“The step in size from each of these things to the next is roughly the same… twenty powers of ten….”

Source: Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 2 : Butterflies and Superstrings, p. 18
Context: Imagine, if you can, four things that have very different sizes. First, the entire universe. Second, the planet Earth. Third, the nucleus of an atom. Fourth, a superstring. The step in size from each of these things to the next is roughly the same... twenty powers of ten....

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Freeman Dyson 90
theoretical physicist and mathematician 1923

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