Current atomic theory has as its base the concept of the discontinuity of matter, or the existence of an empty space, void , or vacuum between the atoms of matter in any state. The origins of this idea go back to Greek philosophers of around 2500 years ago who intuitively suggested that matter was divisible only up to a certain, then unspecified, minuscule point.
While this was a logical idea for solid matter, in which solid, spherical atoms could be pictured in close proximity as in a pile of oranges, the problem was to explain the fluidity of liquids and of air (as the latter had been identified by Empedocles as having substance).
This was resolved by assuming that the atoms in these states of matter were moving in an eternal ‘kinetic’ motion surrounded by an empty space that was a perfect vacuum, which by definition could not itself exert any force or influence the motions or interactions of the atomic matter in any way.
This idea of the existence of an all-encompassing vacuum was soundly rejected by, amongst others, Aristotle, whose theories, such as the concept of just four material elements (earth, air, fire and water), predominated and which later became part of the accepted ’science’ by the Ecclesiastical Roman Empire which ruled Western Europe for a thousand years. The church allowed no deviation from these concepts and, often brutally, enforced acceptance of them, but with the dissipation of the churches power from the 16th century onwards and with technological advances, such as Galileo’s refinement of the telescope, natural philosophers began to openly explore the realities of the material environment.
In 1643 a pupil of Galileo, Torricelli, inverted a long glass tube sealed at one end and filled with mercury into an open container of the same element. The resultant space that appeared at the top of the column of mercury in the tube was generally assumed to be a perfect vacuum.
(This apparatus, later to be used as the barometer, also appeared to confirm that the atmosphere surrounding earth extended only to a certain altitude, whereupon the perfect vacuum of space began.)
Shortly after in 1647, as a result of this demonstration of the voids existence, Gassendi resurrected and refined Democritus’ atomic theory.
When, in the latter part of the 18th century, the four elements theory was finally demolished by the separation of two of its constituents, air and water, into their component elements, Aristotle’s long-standing authority was further diminished.
The assumptions that are the basis of atomic theory today were presented by Clerk Maxwell in 1859 in his statistical analysis of atomic interactions in gases, the Laws of Distribution of Velocities, which laws were later modified by Boltzmann.
This quantitative model of the kinetic atomic theory of gases, provided the means to be able to predict with reasonable accuracy the behaviour of gases in differing conditions. However it should be noted at this point that similar quantitative kinetic theories for liquids and solids, in which states atoms are also suggested to be in kinetic motion in empty space, have since proved impossible to formulate.
One of the main assumptions presented by Clerk Maxwell was that “the volume of molecules is infinitesimal compared to the volume of the gas” , which means that with respect to air at sea level, the volume of atomic matter is just 1/1000th of the total of any volume.
Clerk Maxwell himself assumed that this empty space was not a vacuum but the hypothetical ‘luminiferous aether’, but this concept of a ’space-filling’ non-matter, that facilitated the transmission of light, was dealt a fatal blow by the Michelson and Morley experiments with light in 1887, the intentions of which were to prove the aether’s existence in interplanetary space and which failed to do so.
However intense debate on the possibility of the existence of the state of vacuum continued until the turn of the last century, when physics was in a state of chaos, with Planck’s controversial ‘quanta’ solution to the ‘Ultra-violet Catastrophe’ and with pro and anti-atomists at loggerheads.
This state of affairs was ended by the scientists of the day progressively accepting Einstein’s theories during the following two decades, culminating in the apparent confirmation of his Relativity theories by Eddington’s observations of a solar eclipse in 1919.
The day after these results were published the London Times ran the headlines ‘Revolution in science. New theory of the Universe. Newtonian ideas overthrown.‘ and Einstein became a global superstar.
As a biographer put it (1) “sickened by the useless slaughter (of the 1914-18 World War) people – turned from incompetent generals to a new hero – who had drawn a new picture of nature and the structure of the universe. That (his) work was far beyond them did not matter. Tired of the old bloody world they were ready to worship the new one and its creator – it was sudden, overwhelming fame.”
In his published papers Einstein affirmed his acceptance of kinetic atomic theory, and the attendant existence of the void, and stated that “the concept of an ether is superfluous”, and his subsequent fame and authority eliminated the opposition to discontinuity within the scientific community, which concept today remains one of the cornerstones of atomic physics.
But where today, with all the technical expertise available, is the proof of the existence this state?
The ‘vacuum’ above the mercury in a mercury barometer contains mercury vapour, and so is a partial vacuum, not a perfect one, and given that the basic atomic theory as taught today still states that the vacuum already occupies 99.9% of the volume of the air we breathe, it must be assumed that some unequivocal demonstration of its existence would be available by now. However it is generally accepted, at least by applied scientists, engineers and technicians that the creation of this hypothetical state in the laboratory by various, highly sophisticated, decompressive techniques, is not possible.
Thus to date no proof has been produced of the existence of the vacuum in any circumstance, and this failure is in itself reason to seriously doubt its existence.
Since the 1980’s technological advances such as the the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) have made it possible to view, and even manipulate, the individual atoms on the surfaces of solid matter. Such images are widely available, but each one takes a considerable amount of time to produce by moving the tip of the probe slowly back and forth across the target, and in every case the atoms depicted are clearly defined, as in the image below, which is a representation of the image of atoms at the surface of a sample of solid matter.
Fig. 1
Such images, when first produced, finally confirmed beyond all doubt the existence of atoms as individual, spherical structures, which in solids are in close proximity to others and arranged in the rows or patterns that could be expected to form for a conglomeration of larger spherical objects such a balls or oranges. But the most striking result is that there is no evidence of discontinuity in these images, and even more significantly there is no evidence of the assumed independent motion or oscillation of atoms in this state.
If as kinetic theory suggests, each of the atoms of a solid are oscillating eternally within a set volume of empty space separating it from adjacent atoms, then instead of the clearly defined images of rows of spherical atoms, the images of the atoms would be indistinct and blurred.
Any independent observer would accordingly conclude that in this state of matter atoms do not have any characteristic of independent motion and that no empty space or vacuum exists, between them, eminent physicists however, instead of accepting these visual images as representing the reality of atomic interactions in solids, cling to current scientific dogma and reject these clear results, inventing vague and patently unsatisfactory reasons as to why these empirical results do not contradict the hypothetical concepts of kinetic motion and discontinuity.
An example of this is by Hans Christian von Baeyer (2) and I quote:-
The apparent continuousness of STM images has two fundamental causes. First there is the problem of resolution. No matter how fine the needle of a scanning probe may be, its tip can be no smaller than an atom. This means in turn that the pictures it makes are limited in sharpness. – In the domain of the atom there will always come a point when two separate features of an object appear as one because the probe is too clumsy to tell them apart.
The second cause — (is that) in bulk matter, and on surfaces, neighbouring atoms bump and jostle each other, and all the while share electrons. Their electron clouds are so intertwined that it is impossible to distinguish which electron belongs to which atom. Metals and other conductors are suffused with electrons that are free to roam over the entire sample – obliterating the structural details of individual atoms.
Von Baeyer seems oblivious to the fact that, if the probe is sensitive enough to pick up traces of individual electrons moving at high velocity, the second cause would appear to contradict the first, however more recent images such as the one below which shows the arrangement of atoms at the surface of a sample of platinum with better resolution are even more convincing and therefore refute these attempts to retain the concept of discontinuity.
Fig. 2
So to summarise, there exists no proof of the existence of the state of a vacuum in any circumstance, on the contrary, to objective observers at least, there is visual proof that, in the solid state, atoms are in contact and are therefore continuous.
The fundamental problem that remains for todays theoretical physicists was clearly articulated by Isaac Newton in a letter to Richard Bentley over 300 years ago : -
“That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.”
To translate from polite 17th century English into the colloquial – ‘If anyone considers it is possible for a force to be transmitted between two units of matter through an intervening vacuum separating them , he is stupid’.
What this brilliant mathematician and inventor/artisan/technician was saying is that it is both conceptually and mathematically impossible to describe the transmission of a force in these circumstances.
As Archimedes said 2500 years ago, ‘give me a point on which to place a lever and I will move the world’, in other words there has to be a ‘something’ for a force to act upon and in the case of two atoms or of two massive bodies separated by vacuum, as this space by definition has no qualities, a force emanating from one mass has no base from which to act upon the other.
This when applied to atomic matter means that, if no continuous contact is assumed between two atoms in any state of matter, there is no possible way to describe how any force acting on one is transmitted to, and acts upon the other.
In the middle of the 20th century however eminent physicists, such as Bohr, ultimately came to the realisation that a vacuum that had no characteristics that could affect atomic matter, was an insurmountable obstacle to progress, and accordingly the vacuum subsequently began to be attributed with hypothetical characteristics, and such concepts as ‘vacuum fluctuations’ and ‘vacuum polarisation’ were introduced, more recently it is suggested that it has such qualities as ‘an infinite energy density’ or ‘quantum potential’.
Also hypothetical vehicles for the transmission of forces through outer space were proposed, such as represented by ’superstring’ and ‘loop’ theories and also, with the realisation that only a small proportion of the mass of the universe can be identified as matter, the concepts of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ occupying the void of space have been floated.
All these completely unproven, and unprovable, concepts are simply attempts to endow the vacuum with qualities that, amongst other things, can transmit or transfer a force, providing it with various hypothetical qualities that can influence atomic matter. In other words physicists have tacitly accepted that the definition of the supposedly all-pervading ‘empty space’ as a vacuum is ’superfluous’.
Thus the concept of an all-pervading non-material medium, effectively the same luminiferous aether that was ridiculed in the first half of the century, has been subtly, and surreptitiously, reintroduced by theoretical physicists in attempts to deal with the present complete impasse in atomic level physics.
Thus 100 years ago the then strongly disputed vacuum was set by Einstein into scientific conciousness, and 50 years ago scientists belatedly began to patch up the already unsatisfactory base of accepted atomic theory, kinetic atomic theory, by investing the assumed empty space component with numerous hypothetical qualities. But again this fudging has led nowhere, no progress has been made in our understanding of the ultimate (atomic) structure of matter or of its actions and interactions with other matter and with energy.
For an example, currently there is no simple, intelligible explanation for the phenomena of convection, and we cannot begin to fully comprehend the functioning of the earth’s climate without understanding how this fundamentally important natural force works at atomic level.
Pure science and in particular theoretical physics has clearly taken a wrong turn in the past to lead to the present impasse. In these circumstances, when a dead end is encountered, practical people recognise that the only way forward is backward, to find the point where the wrong path was chosen, but eminent physicists will of course pigheadedly continue to refuse to recognise the proverbial cliff face and continue to bang their heads against it.
This of course is not a new phenomenon for academia, in 1912 Alfred Wegener, a young German meteorologist, put forward the theory that at some time in the past the continents had been joined together, which was based upon unequivocally sound geological evidence that pointed to, for example, the fact that Africa and South America were previously joined.
Eminent geologists, professors and other academics, publicly ridiculed this idea for 40 years before his ‘Continental Drift’ theory was eventually accepted, long after Wegener’s death, which means that acceptance had to wait until the old blinkered generation of the ‘elite’ of geology had died off.
However the recent and current crop of academic geologists have clearly not learnt this lesson, as a logical development of this, the eminently sensible hypothesis of a progressive expansion of the earth, as propounded by Hildenberg in 1933, in 1976 by S. Warren Carey in his book ‘The Expanding Earth’, has still not achieved the recognition that it deserves.
The STM images are evidence of the existence of atoms, but not of discontinuity or of kinetic motion. If we accept that kinetic motion does not exist in solid matter, then to assume that it exists in liquids and gases in order to explain the fluidity of these states requires an assumption that, while an increase in energy absorption in the solid state does not induce atomic motion, in the change of state from solid to liquid, heat energy is somehow then converted into kinetic energy. But is such an assumption necessary? Occams razor?
However if on the other hand it is assumed that atomic matter is continuous in any state, including the liquid and the gas states, then this basic problem that led the Greek philosophers to assume the void and kinetic motion needs addressing.
As atoms are clearly continuous in the solid state, and as the absorption of heat energy leads to expansion of a volume of solid matter, then it follows that the atoms of which the solid is composed must themselves increase in volume, and that it is this increase in atomic volume that forces the nuclei into a greater separation.
Here we need to consider the other forces at work and, as atoms have mass and are continuous, or are in other words in direct contact with surrounding atoms, the general rigidity of the solid state suggests that it is the force of gravitation that is holding them in close proximity. Also if atoms are forced into greater separation by an input of energy then the only identifiable force that can overcome gravitation in this instance is the force of pressure, and if atoms are individual spheres of influence the only place where such a force can act is at the outer periphery, in other words at the borders between adjacent atoms. Thus energy that is absorbed by each atom results in an increase in pressure, which in turn acts as a repulsive force at the periphery to counteract the attractive gravitational force that is acting in all directions from the core to adjacent surrounding atoms.
Thus it can be suggested that each individual atom is surrounded by an energy field that expands and contracts with the absorption and emission of energy.
Expansion or contraction of the energy fields resulting in a greater or lesser separation of the centres of the atoms’ mass will in turn decrease or increase the gravitational forces at the periphery,and there is no reason whatever to suggest that this force would not obey Newton’s Laws of inverse proportion.
It follows naturally from this that the balancing forces of repulsion acting at the outer periphery will increase or decrease in line with gravitation. Some initial assumptions as to the characteristics of field atoms.
1) Each atom, having mass, exerts an attractive force on each of its adjacent atoms.
2) This gravitational attraction obeys Newton’s Laws and is inversely proportional to the square of the distance (or the altitude from the nucleus).
3) The energy field of each atom fills the space available to it completely, i.e. all the volume between the core/nucleus and the outer peripheries of the fields of adjacent atoms.
4) The energy field of each atom exerts a force of resistance to incursion by the force fields of adjacent atoms.
5) The state of a vacuum is not possible. Applying these assumptions to a volume of matter in any state, the natural formation would be that all the atoms within this volume would arrange themselves in the closest possible association consistent with their energy level.
Arrangements of Atoms
If we now proceed to consider larger numbers atoms in close proximity and if a single atom is envisaged suspended in space and as many other atoms as possible that are of equal dimensions placed in contact with it, then this cluster would take on the form shown in the figure below, where the central atom marked A, is surrounded by twelve others that are also in direct contact with it.
This natural configuration means that each individual atom in a volume of matter is similarly surrounded by and in contact with 12 other atoms.
Fig. 3
Dodecahedron
If we now consider the outer periphery of the central, individual atom in this situation, it is gravitationally attracted to the surrounding 12 atoms that are in contact with it, while at the same time its energy field is repulsing each of their energy fields, so as it is experiencing the same attractive and compressive forces from each of these 12 atoms, it will be evident therefore that the outer periphery of the energy field of the central atom will take on the form of a dodecahedron as depicted below. And of course all other atoms in the same volume of gas that are surrounded by atoms of equal dimensions will be affected by the same forces and take the same form, which form is clearly confirmed by the STM image shown at Fig. 2.
Fig. 4
Of course the main question now is how this close association of atoms in any state allows the observed variations in viscosity from the (generally) rigid state of a solid to the highly fluid gaseous state.
It will be obvious that in the solid state, as the outer periphery of the energy field is in a closer proximity to the nucleus, the inter-atomic gravitational force is strong.
Also the greater density of the energy field at this point will result in a correspondingly strong repulsive force.
The combination of these two forces and the resultant form of the outer energy field will clearly result in a comparably strong frictional force between atoms in the closer arrangement of the solid state.
It is also quite clear from the diagram above that the expansion into the liquid and further into the gas state, will result in reductions in the inter-atomic frictional forces at the outer peripheries of the energy fields. This will naturally translate into a reduction in viscosity in all these changes of state.
1 Albert Einstein, Milton Dank, Impact, 1983
You state that Michaelson-Morley disproved ether. No, it merely disproved the motion of the earth through the ether at the rate (30 km/sec) expected. And, there were some fringe shifts, I understand. The evidence they discovered, as did all subsequent experimenters along those lines, was and is consistent with a geocentric universe, and the existence of ether, ether which is partially entrained by the stationary earth while the rest of the universe rotates. See Robert Sungenis’ book “Galileo Was Wrong.” It’s an exhaustive compendium of heliocentric/acentric/geocentric data.
–Hendrik Mills
The wording was that MM ‘failed to (prove)’, not that the experiment ‘disproved’ the aethers existence, and I am commenting on the general conclusions of interested parties at the time.
However, as it is not technically (experimentally) possible to separate matter from the ‘empty space’, which is generally assumed to exist between molecular matter, (or vice versa to separate ‘space’ from matter) there is absolutely no proof of a ‘space’ (such as the void, the vacuum – or an aether), that has a separate and distinct existence to matter.
As we have no idea what matter ‘is’ ultimately, how can it be assumed that it does not pervade all of space (using the word in the wider sense)?
In other words my suggestion is that matter, centred upon individual atoms, occupies the total volume of the universe.
In this case the transmission of energy and forces can be easily explained and there is no necessity for the concepts of ‘dark’ matter and energy.
Romun,
What then about the space between those molecules which compose a vapor? What constitutes this space?
Also, regardless of Newton’s comments, what about forces that ‘act at a distance?’
Cheers,
Arjun
Arjun,
Thanks for your comments.
Newton also accepted that Torricelli had created a perfect vacuum, in his notes he says “The height of the atmosphere may be known from Torricellius, his experiment.” In other words he accepted that the atmosphere only extended to a certain altitude, after which the perfect vacuum of space existed. This was generally accepted by scientists until the unmanned and manned satellites, and Penzias and Wilson’s CMB result, around the 1960′s, which found no vacuum in near space and that even in the vast volumes of inter-galactic spaces matter was consistently present.
On to the 1980′s and electron microscopy showing that atoms in solid matter are not in ‘kinetic’ motion or are separated by ‘empty space’, (a result that of course is not accepted by the mainstream as it would collapse the whole facade of modern physics).
As I am unencumbered by this dogma, I accept this evidence, and that it is impossible to create a perfect vacuum in the lab.
In these circumstances I say, where is this ‘empty space’ (by any name) that is a distinct and separate entity to matter, and which apparently occupies so much of the total volume of the observable universe, that the actual volume of matter is almost infinitely small in comparison?
And I suggest that if matter is continuous in solid matter, and on expansion of this solid to the liquid state (with energy input), and further to the gaseous, it is the atoms themselves that expand in volume and remain continuous and do so even to intergalactic spaces where there may be only a few atoms of hydrogen to a cubic centimetre.
Thus I do not accept that there is a separate entity to matter called ‘space’, that has been speculatively filled with an ‘aether’, ‘virtual particles’, strings, etc. in attempts essentially to provide a base for the observed transmission of forces, both at the microscopic and out to the celestial dimensions.
Thus matter, based on the atom, occupies all of space, and briefly, an atom’s matter field decreases in density with increasing altitude from the centre, until it meets with that of surrounding atoms that are, of course, at similar energy levels.
‘Action at a distance’ is not possible, action and reaction is only possible with a continuity of matter.
Regards,
Roger Munday