Continuous Magnetic Atoms
Current atomic theory has as its base the concept of the discontinuity of matter, or the existence of a 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 apparent demonstration of the voids existence, Gassendi resurrected and refined Democritus’ atomic theory. When, in the latter part of the 18th century, Aristotle’s four elements theory was finally demolished by the separation of two of its constituents, air and water, into their component elements, and his 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 the liquid and solid states, in which 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 patently 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 “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.” 1
In 1904 Einstein published a paper which 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, and this concept today remains one of the cornerstones of atomic physics.
It is now 377 years since Torricelli’s experiment in 1642, but it is still generally believed today, (and taught in early physics education, as in the currently published diagram below) that a mercury barometer contains an absolute vacuum above the liquid, and accordingly there is a condition of absolute zero pressure here. However it is also suggested that there are a few mercury atoms in ‘kinetic’ motion within this vacuum and which, it is implied, essentially do not generate any pressure on the liquid surface by means of their very rare collisions with it.
This assumes that the external atmospheric pressure acting on the surface of the exposed mercury liquid is the only force, acting against the pull of gravity on the liquid in the tube, that maintains the observed level of around 760 mm above the exposed liquid at sea level.
The Torricellian barometer was produced by simply filling the glass tube with liquid mercury and, placing a finger over the open end, inverting and emerging it at an angle into a bowl of the liquid and then after removing the finger the tube was elevated to vertical, as in the diagram below.
When this elevation angle reaches the point where the top is at 760 mm above the exposed liquid, with any further elevation the liquid in the tube remains at this level whatever length of tube is used, as indicated in this diagram.
However if this apparatus is taken up a mountain this level will fall in the tube, as in Pascal’s subsequent experiment where he found that at an elevation of around 4000 metres, in the conditions of a lower atmospheric pressure here, a level of around 640 mm was observed in the tube.
From this experiment it was assumed that the reduction in atmospheric pressure was the only determinant on the level of the liquid in the tube and that the volume of vacuum increased accordingly, as is depicted in the longer tubes in the diagram below. In other words this implied that the vacuum component had no influence whatever on the level of mercury and that it could freely expand (or contract) in volume.
However it is now proven by experiment in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpZF88fqrl8, that mercury evaporates rapidly at sea level, and so in the depicted elevation of a glass tube full of the liquid, with the progressive and consequent reduction of pressure at its upper surface in contact with the top of the glass tube, evaporation will also occur. And with further elevation of the tube, past the 760 mm mark, as in diagram above, the volume above the liquid will be composed of mercury in its gaseous state.
But, with respect to the postulates of the kinetic atomic theory of gases, if this space were ‘full’ of a ‘kinetic’ gas that is composed mostly of a volume of inter- atomic vacuum (i.e. 99.9% of the total volume of atmospheric gases) then, as this component by definition can have no influence on the ‘kinetic’ motions of atoms, the high velocity collisions of these, massive, ‘kinetic’ mercury atoms will apply a force of pressure on the surface of the liquid, and in this non-zero, low pressure environment further evaporation should obviously occur and the surface level would eventually subside to that of the surface exposed to atmospheric pressure.
As this clearly does not happen, it is evident that there is a force acting here within the tube to maintain the liquid at this level, and if any volume of vacuum, either inter-atomic or sub-atomic were present, then such vacua, patently, could not generate such a force.
And so in the diagram below where the tube filled with mercury is elevated at an angle to a height of just below 760 mm the pressure at the top of the column of mercury is NOT immediately absolute zero, but is simply lower than atmospheric and the pressure progressively reduces as the tube is raised further.
In these circumstances as the tube is further elevated mercury will begin to evaporate, at a greater rate than at atmospheric pressure, and as the tube is raised further evaporation will continue, so that any volume of ‘space’ above the liquid will be full of mercury vapour.
As mentioned, if this vapour were a ‘kinetic’ gas composed mostly of vacuum then, as stated there is absolutely no possibility of this discontinuous gas applying any force to hold the column up against the pull of gravity.
This pure assumption of the existence of a void space has led to current theoretical absurdities.
For an example:–
Since the introduction of Electron Microscopy in the 1980’s the atomic structure of solids, e.g. metals, needed revision, in the first diagram below this structure was previously one of atoms oscillating in a ‘lattice’, consisting of a relatively huge interstitial vacuum of a volume of 500% of the total.
But to conform to the images produced by this technology, this hypothetical structure was ‘adjusted’ to the currently assumed one of atoms in “close packed arrays” as in the second diagram.
Here the atoms were now assumed to be in continuous contact at their face diagonals and were “kinetically rotating and vibrating” and “separated” by an interstitial vacuum of a volume amounting to just 28% of the total.
Lattice Structure
But this created a problem, as this was the assumed structure of matter at 20ºC as in the first diagram below, and so, in the observed reduction in the volume of a metal, with a reduction in temperature (accompanied of course by an increase in the mass per unit volume), it was theoretically necessary to suggest that all the component atoms, as well as the interstitial vacuum, were physically reduced in volume, as depicted in the center image below at -100ºC.
However in complete contrast it is now stated that, in the opposite direction, on the introduction of heat energy to these atoms at 20ºC they do not increase in volume (as must occur in the transition from -100°C to 20°C) but instead the vacuum alone expands as in the third image at 400ºC, where of course the “kinetic” energy of motion is said to have moved them apart randomly into a greater volume of vacuum.
All this implies that the ultimate structure of matter in the conditions of STP here at the surface of the Earth are the ‘gold standard’ universally, which is a totally absurd assumption of theoretical physicists alone.
Creating a Vacuum
For centuries scientists have been trying to create lower and lower temperatures and pressures, initially by evacuating gas from containers with mechanical pumps.
But today more refined technologies such as diffusion, ionisation, chemisorption etc. are used to produce ‘high’ partial vacuums for commercial and experimental use and it is possible to (momentarily) achieve extremely low pressures, termed as ultra-high vacuums (UHV), to within a fraction of absolute zero pressure and temperature.
“Ultra-high vacuum is vacuum regime characterised by pressures lower than about 10-⁷ pascal or 100 nanopascals (10-⁹ mbar, ~10-⁹ torr). (Wikipedia)
But there is no single vacuum pump that can operate all the way from atmospheric pressure to ultra-high vacuum. Instead, a series of different pumps is used, according to the appropriate pressure range for each pump. High pumping speeds are necessary and multiple vacuum pumps are used in series and/or parallel.
Pumps commonly used in combination to achieve UHV include:-
1) Turbomolecular pumps (especially compound and/or magnetic bearing types)
2) Ion pumps
3) Titanium sublimation pumps
4) Non-evaporable getter (NEG) pumps
5) Cryopumps
But the UHV’s produced cannot be sustained for any length of time, this is due to contamination of the sample resulting from such effects as ‘out-gassing’.
Out-gassing can include sublimation and evaporation, which are phase transitions of a solid or liquid substance into a gas, in other words at these extremely low conditions of pressure, atoms, either contained within, or vapourised from the surfaces of, the solid matter of the apparatus are drawn into the volume under examination.
“Out-gassing is a significant problem for UHV systems. Out-gassing can occur from two sources: surfaces and bulk materials. Out-gassing from bulk materials is minimized by careful selection of materials with low vapor pressures (such as glass, stainless steel, and ceramics) for everything inside the system. Hydrogen and carbon monoxide are the most common background gases in a well-designed UHV system. Both Hydrogen and CO diffuse out from the grain boundaries in stainless steel and Helium can diffuse through steel and glass from the outside air.” (Wikipedia)
And extraordinary preparatory steps are required to reduce these effects, which include the following:-
1) Baking the system (for one-two days at up to 400°C while the pumps are running) to remove water or hydrocarbons adsorbed to the walls.
2) Minimizing the surface area in the chamber.
3) High conductance tubing to pumps — short and fat, without obstruction.
4) Low out-gassing materials such as certain stainless steels.
5) Avoiding creating pits of trapped gas behind bolts, welding voids, etc.
6) Electro-polishing all metal parts after machining or welding.
7) Low vapor pressure materials (ceramics, glass, metals, and teflon if unbaked).
8) Chilling chamber walls to cryogenic temperatures during use.
9) Avoid all traces of hydrocarbons, including skin oils in a fingerprint.
These preparatory requirements, together with the actual pumping processes, use an enormous amount of energy and, as it is not technically possible to completely eliminate out-gassing or other contaminating efflux, these very low pressures, or conditions, cannot be sustained for any length of time, it is therefore clear that there is a progressively increasing force of resistance to the decompression of a gas, and a very strong resistance to the maintenance of such levels of pressure.
Why should this be the case when the only external resistance is that generated by atmospheric pressure, which in theory should be easily overcome by modern machinery?
In the opposite direction, for example, there are sophisticated machines in regular use today that compress materials to upwards of 200,000 times atmospheric pressure, for example to produce industrial diamond from carbon.
This high level of resistance requires an explanation.
It is a core premise of currently accepted physics theory that a perfect vacuum cannot influence matter in any way, and accordingly nor can any of its hypothetical, aetherial constituents.
This being the case, the question is:-
What forces are operating in these circumstances to prevent the extraction of all matter from within the compartment, and what is the source of this resistance?
The simple diagram below illustrates this situation with a perfectly sealed piston cylinder apparatus, and a single atom within the cylinder.
The hypothetical, non-material, empty space which is believed to occupy virtually all the chamber, by definition, can have no influence upon matter itself and, as matter is undeniably present within the compartmental space under investigation (and in the surrounding structure), it can only be either the single atom, and/or the atomic structure of the apparatus which generates this exponentially increasing resistance.
In other words it is matter, and matter alone, that is the cause of this resistance.
As mentioned earlier, today it is being said that the vacuum is not empty, but is permeated with waves of energy, etc. etc., but again such a medium has to have the qualities of non-resistance to the free motion of atoms and molecules within it (i.e. is a zero-inertia medium) and so could not generate any resistance.
But, in terms of the kinetic atomic theory of gases, where the only force allowed is a positive one generated by the collisions of atoms, the generation of such a resistive or negative force is inexplicable, and if the matter of our experience is almost entirely composed of a non-material ’empty space’ (of any speculative description) then, technically speaking, it should be very easy to remove all atoms from within it.
It is an undeniable fact that current physics theory has no answer to this question and, as these numerous empirical results are a direct falsification of current, kinetic-atomic atomic theory of gases, it would be accordingly necessary to conclude that this, the base theory of the science of physics, is invalid.
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, electron microscopy images show that in the solid state atoms are in contact and are therefore continuous.
The assumption by theoretical physicists that this state ‘exists’, and is by far the largest component of macroscopic matter, is a fundamental problem for science in general, and this 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.”.
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 such a void cannot sustain the necessary process of ‘action and reaction’.
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’ etc. etc.
Also hypothetical vehicles for the transmission of forces and light through outer space were proposed, such as represented by ‘super-string’ and ‘loop’ theories.
And, with the realisation that this universal structure would mean that only a infinitely small proportion of the mass of the universe could be identified as matter, the concepts of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ occupying the vacua in outer 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 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.
100 years ago the, then strongly disputed, vacuum was set by Einstein into scientific consciousness, and 50 years ago scientists belatedly began to patch up the already unsatisfactory base of accepted atomic theory, kinetic atomic theory, by investing the essential, ‘empty space’ component with numerous hypothetical qualities.
And today it is known that atoms are the ultimate natural division of matter, in other words it is effectively proven that this is the case.
“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.” (Textbook quotes)
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.
At the beginning of the 1800’s Dalton introduced his solid, spherical, indestructible atoms and, if we ignore the belated acceptance of Avogadro’s multi-atomic molecular structures and J J Thompson’s ‘plumb pudding’ model atom later in that century, the next significant change to the internal structure of atoms was Rutherford’s model of 1919.
Since this time theoretical physicists have focused their attention on examining this structure and today have arrived at a hypothetical structure described, broadly speaking, as the Standard Model.
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 dot below on the left represents such a nucleus) the atoms single electron would be orbiting at an altitude from it of over 2 metres.
Nucleus ▪ <———————– 2.3 metres ————————> · Electron
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.
This 2mm diameter nucleus of such an atom would exert influence over a nominally spherical, sub-atomic ‘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, i.e. no distortion of their spherical forms and no loss of energy, and no reduction in the average motions of both atoms.
But it is rather difficult to imagine how a collision of such ‘vacuum’ atoms could result in such a ‘perfect’ collision.
However this picture is a simple one and the, tiny, material structure of the nuclei of atoms today, as postulated by particle physicists, are one of an extreme complexity and which are said to be composed of around 300 separate 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” 2
It could be said that these advances are due to the fact that in these disciplines solid and liquid matter are analysed using continuum mechanics, in other words atoms in these states are treated as forming a continuous structure.
But today, for theoretical physicists, in essence, the atom 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” 3 , which vacuum occupies almost all of the volume of an atom, while the proportion of matter represented by these sub-atomic particles is one trillionth of its total volume, and that atomic interactions are based upon their ‘kinetic’ motion within an extra-atomic vacuum.
The reason for physicist’s focus on the atom’s internal structure is that, as there is no possibility of the transmission of forces through and between the vacuum separating such discontinuous atoms, and they live in hope that somehow the answers could lie in the sub-atomic structure of the atom itself.
But 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 force from the mass of the nucleus outward to and beyond its outer periphery.
Clearly this Standard Model ‘vacuum’ atom is an absurdity, however the suggestion that its mass is concentrated at its central core is not but this does not mean that the remaining volume is empty of matter, as no one, and certainly no physicist, knows what matter is ultimately and so they cannot say with any certainty that matter is confined to the nucleus and electrons and so is ‘here’ and not ‘there’.
But if 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 relatively vast inter-atomic, non-material, ‘empty space’ to function, i.e. 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.
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.
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 consistently between these atoms to maintain this structure.
If there were not then according to current ‘kinetic’ theory these atoms would all separate as a result their frequent ‘kinetic’ collisions.
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.
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 “hexagonal 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 and random 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” 4
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 cross sections of this surface A-B and C-D are shown.
It is therefore clear in these examples that forces are acting at close range between these gold atoms.
The drawn out, nano-wire structure of gold atoms shown earlier 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, attractive or repulsive, 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 direct inspection the, cross sectional, magnetic alignments of the spheres composing these assemblies in the three photos above are as in the diagram 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 the magnetic alignments of these spheres are, again from direct observation, as represented below.
As there are no other identifiable candidates capable of generating the observed strong forces acting between the gold atoms in the ‘nano-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 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, while it is said 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” however 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”.
And 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. 6a 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. 6d.
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 shown earlier, 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 spherical central atom, as is demonstrated by the diagram 8 following this, in which the magnetic alignments of the outer atoms N-S are shown.
An alternative ‘close packed’ arrangement is shown in diagram 9b below composed of seven 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 available space completely as in 10D.
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, and are similar to the Electron Microscopy image of platinum atoms shown previously.
Below that is a photograph of a dodecahedron assembled in a 3D printing machine.
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 that of an adjacent atom, which directly translates into the force of pressure that is 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.
Conclusion
Quote:- “The solar atmosphere is actually a vacuum by most standards”
https://www.britannica.com/place/Sun/Solar-atmosphere
So in terms of current theory, as the atmosphere is composed of vacuous atoms in eternal kinetic motion in an extra-atomic vacuum.
But in this case there is absolutely no possibility of the transmission of a force, e.g. between the material structures of the Earth and the Moon, or with that of the Sun.
However it is rather obvious that there are forces acting to maintain the orbital motions of both bodies.
So there are two options, either continue believing in this impossibility, or accept that there is a fundamental fault with this theoretical base.
Facts:-
It is stated that one cubic centimetre of atmosphere at the Earth’s surface is composed of (a practically inconceivable number) 25 x 1018 atoms.
It is observed that a ray of light entering the Earth’s atmosphere is refracted and coincidentally that its velocity is fractionally reduced.
This can only be due to interactions with the progressively increasing densities of the gases of the atmosphere, in other words with the component matter of the atmosphere, the atoms.
But all physicists apparently believe that the force that you call “gravity” can act through an absolute vacuum, or through hypothetical “vacuum filling” aethers .
In the first diagram below the atoms depicted between the Earth and the Moon are each representative of innumerable numbers of atoms in reality.
And in accordance with the observed collective densities of atoms with altitude from the Earth’s surface these atoms increase in volume and decrease in mass density, as is indicated by the rapid evaporation of liquid mercury observed in these experiments. And it is stated that the rate of its evaporation doubles with an 18oC rise in temperature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpZF88fqrl8
And, it can only be concluded, that mercury atoms individually expand in volume and that their individual mass densities are lower than that of the combined atmospheric gases.
The mass densities of the atmosphere patently decreases with increase in altitude.
The second images depict atoms that increase in mass density exponentially to the core.
So there are just two options for the transmission of forces universally:-
1) Vacuous atoms in vacuum, i.e. impossibility.
2) Vacuum is a universally impossible state. Instead there is a universal continuity of magnetic atoms which expand (and contract) with input (emission) of energy and fractionally decrease (increase) in mass density and accordingly increase (decrease) in fluidity.
In conclusion the mythical, one way, force of ‘gravity’ does not exist, there is just one ultimate force acting universally between individual atoms that are composed entirely of matter, which force is also acting between two massive iron spheres suspended in proximity on 40 metre long cables, and is observed to act throughout a spherical volume of over 4 metres of atmosphere around a 5cm long neodymium magnet, and which is acting between the Earth and the Moon and between vast Galaxies.
All atoms in the universe are magnetic and extend their internally generated N-S fields externally to adjacent atoms and these (relatively weak) individual fields generate the magnetic field that is observed to be generated by the Earth at its surface through an atmosphere composed of 25 x 1018 atoms per cubic centimetre.
Magnetism is the ultimate universal force.
Roger Munday