Two Cars Passed Through Each Other

Look at it this way: When you have at atom, there is a central core of sorts, with electrons in orbit around it. If you could expand it, the electrons would have enough room as bees in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. There is that much empty space in an atom. Or, conversely, the vast majority of an atom is empty space.

So you have a huge amount of atoms in an auto, which amounts to an awful lot of empty space, really. Someone’s not looking where they are going and their awful lot of empty space meets your awful lot of empty space.

Why don’t they just pass through each other? It’s not as if there is a great amount of density in there; we’ve already described how far the atom’s electrons are from the core.

Why can’t we put ten, twenty people in one airplane seat? Unless there is a chance their atoms might get mixed up with each other, Uncle Ed getting on the plane will still be Uncle Ed getting off. It’s just that he shared the seat with Fritzi Olmbecker, Joe Brizt, Bambi Friday, Esther Fesstah, Gloria Snockers and 14 other people. (Bambi Friday is a real person who lives near me.)

Apparently, these atoms all get together in some sort of club called “The Molecules,” which has a stronger attraction than either the Mafia or Aunt Sarah’s Thursday Night Gossip and Card Club. You can’t break through any of them and, therefore, when we run into someone, we run into them and not through them.