One morning, out for my 6.5-mile run, I had a revelation. Taken aback by the beauty that lay before me, I heard myself uttering in amazement, “What a marvelous, ingenious invention!” That involuntary response, and a sudden inexplicable change in perspective, left me feeling like a recently-arrived, body-snatching, interplanetary space-traveler.
I could feel my new planet rotate on its axis. I could see in detail its vast collection of water molecules crash onto a beach of pulverized silicon dioxide amalgams. I could feel photons
exciting my newly sensitized retina, and optic nerves sending signals to my newly enhanced image-intensifying brain. I could see, therein, strange beings standing by a seawall, where, with my newly crafted ear drums wildly vibrating and tiny calcium-capped hairs excitedly waving signals to auditory nerves, I could hear one of the beings demanding attention with a one-word command, “rainbow!” And, then, as if I had awakened from a hypnotized trance to receive a posthypnotic suggestion, I nally got it! “Everything in our universe has been and continues to be self-assembled! Atoms, self-made by protons and neutrons, working together, on their own, have made, and continue to make, everything!”
Our Self-Assembling Universe 