at the University of California describes this fact regarding the atom:
If you stop to think about it at all, you might realize that life on planet as we live it is really a surprise, considering just how empty the universe really is. In fact, the universe is more than 99 percent nothing! And considering that the universe is still expanding at an alarming rate, it’s getting to be more nothing than it ever was!
So while looking out at it leaves us in awe, when we consider the microworld of subatomic matter, it’s even worse. There, nothing exists in spades, so to speak. (Fred Alan Wolf, The Spiritual Universe: One Physicist’s Vision of Spirit, Soul, Matter and Self, Moment Point Press, 1999, p. 99)
At the beginning of the 20th century, it was known that there was a giant empty space inside the atom, which was regarded as the smallest component of all things, and that this space contained a nucleus and electrons revolving around it. However, only the general lines of matter—the atom and its fundamental parts—were understood. So what was there in the atomic nucleus, in a space just 10-18 kilometer in size, or one millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a kilometer? That was something unknown to scientists.
In the 1960s, a most significant scientific discovery was made. It was realized that in the depths of the proton, there were particles known as quarks. These extraordinarily minute particles caused protons to have a positive electric charge, and neutrons to have no charge. Research eventually revealed the presence of a gloriously complex world in what comprised just 0.0000001 of the atom.
The more that materialists descended into the depths of the