YOU breathe air made up of atoms, eat foods composed of atoms and drink water made up of atoms—with a body that itself consists of atoms. The objects you see around you are actually nothing more than photons striking the electrons belonging to the atoms in your eyes. And what about the things you touch and feel? Those too—hard and soft, rough and smooth, cold or hot—consist of the atoms in your skin interacting on the atoms in those external objects.Many people, of course, know that their bodies, theEarth, the galaxies—in short the entire universe—consists of nothing but tiny atoms. But they may still never have thought about the system and solidity in the basic building blocks of matter that we call “atoms.” The fact is, however, that human beings live in the closest possible proximity to this flawless arrangement throughout the course of their lives. So splendid is this system that each one of the trillions of atoms that comprise the chair you sit in possesses an order and a complexity about which an entire book could be written. And under natural conditions, failing a major intervention, that matchless order will persist without ever suffering any impairment.