Then there is the Atomium, a giant-sized more-or-less model of an atom put up in 1958 as a tribute to the potential of the nuclear age.

ECONOMIST: The EU and Brussels

Performance is somewhere between the original Atom-based Chromebooks and the current Celeron-equipped Series-5 model.

ENGADGET: Hands-on with Google's $249, ARM-based Chromebook (update: video)

That model is the best explanation out there for what happens at scales smaller than the atom, but still has a lot of holes in it, and there are other theories out there that go beyond that model.

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