Atoms of Matter and Energy

Abstract

Abstract Perhaps the greatest scientific achievement of antiquity, possibly of all time, was the realization of the atomic nature of matter. “There are but atoms and the void,” Democritus proposed. And he understood the great diversity of material objects as complex aggregations of uncuttable atoms, the building blocks of matter, moving in the void, the empty space between them. Leucippus invented the atomic theory, and Democritus, a true polymath and a prolific philosopher, developed it extensively. Uncuttable (the actual meaning of atom in Greek) are also the modern elementary particles of matter, the quarks and leptons, and although void is a controversial concept still, a kind of void is required to explain nature. Leucippus’s and Democritus’s notion of indivisible (atomic), discrete particles without substructure has endured and, according to modern physics, is still one of the most remarkable properties of nature. Could space and time have an atomic nature, too?