Attractions and repulsions were known in ancient times. By 1750 they were thought to result from fluid like electrical transfers that delivered positive and negative charges. One hundred and fifty years later, and after the discovery of the electron, atoms were no longer thought of as indivisible balls; they had negatively charged electrons scattered around a central positive charge in what became known as the plum pudding model.
Electrons were next thought to be in orbit round the atom centre like planets round the sun. Soon after and in 1913 the orbits were seen as allowed electron energy levels. Electrons could only occupy such levels. Moving between them involved quantised energy emissions or absorptions. The subsequent discovery of protons and neutrons only mildly changed these early atomic images.
I suspect most members of the public have a picture of electrons orbiting a central nucleus, even though that is not how it is.
No single image can give us a picture of atomic particles and their activities so I have produced a set of videos. Even they cannot fully illustrate particle behaviours but I hope they do leave you with mental images and thoughts that convince you that atomic structures and behaviours happen because atomic particles are living energies.
Below is my introduction to the series.
Even before the discovery of the neutron and in the 1920’s, the works and mathematics of many scientists led to a quantum model with its wave functions, probabilities and uncertainties. Now physics has classical and quantum versions and the use of particle colliders have given us a zoo of particle energies. The quantum world and its probabilities are said to explain everything except perhaps gravity and nuclear radioactivity.
Laymen or would be scientists are either stuck with the images of the early 1900’s or have to try and understand the quantum model.
My atomic picture is based on the idea that atomic particles are composed of living, proactive energies. Neutrons, protons and electrons have different roles and their energies interact and cooperate in structures so as to secure stable energy states in that environment.
Living particle desires explain gravity and nuclear changes. My model does not tell you something happens because some law says it has to. It places life at the particle level and says particle energy desires are responsible for the forms of matter and events in our universe.
We live in a world of supposed solids, liquids and gases yet the reality is that all structures are mostly space. Surprisingly, in our teachings of science we do not emphasise just how much of an earthly structure is space and so my next video is an attempt to do just that.
It is hard for us to think of our seemingly solid earth as just tiny particles of interacting energy in considerable space. But that is how it is.
Phenomenal numbers of light speed photon energies (300,000 kilometres per second) are arriving from the sun at coin sized areas of earth’s surface every millisecond. Nearly all are in the infra red and visible light ranges. The particles that make for the earth are absorbing reacting to and releasing photons.
All of earth’s particles are exchanging photons. Temperature is a measure of the photon energies they are exchanging. Over time, energies emitted into space match earth’s absorbed energies. If this were not so the earth would get hotter. We evolved with the means to see the emitted visible light energies of earth’s structures and to feel the warmth of the infra red energies that come our way.
Earthly structures, including us, absorb and emit a lot of photon energies at around about 0.125 eV. (26 degrees C). Electrons exchanging such photon energies will be doing so at the associated frequency of 30 million million cycles a second.
The following video is about the proactive, living particle desires that are happening within atomic structures and which are responsible for their behaviour. It also makes reference to some of the less well known particles.
When collecting blackberries we pick the best available locations. Electrons intelligently do likewise. We call their operational areas orbitals. They are not orbits. They prefer to stay in these orbitals but higher photon energies can cause them to move to orbitals further from the nucleus or thrust them out of an atom altogether.
Photons from the environment, like blackberries, may be wanted or unwanted. Electrons in structures position themselves to best select, absorb and emit the most desired photon energies. In more fluid structures, like our atmosphere, they may avoid unwanted energies that less fluid structures have to deal with. Whilst communication photons pass through walls, visible light photons do not do so.
The next three videos are all about how living atomic particle energy desires are in evidence at our life macro level.
The first of these three looks at the changes that occur in chemical reactions, in matter state changes and in nuclear reactions. It is intended to convince you that particles are not things to be pushed about. In chemical changes, in state changes and in nuclear changes they are doing what they want to do.
Some of the examples involve an input from us humans but all we are doing is providing the energy conditions in which the particles will do what they want to do.
The next video is about particle and particle structures that interact in our macro world, but particularly about those that deliver structural and particle motions
At our macro life level we see particle structures interacting via forces. Forces that move structures apart are the result of the photon energy interactions between them. They happen because stable energy structures do not want other energy stable structures interfering with their stability.
Whilst stable structures do not want to get too close to one another, they do attract one another, as with the gravity desire. When stood supposedly at rest on the earth’s surface the vibrating particles in our feet are exchanging energies with the vibrating particles of the earth. Our stable energy state is a vibrating balance between our particle desires for earth’s photon energies and their not wanting excessive photon energies.
Though not seen we all use electrical energy flows. Voltages are photon pressures on electrons encouraging them to move and shift proton allegiances. Alternating voltage supplies that have travelled considerable distances from sub stations are continuously changing the electron pressures in our homes. When we close a switch those pressures lead to increased electron movements that are active throughout a circuit, because of light speed photon interactions, delivering energy to some light or appliance
We see and feel structures and our mind image of them is one of solid, coloured, earth bound objects. It is hard for us to realise that the earth itself is just a massive space volume with tiny interacting particles in that space. But doing so and realising that those particles have desires gives us an understanding of what gravity is, what draws our particles to the earth and the earth and our particles toward the sun.
Newton’s gravity force is still much used in calculations because it works. Newton’s law of universal gravitation has force F = G M1 M2 / d2 where G is a constant, M’ s are masses and d the distance between them. Interestingly Coulomb’s law concerning photon interactions between electron and proton charges is F = k q1 q2 / r2 where k is a constant, q’s are particle charges and r the distance between them.
The similarity is because they are both related to particle energy desires. The electromagnetic photon force is stronger because it is about the desire of particles to come together and stay together in stable structures, whereas the gravity force is the attraction that establishes the energy relationship between stable particle structures.
Many of you may think that our structures and those of other “living” creatures are different, so we will next look at what humans regard as lifeforms.
The organisms of plants and animals (including us) comprise of the particles of eukaryote cells of various types. All that we are, all that we can do, all of our complex systems including our reproduction capability, evolved over thousands of millions of years, each tiny change hardly noticed. But one thing we can be sure of is that all of those tiny changes were made by particle energies that acted to improve the energy stability and energy exchanging abilities of their parent organism in the environment they were in.
Bacteria are smaller, independent prokaryote cells. Those, living on and hosted by a human significantly outnumber human cells. We regard bacteria as living but not viruses that can colonise and live on our cells.
Our line between living and non living is hazy and there is no standard definition. As you will have realised by now, I place life at the particle energy level.
The next video is intent on giving an insight into the role photon energies play.
How should we think of photons? We describe them as an electromagnetic waves but also describe them as particles. We say they move everywhere at light speed irrespective of the motion of their source but is that so and relative to what? The energies they have we link to wavelength and frequency and most regard them as massless yet having momentum. We also have a view that particles fully absorb photon energies but is this correct?
It might seem unlikely that the attractions and repulsions of magnets and the workings of electrical machines have much to do with particles and photons but we do not term the photon spectrum the electromagnetic spectrum for nothing. The electric and magnetic fields of our universe are photon fields. They are just different aspects of the same thing.
My final video in this series is a speculative look at the way particles interact. At the macro level I have argued that particles have desires and that their motions away from photon energies happen when those energies are in excess of their desires. Excess energy absorbed is not held onto. It is unwanted and this I believe is also the case at the particle level.
I also question in this video the ideas that light speed is the same everywhere and that photons are of fixed unchanging energies. Einstein did not say light speed was the same everywhere. He saw light speed as a constant relative to an inertial frame and the same for every observer. We cannot observe particles in atoms and the interactions between them but we do know much about their collective actions and can speculate as to their individual behaviours.
The objective in this video series was to put forward a living energy idea and support it and I hope I have done that. The history of science has been and continues to be one of observing and explaining what is observed. Much of that explaining is in a mathematical form that works and which has proved to be successful.
But maths that works can mislead us as to the reality. A gravity force and a motion energy store are clear misleads but there are many things considered as unchanging when they are in reality vibrating changes about a value. Because the maths of the macro level did not work at the atomic level physics split into classical and quantum versions.
Quantum field theory argues that fields can explain everything but it is incomplete and the realm of the few. I have avoided the maths, stayed with a particle and photon view of energy but added the view that it is living. In doing so I hope I have shown how the macro world is simply an extension of the micro world.
I am not a scientist and scientists may not agree with my simpler ideas. Many experts don’t want change. I just hope my ideas have given them food for thought. As to the layman, I hope I have stimulated his interest and improved his understanding.