Smallest Sliver of Time
New Scientist Article on Smallest Sliver of Time Ever Measured
From that article:
“In this case, the speed demon was an electron escaping the bonds of its parent atom.”
But according to this:
”A helium atom is an atom of the chemical element helium. Helium is composed of two electrons bound by the electromagnetic force to a nucleus containing two protons along with either one or two neutrons, ...” - Wikipedia
And according to this:
”When helium atom loses one electron it becomes positive ion with +1 charge” – science.blurtit
But according to this:
“It will not lose any electron. As it is a noble gas (Group 18 ) it will not either gain or lose or share any electrons. It has a completely filled shell.”
http://www.answers.com/.../How_many_electrons_does_Helium...
What gives? Can a helium atom loose an electron or not?
If a helium atom looses an electron why does it remain a helium atom? If it does not loose an electron, then what escaped from the helium atom in the article?
“We” classify atoms according to their number of protons, so if helium looses one, it is still helium but its chemistry is different, hence called an ion. We determine an element by the number of protons, an isotope by the number of neutrons and the ionization state by the number of electrons.
Can a helium atom loose an electron or not?
Group 18, has eight valence electrons, except for helium, which only has two. Why is this?
What happens if those nitwits knock both electrons from the helium atom. What is it then?
Well, an atom can loose a proton but then it is a different type of atom (next one over on the periodic table), according to atomic phiz whizes.
Steve says, “Yes...but the claim in the article is that 'physicists shoot protons around a 17-mile track and smash them together at nearly the speed of light.' That certainly implies that the protons were not lost from the atom, but, in fact, were snagged from the atom. These are some funny guys.”
Well, electrons are fundamental particles to these guys and if you collide them there isn't anything left over, like when colliding protons. But, like you say, if you take a proton then what happened to the electron, and vice-versa. Maybe we'll find them some day in the missing sock department. All those socks that disappear in the wash have to go some where.
But one reason the new LHC which is 70 times more powerful than the old one, uses mostly protons instead of electrons/positrons is because all the radiation that would be lost at the higher energy levels. (Accelerating electrons [charged particles] causes them to release radiation). What is this radiation?
Ok, returning to the article, we see this:
“When a polarised laser pulse is trained on a jet of helium gas, it sweeps some electrons away from the atoms before bringing them back again – like flotsam rising and falling on the ocean waves.
“But the electrons do not always immediately fall back again: some may get caught up in subsequent waves and so hang around for longer periods before returning to the atom.”
So the electrons are not being permanently removed from their atom, only held in an ocean wave of light for a short time before being returned to their valance band to merrily orbit along.
An atom is electrically neutral when it has all its marbles. When it looses one, or two it becomes negatively or positively charged. Atoms tend to seek stability by becoming electrically neutral according to the octet rule. They loose, gain or share electrons.
Eight valence electrons make a stable atom, like the noble gases, with the exclusion of hydrogen and helium. Elements accomplish this by bonding either covalently or ionically.
Here's something else to consider: we are told that when an electron moves from its steady state (electrons orbiting in their usual path) to an excited state (wider or higher orbit) and then drops back down to its steady state, it releases energy in the form of a photon.
Is this creation of matter? Or, is the massless photon just a spirit?
When the fundamental atom, hydrogen, receives a new proton (two H-atoms merge) such as what we are told happens inside a star, then, we have by way of fusion, helium. Supposedly there is some left over “binding energy” along with positrons (anti-electrons) and gamma rays produced.
Elements are jealous of the Noble gases and most want to be just like them with their 8 valance electrons, but there are exceptions besides helium, and hydrogen. Beryllium and boron, for example, have fewer. Also, there are some elements that are fine and dandy with less than 8 valance electrons such as sulfur and phosphorus. Sulfur uses its 6 valance electrons to bond with halogen.
Elements like lithium want to loose an electron so they can be more stable. As do all alkali metals which tend to loose an electron in order to mimic the nearest noble gas.
Since the physicists and chemists have made a rule that an atom’s electrons can not exceed the number of protons, hydrogen can exist as only a proton but not as an electron. This is a good thing, because that’s what makes electricity possible, and why metals are so conductive.
Because electrons can move so easily from one (metal) atom to the next, they can “transfer energy or charge in the form of heat or electricity”
But rational scientists understand there are no such material objects like radiation, energy, heat or electricity. There are no discrete electron or positron particles, so how do we explain binding energy, and the rest with a physical model?
Can alchemists knock some electrons out of lead to obtain gold? After all, if creation of particles out of thin air is possible why not transmutation of lead into gold. We see how hydrogen becomes helium, and alkali metals become gases.
“It is relatively straightforward to convert lead, bismuth or mercury into gold,” Morrissey says.
“The problem is the rate of production is very, very small and the energy, money, etcetera expended will always far exceed the output of gold atoms.”
"In 1980, when the bismuth-to-gold experiment was carried out, running particle beams through the Bevalac cost about $5,000 an hour, “and we probably used about a day of beam time,” recalls Oregon State University nuclear chemist Walter Loveland, one of the researchers on the project. Glenn Seaborg, who shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with heavy elements and who died in 1999, was the senior author on the resulting study. “It would cost more than one quadrillion dollars per ounce to produce gold by this experiment," Seaborg told the Associated Press that year. The going rate for an ounce of gold at the time? About $560."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/.../fact-or-fiction.../
Back to the article:
The near infra red laser is fired at the helium cloud and timed with femtosecond precisions. The lab rats measure the time the electron jumps from its tightly bound ground state to its “freed” state. Depending on how the electron interacted with the helium atom’s nucleus or the other electron determined if it accelerated or decelerated. Using the information gleaned from the experiment they were able to time the event.
But this…well this:
“The researchers were also able to measure how the electrons divided up the laser’s energy, taking an even or uneven share. In some cases, one of the two electrons grabbed all of the energy. Several factors influenced this energy split, from the quantum correlation between the electrons to the electromagnetic state of the laser field, Schultze says.”
Is just too much for my little MonkEmind to absorb. Whatever are they talking about? What is this energy thing being divided and what is “the electromagnetic state of the laser field”?
Continuing on...
By understanding how electrons interact, the researchers hope to be able to apply this understanding to superconductivity and quantum computing.
“There is always more than one electron. They always interact. They will always feel each other, even at great distances,” he says.
“Many things are rooted in the interactions of individual electrons, but we handle them as a collective thing. If you really want to develop a microscopic understanding of atoms, on the most basic level, you need to understand how electrons deal with each other.”
There is an interesting statement in there, did you catch it? But the missing element in that is HOW electrons feel each other even at great distances!
The title of the article claims the smallest sliver of time ever measured. But time itself is a measurement, so they measured a measurement?!? NOPE! Only objects can be measured.
Newton said this:
“It is inconceivable that inanimate Matter should, without the Mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and affect other matter without mutual Contact…That Gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to Matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance thro’ a Vacuum, without the Mediation of any thing else, by and through 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.” – Newton.
Even Alfred, began to understand, as in the words of Shakespear’s Marcellus, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Einstein’s IAAAD or “spooky action at a distance” troubled him until his death. He began to loose faith in relativity and in all of physics.
“As far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality they are not certain, and so far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”“Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore.”
“There is not a single concept, of which I am convinced that it will survive, and I am not sure whether I am on the right way at all.” —Albert Einstein
If one is tired of the irrational reification of such mathematical abstractions as time, space, energy, field and radiation, then come on over to the Rational Scientific Method Facebook Group where we explain phenomena with objects. Or, check out my series of books, Rational Science Vols I-V on Amazon.com; AND for a viable alternative atomic model, a physical model for electricity, magnetism, light and gravity, don’t miss my book on Bill Gaede’s Rope Hypothesis and Thread Theory.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071W9QLPB
