Is the “Vast Empty Space” of the Atom an Empty Idea?

I’ve come around on this business of the atom being almost entirely empty space. This is an established bit of folklore in intro chemistry and physics. It dates back to experiments by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden under Ernest Rutherford, showing how alpha particles could sail through thin gold foil and infrequently, an alpha particle would impact something hard and scatter. The striking thing about the experimental results was just how infrequent the scattering was. The conclusion eventually...