Do you ever really touch anything?

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Revernd Maynard
Because there are electrons in your skin and on things that you touch, and they create a charge, so do you ever really touch anything?

Morgoths_Wrath
yes?

Spelljammer
Yes because when you touch the electrons stimuli one another.

Proving we are beings of energy, not flesh and blood.

debbiejo
Energy touching energy...

Adam_PoE
According to quantum physics, no, we never actually touch anything.

Spelljammer
Originally posted by Adam_PoE
According to quantum physics, no, we never actually touch anything.
If you go by quantamn physiques we're all part of one massively growing sphere of energy.

GCG
when i did a PC technician course, we were always told to 'earth' ourselves with a wrist strap as to avoid EMD ( Electro-Magnetic-Discharge).

EMD can damage the PC when you open it up cause the parts are very sensitive

Atlantis001
According to physics, we never touch anything, eletric repulsion prevents us to do that. In physics, when two atoms "collide" they do not really touch each other, but interact through the eletric force. Why our hands cannot pass through the wall ? Its because eletric repulsion between our atoms, and the wall atoms prevent us to do that.

Hit_and_Miss
I agree with atlantis... While my brain tells me I've touched something physics tells otherwise...

its all a matter of interpretation... while a simplicity tells we are touching, long winded science tells us otherwise...

terd40
it all depends on your level of perception. do you actually breathe the air around you? its not about physics or anything like that. there is the act of touching something. did you do it or was it pre-destined and a fate that is unalterable, unchangeable, and there is nothing you can do not to touch that something? Or did touching it start a chain of events that will spin on and on into the future. i dont think the question is do you ever touch anything but rather is the toucher really you...

kidwhothinks
interesting points but if your going to get into the varry fundamentals of it all the simple answer is no. we don't touch anything physically. if you look at our atomic structures you see that we are in basically holograms none of our atoms aculy touch we are in essence non solid and beings of energy.

Atlantis001
Originally posted by terd40
it all depends on your level of perception. do you actually breathe the air around you? its not about physics or anything like that. there is the act of touching something. did you do it or was it pre-destined and a fate that is unalterable, unchangeable, and there is nothing you can do not to touch that something? Or did touching it start a chain of events that will spin on and on into the future. i dont think the question is do you ever touch anything but rather is the toucher really you...

I think he meant "Do you ever really touch anything?"(physically, I mean), or else he should just asked "Does fate exist?".

We do not touch anything, the touch sensation is a electric impulse that our nerves feel, and we do not need to "touch" things to electrical impulses to be generated.

mailedbypostman
Isn't that what touch is though? Electrical signals interpreted by the brain? Without the brain, we would feel nothing.

terd40
im sorry i was rambling, you are right.

i know this is off topic but can anyone answer a couple questions for me
what is the speed of light, in miles per hour
what is the size of the circumferance of a hydrogen atoms electron orbit,
and do all electrons move at the speed of light

wow i really appologize for being off topic but you sound like a bright bunch and i think you could answer these for me.

and i think that by touching is a matter of ones opinion of what a touch is.

Scoobless
Originally posted by Atlantis001
According to physics, we never touch anything, eletric repulsion prevents us to do that. In physics, when two atoms "collide" they do not really touch each other, but interact through the eletric force. Why our hands cannot pass through the wall ? Its because eletric repulsion between our atoms, and the wall atoms prevent us to do that.

so you're saying ......... what people do at night shouldn't be considered "touching themselves"?


roll eyes (sarcastic)

StrangeDays
if electricity is made from electrons ... is morality made from morons?
hysterical

Atlantis001
Originally posted by terd40
im sorry i was rambling, you are right.

i know this is off topic but can anyone answer a couple questions for me
what is the speed of light, in miles per hour
what is the size of the circumferance of a hydrogen atoms electron orbit,
and do all electrons move at the speed of light

wow i really appologize for being off topic but you sound like a bright bunch and i think you could answer these for me.

and i think that by touching is a matter of ones opinion of what a touch is.

No problem, I like answering these questions big grin

If 1 mile = 1,61 km(what I am not sure of, since were I live we not use miles too much, but I think its right), doing the calculations 1 mile/hour = 0.45 meters/second, and c = 1.35*10^8 miles/hour or c = 13,5 billions of miles per hour.

The radius of the hydrogen electron orbit is r = 0.5 angstrom = 0.5*10^-10 meters = 5 millimeter divided per 10 millions. So the circumference is l = 2*pi*r = 3.14*10^-10 meters.

No electrons move at the speed of light, they can just move near it. Only massless things can move at the speed of light, this happens because anything that has mass will have its mass increased proportionally to its speed, near the speed of light the mass will be so great that you will need a great amount of energy to move it faster, so you will never get something to move at the speed of light. You would need infinite energy to do that. But photons, which are the particles of light, do move only at the speed of light.

Atlantis001
Originally posted by Scoobless
so you're saying ......... what people do at night shouldn't be considered "touching themselves"?


roll eyes (sarcastic)

Lol... never thought of that ! Yeah it is this way.

mailedbypostman
But then again, we live in the matrix...

theReject
Originally posted by Revernd Maynard
Because there are electrons in your skin and on things that you touch, and they create a charge, so do you ever really touch anything?

yes You are correct. People don't ever really touch anything.

Scoobless
if you want to get right down to it, we're all just a collection of atoms , electrons... blah, blah, blah... nothing is really solid, so we don't touch anything

but so what? i can feel the difference between wood and metal by placing my hand on it, i can taste the difference between chocolate and chicken... just because the molecules don't actually slam into each other doesn't change anything

Pandemoniac
I agree on that. Even as we are not able to place our molecules right beside the ones of the object we touch, there remains some connection though the varied 'behaviour' of different materials as we receive different data from different materials. And that is only when viewing stable solid mass. You can definitely touch or more be touched by forms of energy. Ever been zapped by 220 volts? I have, and that felt pretty connected! Not to mention being exposed to laser or radiation, in those cases the energy directly affects your matter, with no electrons stepping up to get in between.

Atlantis001
Even electric discharges, lasers, and many types of radiation does only affect our electronic structure. Even burning something does only affect that thing electronically.

Almost everything that we see happen because it is a electronic thing, for example, two objects cannot pass through each other only because electric repulsion between the protons of the two objects prevent it, it does not have any relation with matter(like if the mass of the objects prevented the objects to pass through each other), it is just electricity, or precisely electric repulsion.

Soth
Originally posted by Adam_PoE
According to quantum physics, no, we never actually touch anything. Quntam physics are nothing compared to my little buddy, Common Sense. Of course we touch things. I recently touched myself. . . and I'm pretty sure it was real

R.O.T. Yahman
Originally posted by Scoobless
if you want to get right down to it, we're all just a collection of atoms , electrons... blah, blah, blah... nothing is really solid, so we don't touch anything

but so what? i can feel the difference between wood and metal by placing my hand on it, i can taste the difference between chocolate and chicken... just because the molecules don't actually slam into each other doesn't change anything

All of that is made out of energy aswell, which doesn't exist in a physical state !

Adam_PoE
Originally posted by Soth
Quntam physics are nothing compared to my little buddy, Common Sense. Of course we touch things. I recently touched myself. . . and I'm pretty sure it was real

On an atomic level, one never really touches anything. Earlier, when you touched yourself, you were not feeling yourself, but the electrical force between charges.

crazylozer
I consider existing as touching yourself. You're made up of atoms, and in their existence, they are touching themselves. And since they make 'you' up, you are touching yourself at all times. Cue the jokes... now.

Adam_PoE
Originally posted by crazylozer
I consider existing as touching yourself. You're made up of atoms, and in their existence, they are touching themselves. And since they make 'you' up, you are touching yourself at all times. Cue the jokes... now.

Nothing touches on an atomic level, not even atoms.

tall_paul
do you ever really touch anything is pretty much based on a definition of touch

im gonna say yes just because i think touching involves some serious electromagnetic interactions

and adam poe is right, nothing ever touches ever. except maybe in particle accelerators... not too sure about that

crazylozer
Originally posted by Adam_PoE
Nothing touches on an atomic level, not even atoms.

What I meant was, the atoms that make up your person exist. They are part of you. In existence, they are 'touching' themselves because the smallest part of an atom exists, and if you divide it, it is touching itself. Therefore, all parts of you are touching yourself.

Adam_PoE
Originally posted by crazylozer
What I meant was, the atoms that make up your person exist. They are part of you. In existence, they are 'touching' themselves because the smallest part of an atom exists, and if you divide it, it is touching itself. Therefore, all parts of you are touching yourself.

Umm... no.

Darth Jello
i'm gonna appeal to pure human emotion and cuteness here.

You've never touched anything till you've petted a platypus.

tall_paul
Originally posted by Adam_PoE
Umm... no.

agreed, there are so many problems with even saying that something is touching itself even if it is just one particle

AOR
Originally posted by Revernd Maynard
Because there are electrons in your skin and on things that you touch, and they create a charge, so do you ever really touch anything?

Well let's see, take a gun and point it to your head. If things never really touch, than you should live, right?

Mynard?...MYNARD?!?!?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO













Just kidding but to talk of the subject, I think that in my opinion I must agree. My supporting theory is that instead of the electrons causing charges, they cause one another to change. For example, the bullet coursing through your head would never "touch" anything. But in fact cause the cells to move away, and the tissue to seperate away from the bullet. Like identical poles of a magnet.

crazylozer
Originally posted by tall_paul
agreed, there are so many problems with even saying that something is touching itself even if it is just one particle

Sorry, I don't think I was completely coherent before, let me try again.

Touch is the contact between one thing and another. But when dealing with the technicalities of science, the definition of thing is that if there is space space between them, it is then two things. But that's not how people deals with objects. If it were, everthing would be a variation of the same protons, neutrons, quarks etc. and there would be no point in using different words to describe them. However, if you classify an atom as one thing, that being the sum of its parts, them how can you seperate the magnetic fields and whatnot from that item. It is a property of the object, and if that property exists, it is a thing, which when coming into contact with another field, which is a property of another object, then that should be touch. On that point, if it is insisted that each part of the atom is seperate, and each atom of a molecule is seperate, etc. etc., then there is no 'you'. 'You' are an entity which is built up of the sum of your parts, which means that if you choose to seperate the make-up into every divisible thing possible, 'you' do not exist in the sense that 'you' are one thing.

Adam_PoE
Originally posted by crazylozer
Sorry, I don't think I was completely coherent before, let me try again.

Still incoherent.

debbiejo
Waves blending waves, we really don't touch anything.

Arachnoidfreak
Science says no, I don't touch anything really, not even other people.

But goddamn, does a pair of lips feel good on.................

The rest of that sentence is not even close to PG-13. I'll leave that up to your imaginations.

Mindship
We touch the lives of those around us pokey

We touch the hearts of those we love hug

dance band dance

Shakyamunison
Originally posted by Mindship
We touch the lives of those around us pokey

We touch the hearts of those we love hug

dance band dance


We touch the brown stuff on the side of the... oh! never mind. sick

Mindship
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
We touch the brown stuff on the side of the... oh! never mind. sick

< meditating with a 54-syllabic mantra to keep the above mental image from taking form.

debbiejo
Originally posted by Arachnoidfreak
Science says no, I don't touch anything really, not even other people.

But goddamn, does a pair of lips feel good on.................

The rest of that sentence is not even close to PG-13. I'll leave that up to your imaginations. Yeah........hahahaha...It must be the vibrations of it. eek!

xxxholicxxx
Originally posted by Scoobless
if you want to get right down to it, we're all just a collection of atoms , electrons... blah, blah, blah... nothing is really solid, so we don't touch anything

but so what? i can feel the difference between wood and metal by placing my hand on it, i can taste the difference between chocolate and chicken... just because the molecules don't actually slam into each other doesn't change anything



there is a diference a big one to because even if you do "
think" that you touching if you did touch we would stick together you know my hand would stick to the wall or my tounge would stick to the piece of chicken i was trying to eat

inimalist
lol

since when did our sense of touch have anything to do with atoms?

omg, there is space between atoms, omg, we dont touch things!!!!

lord xyz
Originally posted by Adam_PoE
According to quantum physics, no, we never actually touch anything. Well, yeah we do. As we create a print on the thing we've touched.

inimalist
it is true though

It has nothing to do with quantum physics.... People just like to throw that out when they talk about atoms.

There are nuclear energy fields that hold molecules together (Is it nuclear or EM at molecule size?), and it is true that it is those fields that interact when molecules get close to each other.

However, the idea that said interaction between the atomic fields of our skin/mechanoreceptors and those in the environment is not "touch" is somewhat odd. I guess it is a language game "ooooh, touch can mean this, so lets redefine the sense of touch to mean literal touching between the nucleus of atoms and mess with people"

dadudemon
Originally posted by inimalist
"ooooh, touch can mean this, so lets redefine the sense of touch to mean literal touching between the nucleus of atoms and mess with people"

Naaaah...it is beyond the electron orbitals in which the atoms/molecules "touch"...not the nucleus. stick out tongue

It is fun to think that nothing actually ever touches...that is why people were talking about it...it IS pretty cool to realize that we don't actually touch electron orbitals to electron orbitals....

inimalist
Originally posted by dadudemon
Naaaah...it is beyond the electron orbitals in which the atoms/molecules "touch"...not the nucleus. stick out tongue

It is fun to think that nothing actually ever touches...that is why people were talking about it...it IS pretty cool to realize that we don't actually touch electron orbitals to electron orbitals....

lol, thats kind of what I meant. Touch, as it is being used in the title and argumentation of the thread, has two radically different meanings.

We touch lots of things, as far as our sense of touch is defined. As far as literal "touching" is defined, we do not. Presenting the two meanings of "to touch" as though they were equivalent concepts is lame, imho. The whole "paradox" of the thread is based entirely on not knowing how to differentiate the human sense of touch from literal touch of atoms.

Its mind boggling to think of most atomic stuff for me, but since psychological and perceptual things interest me more, you can probably see where I am coming from. I think it is way more interesting to think that every single sensation of touch you have comes from your somatosensory cortex, and is an interpretation of neuron firing patterns. Meaning that pain and pleasure, literally, are the same thing. That back pain? all in your head. Feel hot? thats because your brain is warm.

DigiMark007
But for electrons to stimulate each other, there needs to be an interaction in the electrical force between the two. Thus, some form of touching, even if it's just via electrical currents that exist around electrons/atoms

debbiejo
Waves overlapping concurrent.

dadudemon
Originally posted by debbiejo
Waves overlapping concurrent.

Doorknobs shoe-strings bananas. no expression

Punkyhermy
Yes we do.

We do in the sense that we as Homo sapiens work with bodies that acknowledge physical contact. We touch things because we have the ability to experience the touch. When an atom "touches" another atom, it does not know it has made any kind of contact. In fact, an atom doesn't know even when its not making any contact. Point being, it is not in the nature of an electron, and with that an atom, to understand the phenomenon that is "touch".So the concept of "touch" does not exist in their world. Bodies in the macroscopic world aren't entities existing becaues of themselves, but in this case serve as tools. Tools for the great miracle that is living breathing creature, be it a cockroach or a Homo sapien , can experience contact with the world in a non-macroscopic scale.happy

inimalist
Originally posted by Punkyhermy
Yes we do.

We do in the sense that we as Homo sapiens work with bodies that acknowledge physical contact. We touch things because we have the ability to experience the touch. When an atom "touches" another atom, it does not know it has made any kind of contact. In fact, an atom doesn't know even when its not making any contact. Point being, it is not in the nature of an electron, and with that an atom, to understand the phenomenon that is "touch".So the concept of "touch" does not exist in their world. Bodies in the macroscopic world aren't entities existing becaues of themselves, but in this case serve as tools. Tools for the great miracle that is living breathing creature, be it a cockroach or a Homo sapien , can experience contact with the world in a non-macroscopic scale.happy

well put smile

Mindship
Related question: Do we ever really touch anything in the present? By the time the neural signal registers, a fraction of a second has gone by.

For that matter, do we even really see anything in the present? Even if something is an inch away, it still takes light a finite amount of time to cross the distance.

smokin'

Shakyamunison
Originally posted by Mindship
Related question: Do we ever really touch anything in the present? By the time the neural signal registers, a fraction of a second has gone by.

For that matter, do we even really see anything in the present? Even if something is an inch away, it still takes light a finite amount of time to cross the distance.

smokin'

Reality is all in our head. wink

inimalist
Originally posted by Mindship
Related question: Do we ever really touch anything in the present? By the time the neural signal registers, a fraction of a second has gone by.

For that matter, do we even really see anything in the present? Even if something is an inch away, it still takes light a finite amount of time to cross the distance.

smokin'

"conscious" perception of touch is delayed about 500ms

Sight about 300ms

However, we are able to react to some things very quickly (reflex arcs and the like) but it is done without conscious perception.

But yes, it is all entirely in our head.

debbiejo
Isn't it said that we really don't touch anything like we think we do? Isn't that the new science?

Cornlady
Originally posted by Hit_and_Miss
I agree with atlantis... While my brain tells me I've touched something physics tells otherwise...

its all a matter of interpretation... while a simplicity tells we are touching, long winded science tells us otherwise...

My brain is telling me when I am touching something (unless my hand goes numb and I cannot feel what I am touching), but I also know that we cannot put our hand through a solid object like a wall.

Peace,
Amanda

Atlantis001
Well, if we are talking about atoms, then they do not touch other atoms. They are just very close. I mean, the only thing that doesn't allow you to pass throught a wall is electric repulsion. You do not acctually touch the atoms of the wall.

Cap'n Happy
Originally posted by Spelljammer
Yes because when you touch the electrons stimuli one another.

Proving we are beings of energy, not flesh and blood.

"Luminous beings are we... not this crude matter!"

I've always thought this question treads similar ground to Zeno's paradox. If you take it down to the smallest measurements, no, probably nothing ever "really" touches any thing else. But only Zeno and Yoda know for sure. My brain hurts now.

lchil
if we never touch anything then how do we get cut like if your arm got cut off the thing that cut it off has to touch some thing.

Symmetric Chaos
the qualia of touch happens
the description of the qualia of touch just happens to be wrong

the semantics that result from trying to make this situation are pretty hilarious IMO

alltoomany
I don't know but when he placed his hand on my face, I felt a tingle feeling go up and down my spine.

movie1
I remember hearing this way back in high school... cool fact.

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