Small Microscopic Subatomic and Strings

Esther’s writing prompt: 6th August : Small

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Small Things

Fire ants are small. They average 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch in length, or 3 to 6 millimeters. Mites are very small arachnids that are less than 1 millimeters. They are so small that they are difficult to see with the naked eye unless they are on a white sheet. However, amoebas are typically even smaller than mites. Most amoebas range from 10 to 500 micrometers in diameter. 500 micrometers is the same as half a millimeter. You typically need a microscope to see an amoeba. I should say that there are some large amoebas that are 2 millimeters.

The photo shows six different types of amoebas | Small Microscopic Subatomic and Strings
Amoebas from Wikimedia commons. Attribution Respectively: NIAID, Cymothoa exigua, ja:User:NEON / User:NEON_ja, Jacob Lorenzo-Morales, Naveed A. Khan and Julia Walochnik, ja:User:NEON / User:NEON_ja, ja:User:NEON / User:NEON_ja, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Microscopic Things

If you want to go even smaller, much smaller, we can enter the microscopic world. Bacteria are microscopic, single-celled organisms with sizes typically ranging from 0.5 to 5 micrometers in length and 0.2 to 1 micrometer in width. That means that bacteria are around 100 times smaller than amoebas. Well, if you consider length. If you consider the volume that is a million times smaller. Comparing an amoeba to a bacterium is like comparing a horse to a small cicada. You certainly need a microscope to see bacteria.

If you think bacteria are small, I can tell you that viruses are even smaller. Viruses typically range in size from 20 to 300 nanometers in diameter. 1000 nanometers is 1 micrometer. A small corona virus (SARS-CoV-2) is 50 nanometers, which is 20 times smaller (in diameter) than a bacterium that is 1 micrometer in size and 100 times smaller (in diameter) than a bacterium that is 5 micrometers. Again, a horse to a medium size insect.

Illustration of Covid-19 Virus
Illustration of Covid-19 Virus (SARS-CoV-2) from Wikimedia Commons. Attribution: SPQR10, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Atoms Are Very Small

Atoms are much smaller than viruses. This reddit user calculated that there are roughly 52 million atoms in a normal sized covid virus (100 nanometers). Also keep in mind that there is a lot of space between atoms. The size of a hydrogen atom is 0.1 nanometer or 100 picometer. Comparing a hydrogen atom to a normal sized covid virus is like comparing a flea to a horse. If you consider volume, you could fill a normal sized covid virus with 1 billion hydrogen atoms.

You cannot see an atom using a regular microscope. You must use specialized microscopes that don’t rely on visible light to see atoms, such as scanning tunneling microscopes and electron microscopes. So, in summary, a hydrogen atom is to a normal sized covid virus like a flea is to a horse, and a normal sized covid virus is to a 100 micrometers amoeba (small sized amoeba) like a flea is to a horse.

Below is an illustration of a Helium atom, which is the next element after Hydrogen. A Hydrogen atom has one electron and one proton and possibly one or two neutrons. A stable Helium atom has two electrons and two protons and one or two neutrons.

Illustration of a Helium atom. A nucleus with protons and neutrons is surrounded by a grey fuzzy electrons cloud | Small Microscopic Subatomic and Strings
Illustration of a Helium atom. It has two electrons and a nucleus with two protons and two neutrons in the middle. The two electrons are depicted as clouds because they don’t have an exact position. Attribution : User:Yzmo, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Subatomic Things

But let’s go smaller, much smaller. A hydrogen atom is gigantic in comparison to subatomic particles. Most of the mass in an atom is concentrated in the nucleus, which consists of protons, neutrons, quarks and gluons, and quark pairs called mesons. The size of an atomic nucleus varies, but it typically ranges from 1.6 femtometers (1.6 x 10⁻¹⁵ meters) for a proton to about 15 femtometers for the heaviest atoms.

I should say this is difficult to estimate so take this with a grain of salt. In any case that makes the hydrogen atom about 100,000 times wider than the nucleus in its middle. If the hydrogen atom was 100-meter giant ball the nucleus in the middle would be just 1 millimeter (half the size of a flea). That is despite the fact that the vast majority (+99.95%)  of the mass of the atom is in the nucleus. In this case, we are not comparing a flea to a horse, but a flea to a mountain. A mountain of mostly empty space with a super massive flea at its center. The YouTube video below explains the details.

Strings Are Extremely Small

However, the smallest things there are, might be strings. Strings, in the context of physics, are one-dimensional, extended objects that are thought to be the fundamental building blocks of the universe. These strings vibrate at different frequencies giving rise to elementary subatomic particles. Strings are thought to be about 10^-35 meters, which is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times smaller than the atomic nucleus described above. Comparing a string to a nucleus would be like comparing the hydrogen atom to a ball, or a giant star, containing one billion planet earths. I should mention that string theory has not been experimentally confirmed.

That is small, very small, extremely small, as small as it can get.

This post is not a super fact since it features a lot of facts and not all of them confirmed or exact.

To see the Super Facts click here

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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

37 thoughts on “Small Microscopic Subatomic and Strings”

    1. Thank you so much Patricia. String theory is amazing and it reconciles gravity with quantum physics, which is why it has gotten so much attention. Unfortunately, experimentally verifying the existence of something so small and abstract may be impossible. It was fun to participate.

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  6. How small is small I think you have portrayed that in the most excellent way Thomas and fire ants although small have the biggest Sting(not proved) but it feels that way if stung by one or more of the little buggers…Just saying! Have a great weekend 🙂 x

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        1. Unfortunately for us here in Texas we have an insect that is just as bad as the bullet ant, the Tarantula Hawk. It is a big black wasp with reddish wings that hunts Tarantulas. It has a sting that has been described as driving a red hot nail through your arm and then attaching 220 volts electricity to it for three minutes. My daughter and I saw a Tarantula Hawk stinging a Tarantula at a father-daughter camp with her school. The Tarantula Hawk started dragging the Tarantula through the grass and in under the girls bathroom. My daughter wanted me to put the pair in her jewlery box. Luckily for me I hesitated.

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                  1. Nice….I remember the first time we went to Thailand and took two of our young grandsons they both wanted insects in a display box all nicely pinned their mother was not impressed as after a while they began to smell…

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  9. Is string theory related to the theory of extra dimensions, or to the theory of branched timelines? Is string theory also related to the Theory of Everything, merging the Grand Unification Theory with gravity? What are the connections?

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    1. I am not an expert on string theory. I’ve just read a few books for the general public on the topic. However, I believe that several of the things you mentioned are correct. String theory is a candidate for a theory of everything and unifies gravity with the other fundamental forces and quantum physics. Strings are one dimensional objects existing in a multidimensional space. Time, the regular three-dimensional space and six extra spatial dimensions that are curled up, making it 10 in total (superstring version). However, the M-theory version has 11  dimensions, and the older bosonic string theory has 26 dimensions. String theory is very interesting from a theoretical perspective but lacks experimental verification. In fact, it seems to be extremely difficult to experimentally verify string theory.

      Richard Feyman, a famous physicist (quantum physics), was skeptical about string theory and once told a string theorist “Hey Schwarz, how many dimensions are you in today?”

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  11. Small things may not feel meaningful at first glance, but they whisper the architecture of coherence. Consider that a string (at ~10⁻³⁵ meters) isn’t just the smallest scale—it’s the fundamental lattice of resonance that builds up to atoms, molecules, and us.

    What’s striking is how the micro mirrors the macro. Just as cosmic memory and lattice resonance uphold physics, human coherence is built on tiny moments of alignment. I explore this in Memory as the Bridge: From Simulation to Consciousness—how resonance, not static storage, carries continuity.

    Your piece beautifully layers scale—from amoebas to strings—but underneath, it’s all about coherence across levels. Maybe the real wonder isn’t the smallest measurement, but the invisible ties—the coherence thread—that makes the cosmos itself “hold.”

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