“Atoms are the basic units of matter and the defining structure of elements.”
“Atoms are the basis of chemistry and they are the basis for everything
in the Universe.” (1)
It is now known that atoms are the ultimate natural division of matter, in other words it is effectively proven that this is the case.
But up until around 35 years ago the atom was still a hypothetical entity. And, while for most of the last century its existence was almost a certainty, a definitive proof had to wait until the technology of electron microscopy was perfected in the early 1980’s.
Since then many thousands of images of atoms in solid matter have been produced and published for all to see, and individual atoms have even been manipulated into positions on surfaces to create company logos, rings and other shapes, as in the image below.
Dalton introduced his solid, spherical, indestructible atoms at the beginning of the 1800’s, and, if we ignore the belated acceptance of Avogadro’s multi-atomic molecular structures and J J Thompson’s ‘plumb pudding’ model atom later that century, the next significant change to the structure of atoms was Rutherford’s model in the early 1900’s.
Since then physicists have focused their attention on examining this structure and today have arrived at a hypothetical structure described, broadly speaking, as the Standard Model.
Which model atom, in essence, is composed of a nucleus, and the extent of the atom’s influence is defined by a ‘cloud’ of particles – electrons. The nucleus and the surrounding electrons are said to be separated by a “perfect vacuum” (2), which vacuum occupies almost all of the volume of an atom, while the proportion of matter represented by all these sub-atomic particles is one trillionth of its total volume.
So the hypothetical atomic structure has changed dramatically from an indestructible solid sphere to what could be termed, essentially, as a ‘vacuum’ atom, and if this model is put into a comprehensible perspective with a nucleus of a hydrogen atom presented as having the diameter of 1mm (the square below on the left represents such a nucleus) the atoms single electron would be orbiting at an altitude from it of over 2 metres. (Note that on this scale the electron, the dot on the right, would not be visible on this page as it would be less than one pixel in diameter)
Nucleus ▪ < ———————- 2.3 Metres ————————-> · Electron
This 2mm diameter nucleus of such an atom would exert influence over a nominally spherical ‘empty space’, as defined by its electron, having a diameter of 4.6 metres and two such atoms are presented below at the point of a ‘kinetic’ collision. (The nuclei are not included as obviously on this scale they would be invisible, while the dashed circles represent the extent of the nominal orbits of their single electrons.)
This projected collision, at a combined velocity of up to 3600 metres per second is, in terms of the kinetic atomic theory of gases, required to be one of perfect elasticity with no loss of energy and of the average motion of both atoms. But it is rather difficult to imagine how a collision of these ‘vacuum’ atoms could result in such a ‘perfect’ collision.
However this picture is a simple one and the material structure of the atom today as postulated by particle physicists is one of extreme complexity, the nucleus said to be composed of around 300 particles.
This hypothetical structure is the result of a huge investment by governments (i.e. taxpayers) around the world over the last 70-80 years, exemplified by the cost of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN which has cost over $13 billion to date and has an annual budget of $1 billion.
But for all this effort a commentator has said “There have been tremendous advances in most areas of physics, such as materials science and hydrodynamics, which remain tied to experiment, but since the development of QED in 1928-1930 there have been no major gains in our understanding of the underlying structure of matter” (3).
And today for theoretical physicists, the ultimate structure of macroscopic matter remains in essence, that as postulated following Rutherford’s experiments at the turn of the last century, in that atoms are almost entirely a “perfect vacuum” and that atomic interactions are based upon their ‘kinetic’ motion within an extra-atomic vacuum.
Perhaps the reason for physicist’s focus on the internal structure is that, as there is no possibility of the transmission of gravitational forces through and between the vacuum separating such discontinuous atoms, they live in hope that the answers could lie in the sub-atomic structure of the atom itself.
But a few years back a journalist asked a physicist at CERN as to what the practical benefits would be if the Higg’s boson was discovered, and she said“None that I can think of”.
If the atom is itself almost entirely a perfect vacuum and its mass is overwhelmingly concentrated in the nucleus, then again there is no possibility of an sensible explanation for the transfer of a gravitational force from the mass of the nucleus outward to and beyond its outer periphery.
But gravity is a function of mass and perhaps it is time, after decades of failure, to consider that there is something fundamentally wrong with the theory on which all of theoretical physics is based, and which needs a vast inter-atomic, non-material, ‘empty space’ to function – the kinetic atomic theory of gases.
If the atom is the ultimate natural repository of matter, then surely it is also, both collectively and individually, the ultimate natural source of all forces and the ultimate natural vehicle for transmission.
The images below (courtesy of IBM Almaden) shows a surface of platinum atoms and in this there is no sign of the ‘lattice structure’ or of an oscillating motion of these atoms as predicted by kinetic theory.
Of course, as with any prior evidence that tended to contradict the kinetic atomic theory of gases this ‘apparent’ continuity was explained as a failure of the apparatus, and an example of this is by H C von Baeyer (4) 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.”
If the ‘electron clouds‘ are ‘intertwined’ with those of adjacent atoms, then surely there is no distinct intervening ’empty space’.
But there are thousands of such images above which clearly indicate, as was first suggested by Newton, that atoms are “pressing upon each other”, in other words that the process of attraction and repulsion is acting between these atoms.
No one, and certainly no physicist, knows what matter is ultimately and so they cannot say with any certainty that in an atom matter is ‘here’ and not ‘there’.
The Standard Model ‘vacuum’ atom as outlined earlier is clearly an absurdity, however the suggestion that its mass is concentrated on its central core is not.
But that does not mean that the remaining volume is empty of matter, and instead I suggest that matter occupies the whole volume of an atom, and that the density of its matter field increases exponentially from its outer peripheries to the core.
Accordingly, as there is no possibility of an attractive force acting through a sub-atomic vacuum from a defined nucleus of relatively minuscule dimensions, the only possible alternative is that this hypothetical vacuum does not ‘exist’ and atoms are entirely material.
In the image above the distortion from a natural spherical shape to a hexagonal form at the borders between these atoms can only be the result of the actions of a mutually acting repulsive force, and clearly this also indicates that an attractive force is acting from each atom to all adjacent atoms and that their outer peripheries are distortable to some extent.
If, as indicated, atoms form a continuous structure in macroscopic matter, the transfer of forces is clearly possible, atom to atom, through and within the structure, and clearly the external attractive force generated by a massive solid body, such as a metal sphere, would be the result of the collective masses of all its constituent atoms.
Which, just incidentally, is exactly what is observed in experiments.
(1) Textbook quotes
(2) ‘The Void’ Frank Close, OUP, 2007
(3) ‘The Big Bang Never Happened’, Eric J Lerner, P 358
(4) ‘Taming the Atom’ , Hans Christiaan von Baeyer, Random House, 1992