Page 52 - Darwin's Dilemma: The Soul

Darwin’s Dilemma: The Soul

A six-mirror, giant gamma-ray
telescope on Mount Hopkins

can have different wavelengths.
There are very great differences between the wavelengths of
electromagnetic radiation. While some may be kilometers long,
other wavelengths are smaller than a trillionth of a centimeter.
Scientists divide these different wavelengths into named cate-
gories, which seem to imply that they are different forms of energy
entirely. For example, rays with a wavelength as short as a tril-
lionth of a centimeter are known as “gamma rays.” These transmit
very high energy. Rays with wavelengths kilometers long are
known as “radio waves” and transmit very weak energy. For that
reason, while gamma rays are lethal to us, radio ways have no ef-
fect at all as they pass through your body.
The spectrum of wavelengths is extraordinary wide. The
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shortest length is 10 times smaller than the longest. Numerically,
this is expressed by the figure 1 followed by 25 zeroes. In order to
better comprehend this number—which may be written as
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—let’s provide some compar-
isons. For example, the number of seconds that have passed dur-
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ing the 4 billion years of the Earth’s existence is only 10 . If we
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wanted to count to 10 , day and night and non-stop, it would
take us 100 million times longer than the age of the Earth! If
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we tried to place 10 playing cards on top of one an-

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