Why We Think We Touch Things

Why We Think We Touch Things

I’m sure some of you will wonder: “If electron repulsion prevents us from ever truly touching anything, why do we perceive touch as a real thing?” The answer boils down to how our brains interpret the physical world. In this case, there are a number of factors at work. The nerve cells that make up our body send signals to our brain that tells us that we are physically touching something, when the  sensation of touch is merely given to us by our electron’s interaction with – its repulsion from – the electromagnetic field permeating spacetime (the medium electron waves propagate through).

Also note, various things play a role here in making collections of particles into tangible things. We have things such as chemical bonding and, of course, the four primary forces mentioned above. Chemical bonds allow electrons to “latch on” to imperfections within an object’s surface, creating friction.

For those that have persevered thus far:

“You will see that the purely electro-static repulsion between electrons is not the only reason why you hover above your chair. In the normal case, it’s about as strong as the Pauli Exclusion Principle when it comes to pushing things apart. It’s actually a combination of these two effects dominating the actual behavior. By that, I am speaking of the unbelievable idea that electrons know where every other electron is, and they try to avoid each other as much as possible, resulting in an exponential decrease in the force between electrons, even without the electromagnetic repulsion in play.”

All in all, isn’t it amazing how these things relate? It’s a fundamental scientific truth that things are often not as they seem, or at least, they are not as we perceive them to be. It throws everything we think about the universe into a new light.

To Summarize: