If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and
only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement
would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the
atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, if you wish to call it that) that all
things are made of atoms--little particles that move around in perpetual
motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but
repelling upon being squeezed into one another.
-- Richard P. Feynman
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