A restless universe

Tigerzeng / CC BY-SA 

When the kids were younger we went through a phase of lighting candles for dinner. There were (unsurprisingly to anyone who has kids or was a kid) tussles over who would light the candles and who would get to use the snuffer to douse them. Fire is fascinating. 

My hang up was with the smoke from the candles. I wanted to watch it twirl and twist, folding like ribbons on itself. And so was regularly annoyed when the douser waved a hand through the smoke, instantly dispersing it into a muddy cloud hovering over the dining room table.

I find the ephemeral silken ribbons both mesmerizing and beautiful. But what really catches my attention is what the smoke reveals about the air molecules as they bump and jiggle the smoke,  knocking the particles about until they no longer waft upward, carried by the heat of the burning wax and wick, but randomly move, gradually drifting outward until they are but a thin haze. Even in still air, the molecules are moving restlessly about. The nitrogen molecules in the air surrounding you right now are moving at 500 meters per second, more than a thousand miles per hour. Billions of them are colliding with your skin every second.

The unseen universe is a restless place. Something St. Augustine might not argue with.