What’s Atlas Standing On?

If Atlas is holding the world on his shoulders, what is he standing on?

———- from John Shivey of Hendersonville, NC

He’s actually kneeling, begging for someone to remove this heavy load from his shoulders. Fortunately, he’s kneeling on a thick pile carpet of quarks and leptons, the sub-sub atomic buildings blocks of the universe. Even that can cause knee burn and that’s why the big guy is so miserable. But he’s not having any luck getting someone to help him. Fact is, no one wants to carry all the world’s problems. We’ve grown selfish over the millennia, and now all anyone wants to worry about is his own ball of wax.