all waves propagate. They need some kind of medium, they argued, just as waves disperse on the water. That ether could only be absolute time and space. Of course, Einstein’s spe- cial relativity disproved this argument. He pointed out that nothing could exceed the speed of light in the vacuum, which explained the importance of the Lorentz transformation.’ However, did he define the vacuum? No! Is it the absence of matter? No, because matter does not exist as such. So what does the vacuum stand for? Once we find the right answer, the physical world will need a complete overhaul. One clue is that the vacuum contains hundreds, even thousands of times more photons than any other particle. We are thus faced with an inadequately defined boundary. Waves propagate at the speed of light, but what is the actual meaning of propagation under these conditions? To find the answer, we must look into the microscope and find out what we really see. First come the cells, then the molecules, then the atoms, then the nucleus, then the electrons, then the quarks, then the...? We have reached the limits of our perception. However, do we really see atoms or electrons or quarks? Not entirely. We model them. We see them with the help of computer visualizations. In ancient times, people thought that nature was made of indivisible particles called atoms. In the very beginning of the quantum adventure, Rutherford introduced the idea of “playing with marbles,” arguing that the atom was composed of small balls or spheres with a central nucleus 269 The secret life of atoms