Any comments about Gryzinski free-fall atomic model?

[Duda Jarek]

I generally agree with the last posts of both lemur and swansont - the long and stormy history 'melted' dogmas and reasonable hypotheses ... we just have to base on some foundations, but obligation of people calling themselves scientists should be also the search for clear distinction between faith and science - being careful/pessimistic about unproven 'well known facts' - especially if they disagree with experiment ... or lead to logical inconsistencies - for example the coexistence of a few dozens essentially different 'valid interpretations' seems to be a strong suggestion - not to accept that Nature is illogical, but rather to question our dogmas.

 

The central questions of this topic is about corpuscular nature of electrons in atoms - while e.g. semiclassical WBK approximation is about reaching QM basing on classical approximation and so trajectories, there is some kind of social certainty/taboo in trying to imagine quantum probability clouds as emerging from trajectories.

Duality principle strongly suggests that electrons have simultaneously both natures, what is clearly seen e.g. in Afshar experiment.

Looking at photos of atoms, we can see where in orbital electron was (localized?) before being tear off by potential.

If we accept (used in EPR) precessive motion of electron's spin, there is periodic process involved with it - in some situations it's essential for electron to be somewhere (corpuscular nature) and sometimes it has to 'fit with phase' of its own periodic process (has wave nature).

 

Please finally explain why you are insisting that we just cannot think of orbitals as emerging from trajectories?

[swansont]

Please finally explain why you are insisting that we just cannot think of orbitals as emerging from trajectories?

 

Because the physics doesn't work. Angular momentum and/or dipole moment are things of which you would tend to run afoul.

[lemur]

But valid science is also based on valid science. How are you differentiating the two? Where's the dogma? How is this just not a whopping huge straw-man, based on ignorance of science?

 

Einstein's work is questioned and tested continually, so that seems to be either another straw-man, or an example that shows an incredible ignorance of the scientific landscape. It's very easy to accuse science of being dogmatic, but for those who are scientists, and have actually spent considerable time learning the basics and arguing pros and cons of an hypothesis, it would be comical if it weren't so pathetic. When you jump in the deep end of a discussion and find out that you're in over your head, it's your own fault for not having learned how to swim. But it's a lot easier to just label the swimmers as witches, and claim that's why they can float.

All I was trying to point out is that dogma/faith is an attitude/approach toward knowledge by the knower, regardless of what kind of knowledge it is or what its basis may be. In religion, it is slightly more apparent that good philosophies get transmuted into mindless dogmatism in the form of chants and rituals, but it is a little harder to see when science goes from being an open critical discourse that subjects received knowledge to empirical testing to being an orthodox body/bodies of knowledge whose questioning is resisted and fought by its keepers/guardians. Obviously the issue isn't whether knowledge is true or not. If someone questions or rejects faith in gravity, it will continue to be true. The issue is that if proponents of, say, geocentrism or assumptions about a flat Earth would have been successful in maintaining dogmatic recapitulation of their presumed truths, science would not have progressed beyond them. To me, dogma is just a holding pattern that any knowledge can fall into when it hasn't been successfully challenged for a while. Scientific critique is what gets it out of that holding pattern, even when the knowledge that has been dogmatized it itself derived from scientific work.

Edited January 30, 2011 by lemur

[Bignose]

Scientific critique is what gets it out of that holding pattern, even when the knowledge that has been dogmatized it itself derived from scientific work.

 

And, to be fair, science welcomes this critique. The vast, vast majority of what we know today will be shown to be at least incomplete if not wrong some day. There will always be improvements and refinements. Where scientists start getting annoyed is when someone comes along and attempts to claim their model or idea is as good as or better than existing ones without doing the necessary ground work. Without showing that their model makes predictions as good or better than the current models, science does not accept these kinds of claims. Coupled with the knowledge that the current models are the current models because they have been shown to be the best at making accurate predictions, it may seem "dogmatic" to cite the current theory, but there are literally thousands of papers of evidence for it, that if someone would put some time in the library, could be easily found.

[lemur]

And, to be fair, science welcomes this critique. The vast, vast majority of what we know today will be shown to be at least incomplete if not wrong some day. There will always be improvements and refinements.

My point exactly.

 

 

Where scientists start getting annoyed is when someone comes along and attempts to claim their model or idea is as good as or better than existing ones without doing the necessary ground work. Without showing that their model makes predictions as good or better than the current models, science does not accept these kinds of claims.

I'm divided on this part. On the one hand, I understand the irritation when people come up with ridiculous theories that have been elaborated ad tedium without checking the basic foundations for validity. On the other, since I am no expert, I sometimes like to play with ideas that probably seem just as naive to experts with knowledge that would inform my ideas if I had it. So I think there is a balance between lowering one's head and restricting oneself to passive learning and allowing one's creative juices to flow and postulate thoughts that might turn out to be idiotic, but will generate educative discussion in their critical reception. What doesn't help this process is when either orthodox-science dogmatism or crackpot dogmatism blocks the exchange of constructive critical discussion.

 

Coupled with the knowledge that the current models are the current models because they have been shown to be the best at making accurate predictions, it may seem "dogmatic" to cite the current theory, but there are literally thousands of papers of evidence for it, that if someone would put some time in the library, could be easily found.

Citation isn't necessarily dogmatic. It can be, but that is when people cite things axiomatically as if to say, "because s/he said so." Citation is a valuable part of scientific discourse when you need to refer to an idea or information that you read somewhere so that you're not plagiarizing, or because it simply saves effort to mention something without explaining it on the chance that the reader is familiar with the cited text. Dogmatism comes into play when people refuse to subject cited text/authors to critical questioning or attack others to defend the validity of those cited texts/authors without being willing to have a constructive discussion about any shortcomings along with the strengths.

 

 

[swansont]

The irritation/frustration comes in when the questioner is unaware of the evidence which supports the theory, and proceeds as if it doesn't exist. The result is that what might sound dogmatic isn't.

[michel123456]

Because the physics doesn't work. Angular momentum and/or dipole moment are things of which you would tend to run afoul.

 

Could you elaborate your answer a little bit?

[Duda Jarek]

I would like to join to Michel's question ...

I though we get through 'momentum problem' in first posts (complex objects like cats or atoms can rotate with zero angular momentum)...?

About dipole moments - Gryzinski for almost 20 years was the head of Polish hot plasma group (table on 7th page) and so he was extremely careful about such EM properties, which should be clearly seen in experiments he compared his models to...?

Edited January 31, 2011 by Duda Jarek

[swansont]

You asked about trajectories, not just this model. If it solves angular momentum, there is still the issue of a well-localized electron giving rise to a dipole moment, and neutral atoms do not have permanent electron dipole moments, as far as we can measure.

[Duda Jarek]

Dipole moment is created by electrons having angular momentum, while in Gryzinski's hydrogen angular momentum is zero - electron make free fall toward nucleus. In his papers he calculated (among others) many different moments and claimed to get really good agreement with experiment - he was doing related experimental research his whole life and it was this really good agreement what brought him to classical path.

Even if you aren't satisfied with this agreement (QM approximations were worse) or you would find some errors in these peer-reviewed papers, you have to remember that they are still only approximations.

 

If you want to prove that electron looses corpuscle half of duality near proton, you should rather have some deeper conceptual argument for this belief?

Edited January 31, 2011 by Duda Jarek

[swansont]

Dipole moment is created by electrons having angular momentum,

 

No, an electric dipole moment is created when you have a positive and negative charge separated. An electron following a trajectory around a nucleus must have an electric dipole moment. The Bohr model fails to hold for the Stark shift at high field; how does the Gryzinski model stack up? Having an electron with a precise trajectory would seem to be a problem for the hyperfine splitting as well, since the magnetic interaction would have to change in time. Again, how does it compare to experiment?

[mississippichem]

Having an electron with a precise trajectory would seem to be a problem for the hyperfine splitting as well, since the magnetic interaction would have to change in time. Again, how does it compare to experiment?

 

Very true, if electrons had trajectories then the EPR spectrometer at my school would need to be able to time resolve in order to get any meaningful hyperfine splitting. It doesn't time resolve, and I got some beautiful hyperfine splitting just yesterday.

[swansont]

Very true, if electrons had trajectories then the EPR spectrometer at my school would need to be able to time resolve in order to get any meaningful hyperfine splitting. It doesn't time resolve, and I got some beautiful hyperfine splitting just yesterday.

 

Th alternative, I think, is that it would be exceedingly noisy, and it isn't. We base atomic clocks on hyperfine transitions.

 

Looking at photos of atoms, we can see where in orbital electron was (localized?) before being tear off by potential.

 

The s-orbital is spherically symmetric.

 

Gryzinski predicts it to be planar.

 

Inspection of all these result shows that the free-fall orbit may be closedonly in one case, that is in the case of the planar orbit that was considered at the beginning.

 

http://www.iea.cyf.gov.pl/gryzinski/teor4ang.html

 

I also don't understand his argument that the orbit has zero angular momentum; I think his argument implies that the electron and nucleus continually trade angular momentum during the collision, which in itself has experimental implications.

[Duda Jarek]

swansont, since you were talking about angular momentum, I thought about atom's magnetic moment.

In Gryzinski's hydrogen atom, electric dipole moment quickly change its direction, so that it vanishes while taking time average (and could help with cold fusion if we didn't make this average).

I don't feel competent to comment it, but there is a lot about electric dipole/quadrupole/octupole moments in his papers about Ramsauer effect and chemistry - I don't believe he would considered such models seriously if there were serious difference in such essential experimental parameters like moments.

I don't understand your objections about Stark effect - that electric field change energy of charged electron ... there is briefly presented calculus for it in his book, but it seems it wasn't published anywhere else.

 

About hyperfine structure, it's extremely subtle effect ... I don't know if he considered it, but classically there is also a difference if two magnets/spins are aligned parallelly (repelling) or anti-parallelly (attraction) - this force drops like 1/r^4, but free-falling electron almost misses nucleus ...

I see QM statistically emerging as time average, so it's perfect for modeling relatively static atoms like while considering energy spectrum.

Gryzinski's reluctance to QM was based on its weak agreement in more dynamical situations he was working on - scatterings - they provide much more experimental data than energy spectrum. His classical scattering papers have hundreds of citings because it really worked better ...

 

In WKB semicalssical approximation we start with classical one - why we cannot consider such approximation for electron in atom?

Anyway, since you are attacking quite technical problems of this classical approximation, does it mean that you don't have any fundamental arguments against electron's corpuscular nature?

 

The s-orbital is spherically symmetric.

Gryzinski predicts it to be planar.

Observe that while such free fall, the result of bounce strongly depend on conditions - so adding thermodynamical noise make that in fact 'Gryzinski's triangle' for hydrogen should fuzzy with time and finally its time average should became spherically symmetric.

Another explanation is that the choice of the plane strongly depends on initial electron's condition - since e.g. these photos are made thanks of thousands of electrons, we get average over different planes.

 

About zero angular momentum, since it is zero initially and there is no external source, it has to remain zero - like for cat turning while falling.

 

ps. I've just read the last Couder's paper - they've observed Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization condition for ... oil droplets

Looking at MERW-based stochastic models, I would say that they also should observe more general spatial Anderson's localization on irregular pool - for example time average shifted toward resonant modes on Sinai's billiard as in quantum chaos ...

Edited January 31, 2011 by Duda Jarek

[swansont]

Observe that while such free fall, the result of bounce strongly depend on conditions - so adding thermodynamical noise make that in fact 'Gryzinski's triangle' for hydrogen should fuzzy with time and finally its time average should became spherically symmetric.

Another explanation is that the choice of the plane strongly depends on initial electron's condition - since e.g. these photos are made thanks of thousands of electrons, we get average over different planes.

 

About zero angular momentum, since it is zero initially and there is no external source, it has to remain zero - like for a cat turning while falling.

 

You can spin-polarize atoms and get rid of that effect. There are implications of the emission spectrum of such a system. Has Gryzinski worked that out?

 

A cat has an internal structure not present in an atom. G's model requires that the electron continually trade angular momentum with the nucleus, because when the electron makes it's closest pass to the nucleus, it clearly has angular momentum (r is perpendicular to p and neither are zero). Meaning the nucleus must have an opposite amount to maintain a zero value, and this means that the nuclear angular momentum is not quantized in his model.

 

And his system doesn't work for spin 0 nuclei that have no magnetic moments. We know they exist and have no hyperfine structure — that's experimentally verified. (The model fails catastrophically here)

 

ps. I've just read the last Couder's paper - they've observed Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization condition for ... oil droplets

 

Last time I checked, oil droplets were not atoms.

[Duda Jarek]

You can spin-polarize atoms and get rid of that effect. There are implications of the emission spectrum of such a system. Has Gryzinski worked that out?

As I've said, I have no experience about this model - I remember he used this plane picture allowing for spin-polarization to explain Stern-Gerlach experiment, but I don't know if e considered e.g. Zeeman effect - I believe there still have left a lot to do.

 

A cat has an internal structure not present in an atom.

Complex object means built of at least two e.g. particles, like atom - angular momentum conservation says that without external interaction, total angular momentum of such object has to be preserved.

And so if while free-falling total angular momentum of atom is zero, it has to remain that way.

About quantization of nucleus - this complex object has own magnetic moment and it seems natural that it should somehow synchronize with electrons - leading to their common quantization... ?

And his system doesn't work for spin 0 nuclei that have no magnetic moments. We know they exist and have no hyperfine structure — that's experimentally verified. (The model fails catastrophically here)

Looking at 2nd picture of his 4th lecture you've linked, the main Lorentz force seems to be caused by electron's own magnetic moment - nucleus spin has minor effect here.

Last time I checked, oil droplets were not atoms.

Oil droplets had rather to be electron analogy - suggestion that quantization is more general phenomenon and density clouds could naturally emerge on statistical level of localized entities - oil droplet is nice model of soliton: surface tension make it maintaining its shape.

Quantization of localized objects means that its internal periodic process (like spin precession) has to make some integer number of periods while single orbit - it leads to analogy of Bohr quantization condition.

If we would like to describe it statistically, beside probability there is also important relative phase of this internal periodic process - the phase of wavefunction describes it.

[mississippichem]

Anyway, since you are attacking quite technical problems of this classical approximation, does it mean that you don't have any fundamental arguments against electron's corpuscular nature?

 

I'm sure fundamental arguments exist. However, I don't think it needs to go that far. It has been presented in this thread that the idea of "corpuscular electrons" and therefore the model that you present are not reconcilable with the huge body of spectroscopic, and other, evidence that exists. Hyperfine splitting, I=0 nuclei, observed angular momentum, [not to mention the how the "G free-fall" model will predictably botch all currently accepted theories of chemical bonding (especially ligand field theory).]; all the quantities and behaviors predicted by this model are out of line with those experiments. Until that can be reconciled, further delving into fundamental arguments is futile and in my opinion non-rigorous.

 

A proposed model must first fall in line with accepted experimental evidence. Period. I'm not trying to be dogmatic, that's just the way science is conducted.

[Duda Jarek]

mississippichem , the main Lorentz force here is caused by electron's magnetic moment, so everything 'works' also with I=0.

But if nucleus has nonzero magnetic moment, there appears additional complicated correction - mainly attraction/repelling while electron misses nucleus - the alignment of nucleus spin is important - maybe G didn't calculated this, but why do you think there is a problem with hyperfine splitting here?

 

Anyway, he made a really huge work, but I agree there still left a lot to do ... but you seem to have some deeper reason to belief that such path of getting as much as possible from understandable: classical approximations is just senseless - what is this reason?

Edited January 31, 2011 by Duda Jarek

[michel123456]

It seems the G-model hurts too much accepted theories.

The wiki article is unbelievably poor. There are only few translations in english. The situation is terrible. You engaged a lost battle, Duda.

 

But G-model is really interesting.

[swansont]

Looking at 2nd picture of his 4th lecture you've linked, the main Lorentz force seems to be caused by electron's own magnetic moment - nucleus spin has minor effect here.

 

Without a nuclear spin, there is no magnetic field with which to interact. The electron feels no deflecting force.

 

It seems the G-model hurts too much accepted theories.

The wiki article is unbelievably poor. There are only few translations in english. The situation is terrible. You engaged a lost battle, Duda.

 

But G-model is really interesting.

 

Yes, it is interesting. But it fails to work in fatal ways. "Hurting accepted theories" doesn't enter into it. The accepted theories match nature much better, which is why they are accepted.

[Duda Jarek]

Without a nuclear spin, there is no magnetic field with which to interact. The electron feels no deflecting force.

Not true.

Let's choose electron's reference frame for infinitesimal time - electron stops and proton is moving in magnetic field of electron's magnetic momentum - now look at Lorentz force and then use 3rd Newton's law ...

Like Aharonov-Casher is dual to Aharonov-Bohm, charge in magnetic field is dual to magnetic moment in electric field.

Nucleus magnetic moment is a few thousands times smaller and so hyperfine corrections are.

Edited January 31, 2011 by Duda Jarek

[Duda Jarek]

swansont, if you agree that besides magnetic moment of nucleus, there might be also quite important thousands times larger electron's magnetic moment, I think you still need at least one concrete argument to support your claims that "it fails to work in fatal ways." ?

 

Meanwhile, I was pointed out very interesting paper of prof. Hestenes in which he reminds forgotten de Broigle's doctoral thesis concept, which seems to originally motivated Schroedinger:

that with particle's energy: E = mc²

comes its internal periodic motion: E = hf

There is also recent experimental conformation of this claim by Gouanere et al mentioned there: for 80MeV electrons, one such period corresponds to spacing in silicon crystal and it seems they've observed such absorption (here is more recent different conformation of this zitterbewegung).

Such internal periodic motion allows for wave-particle duality as literally observed for oil droplets in extremely educating papers of Couder, Fort et al - that because of some periodic motion, localized particles create periodic wave-like perturbation of the field around - interaction with these waves allows for 'quantum effects': interference, tunneling depending on practically random hidden parameters or orbit quatization condition - that particle has to 'find a resonance' with field perturbations it creates - after one orbit, its internal phase has return to the initial state.

Interesting question is to understand relation with Gryzinski's explanation: using spin precession?

Another interesting information could be that it occurs that prof. Bucher recently rediscovered free-falling atomic model even neglecting magnetic moments.