To help us to understand this clearly let us examine the ultimate atom of
the physical plane (see pp. 21-23). It is composed of ten rings or wires,
which lie side by side, but never touch one another. If one of these wires
be taken away from the atom, and be, as it were, untwisted from its
peculiar spiral shape and laid out on a flat surface, it will be seen that
it is a complete circle--a tightly twisted endless coil. This coil is
itself a spiral containing 1680 turns; it can be unwound, and it will then
make a much larger circle. This process of unwinding may be again
performed, and a still bigger circle obtained, and this can be repeated
till the seven sets of spirillae are all unwound, and we have a huge circle
of the tiniest imaginable dots, like pearls threaded on an invisible
string. These dots are so inconceivably small that many millions of them
are needed to make one ultimate physical atom, and while the exact number
is not readily ascertainable, several different lines of calculation agree
in indicating it as closely approximate to the almost inconceivable total
of fourteen thousand millions. Where figures are so huge, direct counting
is obviously impossible, but fortunately the different parts of the atom
are sufficiently alike to enable us to make an estimate in which the margin
of error is not likely to be very great.
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