While physical Jack was trying on the fat-suit, soul space Jack created a new Subatomic level snapshot with a radius of 50 ters, just enough to cover his house. It was ti to explore the detail limits of a snapshot.
When the snapshot sphere appeared, he moved his wood chair next to it and sat. Then he placed his hands on the sphere and began zooming in. he explored the navigation features and found that he could not only move the view around but he could also peer inside of objects and peel back layers.
He could examine the wiring and plumbing inside the walls of his house, look inside the engine of his car, even look underground and locate the water and sewer pipes. Though he wished he had not looked inside the sewer pipes.
Next, he picked a random plant in his backyard and zood in on a single leaf. He kept zooming in until he could see individual cells, then kept zooming in on a single cell. As his view approached the cell wall, he could see the shadow of the nucleus inside. When he zood in further and peeled back layers of the cell, he found he didn't recognize or understand most of what he saw. The only structures that seed recognizable were the green chloroplasts, the reddish-brown mitochondria, and the dense clump of the nucleus.
He zood in on the contents of the nucleus and kept zooming in, and kept zooming in. At first it was just a jumbled ss, but eventually he could make out what he thought were strands of DNA. He zood in further and found that he could finally see individual atoms!
As far as he knew, individual atoms didn't have color because their outer electrons re-emitted photons as the sa frequency as when they were absorbed. This was why so substances like nitrogen were transparent under normal conditions. But what he was seeing were individual atoms, each with a different color. Though, when he focused, he realized the color was registering not in his eyes, but in his mind. The color of the atoms was conceptual, not physical.
When he zood in on a single atom, he found that each individual electron shell was represented with a faint fuzzy outline with a bright spot. Thinking that the bright spot represented the current position of the electron, he zood in, wanting to be the first person to ever directly see a subatomic particle. But the closer he got, the more confused he beca. No matter how he tried, he just could not understand what he was perceiving.
The best he could figure was that he was looking at pure math. Not math formulas or a graph, but so kind of pure mathematical construct. It wasn't sothing he could see with his eyes, or perceive as a solid object. He'd read about the concept of particle wave duality for photons, but this went beyond that. It was like what he was perceiving was just too complex for his mind to comprehend, and the best his brain could manage was, "Umm, math?"
He also tried zooming in on the nucleus of the atom and encountered the sa problem, but worse. He could actually feel a headache forming just trying to understand it. Still, despite not being able to "see" subatomic particles, he could at least identify individual atomic particles and, more importantly, he could see atoms, their electron shells, and the valence bonds they ford in molecules.
Scientists needed massive particle accelerators, building sized detectors, and imnse amounts of compute power to slowly work out statistical models that showed what an atom probably looked like. And here he was, gazing at one directly.
He zood out and started exploring, looking at the individual proteins that made up a DNA strand, the various structures inside a chloroplast, and other unidentified bits of the cell. He was looking at what he thought might be an RNA transcription mid-progress when a thought struck him. Not only could he theoretically watch CRISPR in action, and figure out how to improve it. He could go well beyond CRISPR. He could achieve the holy grail of biotech and engineering, nanotech. Nanotech had the potential to revolutionize dicine, manufacturing, and so much more. He could go beyond just curing cancer to curing all disease. Imagine a supplental immune system that could adaptively identify and eradicate any virus or bacteria. Or perfect birth control, without any side effects, available for both sexes. Or true 3D printing that could produce complex custom on-off electronics. Raw materials in, new smart phone out. The possibilities were endless. Nanotech would revolutionize the world and could quite possibly push humanity into a post-scarcity era, like as portrayed in Star Trek.
Advancents in biotech and by extension anything at nano-scale were hampered by problems of visibility. It was a bit like trying to build a jet engine while blindfolded and wearing oven mitts. It was theoretically possible, but it would take an imnse amount of ti. With his ability to see individual atoms, he was like the first person to remove the blindfold. He might still be hampered by proverbial oven mitts, but being able to actually see the atoms in a molecule was huge.
His attention was drawn back to what he thought was RNA transcription. He wanted to watch it live, to see the reaction progress, so he created a simulation that included just the plant cell he was examining. When the simulation sphere appeared in an empty cubby hold on his white room wall, he grabbed it and began ntally examining the controls for it. He found that he could peer into the simulation from outside it, which was good because there was no way he could fit inside sothing the size of a single cell. He also ntally probed the observer controls and found that if he ntally pushed, he could change the speed at which the simulation advanced through ti. There was an option to step the simulation forward by so amount of ti and when he kept pushing the ti step smaller and smaller, he eventually reached a limit. He wasn't sure, but it felt like the size of the ti step was on the order of 10 to the negative fortieth power.
He navigated his view of the simulation until he located what he thought might be the sa RNA DNA interaction, or sothing similar. Then is ntally pushed the simulation a single ti step forward. Nothing changed. Or at least he couldn't perceive any change. He kept adjusting the ti step size until he saw sothing change with each step.
Convinced he was indeed watching RNA transcription, he felt a shiver of excitent run down his spine as he zood in to watch various aspects of the transcription. Watching the dance of amino acids was more srizing than any ASMR video on WebTube. His almost Zen like focus was eventually interrupted by Madison.
"Do you know how late it is? Are you sure you want to go through with our lottery plan as a zombie?"
He pulled away from the simulation and realized that his physical self had been just as focused on his exploration as he was. His physical self checked the ti, then groaned. It was 3am. He'd been engrossed in his exploration of the simulation for nearly eight hours! As soon as both of him realized how long they had been at it, they both felt exhausted. But while his physical self was hungry, his soul space self was not.
Since both of him were tired, he disabled parallel self then re-enabled it, only to find that he was still tired. Not physically tired, but ntally tired. Even if he could refresh his physical state in his soul space, he could not refresh his ntal state. So, he disabled his parallel self and went to sleep.
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