Is the Earth 99.999999999999...% empty?

Question

Since a single atom is something like 99.999...percent empty space and since the whole Earth is made up of atoms does that mean that the volume occupied by the Earth or any other object is actually 99.9999...percent space and a very very small percent of mass?

Answer 1

Exactly True.

The real reason why we aren't walking through walls are that the atoms that make us up are repelling against those of the wall.

Interesting, I have to say.

Answer 2

Atoms are 99.999999999999% empty space !! World of Atoms – a little background education ... Earth Berm over Beam Line. SUMMARY. Jefferson Lab

In this world there is nothing softer
or thinner than water
But to compel the hard and unyielding,
It has no equal.
That the weak overcomes the strong,
That the hard gives way to the gentle -
This everyone knows,
Yet no one acts accordingly.
--Lao Tzu 6th c. B.C.

The simple truth known to the brokenhearted, the mystic, and the physicist: what we think solid is not. What most of us believe constitutes the "real" material world - the stuff we can reach out, touch, hold, buy, and see - physicists all agree is actually not solid at all. In fact, what appears "solid" or material in our world is really 99.999999999999 percent empty space made "solid" by a miniscule fraction of matter that may not even be matter but wavelets of energy. Light is a particle that when we try and measure by passing it through a narrow opening behaves just like an ocean wave passing through a narrow harbor. Once through the slender opening, light wave and water wave fan out, each forming a crescent pattern. A far more accurate characterization of our universe would be "fluid."

Even our human bodies are far more fluid than they are solid. Like earth we are mostly water--both in the range of 70%. Even human bones that feel so substantial are themselves 30% water and on close examination reveal pockmarked patterns of tiny rhythmic holes that mimic the flow of water that pits flow patterns into seabed rock. Our eyeballs, the very same by which we read these words, are washed 25 times a minute by water squirted from tiny ducts. Aquatic by nature, we begin life in a fluid mix, are nurtured in womb waters, born to suckle milk, and continue to take in fluids to survive. As the Koran sura 21.30 puts it, "We are made from water every living thing."

Answer 3

An atom is not mostly empty space.

At the quantum level at which people make this claim, most partciles of matter are points - they have no extent. However, they most certainly occupy space, and they pretty much occupy the whole volume of the atoms - none of it is empty in any meaningful sense.

In fact, because of the non zero energy of the vacuum state, not even truly empty space (with no atoms) can be said to be truly empty.

Answer 4

Yes. Almost all of the mass of an atom exists in its nucleus. The electrons are a sort of cloud that floats around the nucleus. In-between, there is nothing at all.

Answer 5

At a fundamental level there is no thickness to matter. Matter can be compressed into infinite density, therefore the Earth is actually 100% empty, however that doesn't make it any less huge.

Answer 6

yes but also there's electric fields everywhere. the influence of the nucleus is felt throught its electric charge much further away than just the volume where its mass is concentrated. as stated above the electrons are delocalised around the atomic nucleus but their mass is not really significant (1800 electrons have the same mass as one proton).

Answer 7

On average a neutrino can penetrate 100 light years of solid lead, the answer is, yes.

Answer 8

yea correct