Magnetic Atoms
The Electron Microscope image below is of atoms at the surface of a sheet of platinum, and this shows that the proportion of the surfaces of these atoms that are in contact with atmospheric gases are roughly spherical in form, while the surfaces that are in contact with adjacent atoms are distorted from the spherical so that each atom at this boundary has a hexagonal form.
Prior to the introduction of electron microscopy technology in the early 1980’s, atoms in solid matter were depicted in most textbooks as oscillating kinetically in lattice structures similar to that shown in the diagram below, where the proportion of inter-atomic vacuum would be in excess of 500% of the volume of the atom.
But, due entirely to the introduction of this technology, atoms in solid matter are depicted as having a far closer structural distribution, the diagram below is an example of one described as ‘hexagonal close packing’, which has the same basic structure as that of the Electron Microscopy image of platinum atoms above.
And so it is now suggested that, instead of occupying a small proportion of the total volume, atoms now occupy most of the volume of solids, and that instead of “oscillating” in a lattice structure are now “rotating and vibrating” in place.
The Electron Microscopy image below is of a bridge of gold atoms that has been physically drawn out to form a wire-like structure between two larger gold masses.
This nano-wire is clearly a cross sectional arrangement of five atoms and obviously there are attractive forces acting between these atoms to maintain this structure.
However if individual atoms in ‘close packed arrays’ are freely “rotating and vibrating”, as current theory states, then there can be no consistently and continuously acting forces of attraction between these atoms, and thus no sensible explanation for the generation of an attractive force of sufficient strength between these gold atoms, both to form and to maintain this wire like structure.
In other words if there were no continuously acting attractive inter-atomic forces acting here, then these gold atoms would simply fall apart and no wire-like structure could form.
The structural change from a “lattice” to a “close packed array” is entirely due to this advance in technology, which has produced numerous images (which take a considerable amount of time to create) of the surfaces of solid matter that show such closely packed arrangements of atoms.
So this is a significant revision of the hypothetical structure of solid matter, from individual atoms oscillating in a lattice structure and occupying a vacuum five times their volumes to spherical atoms that are touching along the face diagonals and are occupying 74% of the available space, as in the hex close packed array above.
Which means that the hypothetical, inter-atomic vacuum in these metals has now been reduced from 500% to 26%, and, as there is obviously no room for any significant, random oscillatory kinetic motion of individual atoms, it is now stated that these are instead “kinetically rotating and vibrating” in place.
On the introduction of this technology around 30 years ago, the observed ‘apparent continuousness’ of atoms was excused by saying that these images are “limited in sharpness – because the probe is too clumsy”.
However 25 years later this technology has advanced significantly and there are thousands of images similar to this, clearly indicating that atoms are “pressing upon each other”, as was first suggested by Newton 350 years ago. And in these images 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.
The image below is of a surface of gold atoms, which is an “Image of surface reconstruction on a clean Au(100) surface, as visualized using scanning tunneling microscopy. The individual atoms composing the material are visible. Surface reconstruction causes the surface atoms to deviate from the bulk crystal structure, and arrange in columns several atoms wide with regularly-spaced pits between them.”
The reconstruction below of this gold surface shows that these atoms are aligned in three rows that are at 60 degrees to each other, and a cross section of this surface is shown below that.
It is therefore clear in these examples that forces are acting at close range between these gold atoms, and the nano-wire structure can be replicated with spherical neodymium magnets as in the photos below.
In the two longitudinal arrangements, in the first photo, of series of five neodymium spheres, the magnetic bonds between them are very strong, and it is difficult to break these bonds either individually, collectively, laterally or longitudinally.
However it is important to note that these arrangements of strong magnets do not extend any significant external magnetic field. For example if a piece of iron, or another small magnet, is brought close to any of these spherical magnets, either longitudinally or laterally, then there is no magnetic interaction until a separation of 2-3 mm is reached.
But when the two arrangements in the first picture are brought to this separation they are immediately drawn together strongly and bond to a single entity, as in the following two photos, and the strength of these bonds are also very difficult to break without a total disruption of these wire-like structures.
In contrast the arrangement in the next photograph below is that of four rows of these spherical magnets, these rows were separately constructed so that each sphere was in contact north to south with its immediate neighbours.
These four separate rows were then placed together, which resulted in their overall N-S alignments combining to form a strong magnet that extends an external field longitudinally to well over 30cm, for example it influences a compass needle at 45cm. However this arrangement, in contrast to those in the above photos is relatively easy to pull apart laterally.
On inspection the, cross sectional, magnetic alignments of the spheres composing these assemblies in the three photos above are, from direct inspection, as in diagram 4 below.
So it is evident that while this arrangement effectively neutralises, or “cancels out” a longer range action of the field of individual magnets, there are strong close range magnetic forces acting here.
And when two such arrangements are allowed to come into contact as photo # 2 above, the magnetic alignments of these spheres are, again from direct observation, as represented in figure 5.
As there are no other identifiable candidates capable of generating the observed strong forces acting between the gold atoms in the ‘wire’ structure above, it can therefore be suggested that, in such circumstances, at close range the individual magnetic fields of gold atoms do extend externally, and in the same manner as those of neodymium magnets, to influence and attract adjacent atoms and thus to generate the forces that are observed to act in creating and maintaining the nano-structures of these gold wires.
But it is stated unequivocally in the literature that gold is non magnetic.
“Non magnetic materials have atoms aligned in random directions, so their magnetic fields cancel each other out.”
So, while it is obvious that there are strong inter-atomic attractive forces acting here between these gold atoms and that atoms “produce a magnetic field”, theory states that these fields do not extend externally to influence adjacent atoms.
However it is clear that, as demonstrated by the neodymium spheres, if these forces are only acting at close range, and the magnetic fields of atoms accordingly do not combine to generate any significant, externally acting, magnetic field, such as those observed to be extended by metals that are classified as ‘magnetic’, these short range magnetic fields would not be perceptible to instruments at macroscopic level.
It is therefore true in this respect that the magnetic fields of individual atoms “cancel each other out” but it is absolutely clear that their fields are not “randomly aligned”.
These short range, attractive effects are confirmed by experiments demonstrating that two “ultrathin gold nanowires (diameters less than 10 nm) can be cold-welded together within seconds by mechanical contact alone”.
This ‘cold welding’ effect is also observed with larger masses, as when two sheets of various metals are brought into close contact.
“Cold welding was first recognized as a general materials phenomenon in the 1940s. It was then discovered that two clean, flat surfaces of similar metal would strongly adhere if brought into contact under vacuum.” Wikipedia
The perfectly plane, facing surfaces of the two metals in Fig. 1 below are structurally identical to that of the image of a platinum surface shown earlier, and these two pieces of metal are brought together while the intervening gases are extracted in a low pressure environment, which process leads to the complete fusion of the two surfaces so that one, continuous piece of metal is created as in Fig. 4.
It is therefore evident that there are strong, short-range, inter-atomic forces acting between atoms of all metals and that these observed effects can only be the result of mutually attractive magnetic forces.
With respect to the gold nano-wire diagram 7 below is a representation of this, and the cross sectional structure beside it is that of the outer layer of five atoms, and if this were composed of spherical atoms that are touching at the ‘face diagonals’, this would obviously leave a central void, in blue, that is patently too small to entertain another central spherical atom, as is demonstrated by the diagram 8 following this, in which the outer atom’s N-S magnetic alignments are shown.
An alternative ‘close packed’ arrangement of “rotating and vibrating” atoms is shown in diagram 9b below composed of seven spherical atoms, which would allow for such a central sphere, while that of five, 9a, does not. But the photo directly below this of neodymium magnets indicates that one of five is structurally similar to the image of that of gold nano-wire atoms in EM2, and that of a cross section of seven spheres on the right is of larger dimensions.
In the following diagrams 10A depicts nominally spherical atoms and their magnetic alignments, and in 10B the the black arrows represent the actions of attractive magnetic forces.
However it is clear that the central void will be occupied and the blue dashed circle in 10B represents a nominally spherical atom here, which when situated between two sets of five atoms in 10C is accordingly mutually repulsed by and repulses, a total of twelve surrounding atoms and this central atom is compressed and adopts a dodecahedral form, filling the space completely as in 10D.
The outer circles surrounding 10B and 10D indicate an accompanying (hypothetical) reduction in volume.
Diagram 11 below is another representation of the structure of the gold nano-wire, with the cross sectional end views added and with the dodecahedral central atoms depicted by the blue dashed lines, the outer forms of which are identical to those in the photo below that of a side view of a dodecahedron.
Conclusion
But in any case the obvious problem is that if these atoms are rotating and vibrating in place as depicted in 9a&b, then clearly their magnetic fields would also be rotating and no continuous, inter-atomic attractive force could possibly act to maintain these structural arrangements.
And the atoms in the gold nano-wire experiment would simply fall apart and separate, and the observed ‘cold welding’ could not, by any means, occur.
These observed examples, of ‘cold welding’, are direct evidence that there are strong attractive forces acting between atoms and that there are opposing and equally strong forces acting repulsively in opposition.
And, as the only possible force of attraction is magnetic, the observed distortion of an atom’s outer extents is evidence of an equally strong resistance to the incursion of one atom’s field into another’s field, directly translates into the force of pressure observed and exerted at macroscopic level.
It is therefore evident that magnetism is a fundamental force, and one that is of far greater significance than is generally considered.
In this respect it is still unexplained in terms of current theory as to how the very strong magnetic fields generated between two permanent magnets acts through a discontinuous atmospheric gas which is composed of 99.9% a vacuum.
The images below (which are not to any specific scale) clearly show how the observed strong attractive and repulsive forces generated by the magnets act to divert atmospheric atoms from their normal alignments to the relatively weak field generated by the Earth itself and so transmit these observed forces.
Clearly if these magnets were separated by a ‘vacuum’ gas structured according to the kinetic atomic theory of gases, then there would be absolutely no possibility of these observed forces acting here.
To translate Newton’s statement quoted earlier from his 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’.
The images below depict two perfectly cubic 1 cc volumes of any metal, both contain 2.7 x 1019 atoms and each of their six faces are composed of 1 x 78 atoms, i.e. 700,000,000 individual atoms.
As is observed in practice when these faces are brought into close contact these cubes will immediately and permanently bond into a single 2 cc entity.
It is stated in scientific publications that ultimately metals are composed of atoms which are kinetically “rotating and vibrating” in place.
And, following Rutherford’s assertion in 1919 that an atom was almost entirely composed of a vacuum, physicists needed to come up with explanations for how such a structure of atoms, in constant “kinetic” motion, interacted to create the observed strong cohesion of metals, and this is an example:-
“Metallic bonding is a type of chemical bonding that rises from the electrostatic attractive force between conduction electrons (in the form of an electron cloud of delocalized electrons) and positively charged metal ions. It may be described as the sharing of free electrons among a structure of positively charged ions (cations). Metallic bonding accounts for many physical properties of metals, such as strength, ductility, thermal and electrical resistivity and conductivity, opacity, and luster.”
“The metal is held together by the strong forces of attraction between the delocalised electrons and the positive ions.”
And so it was then, necessarily, assumed by physicists that these “strong forces of attraction” could act through the relatively vast, Rutherfordian, sub-atomic vacuum between the minuscule nucleus and surrounding electrons and then on through both the inter-atomic vacuum and the sub-atomic vacua of adjacent metal atoms, as depicted in the diagram below where the nucleus is, in these hypothetical circumstances, far to small to depict and, the now observed very strong force of cohesion, is indicated by the red arrows.
And so this absolute nonsense, in that this force of attraction is generated by “delocalised” electrons sitting in a inter-atomic vacuum separating such rotating and vibrating atoms, and which extends through them and this interceding vacuum and then, somehow, on through the atom’s discontinuous and vacuous “outer electron shell” into a vast sub-atomic vacuum containing a few “localised” electrons, and then on through this space to the minuscule nucleus that is suspended within it, is still generally assumed by “physicists” today.
But it is patently obvious that the relatively minuscule magnetic forces acting mutually between this vast number, a total of 1 x 716 individual atoms per cm2, at this intersection can result in the observed macroscopic welding of two sheets of metal.