Electronic alchemy becoming established science!

For some time ago I wrote about mono-atomic elements, something which not a single academic scientists would take seriously publicly, since it would mean a loss of all academic respectability. Since I have cannot do anything to my self-destructive trait of being intellectually honest and taking seriously even the claims of people who do not possess academic merits but happen to have brain with open mind, I proposed for a decade ago a model for the mono-atomic elements in terms of what I called electronic alchemy. The idea was that valence electrons of these elements could drop to larger space-time sheets and form a kind of super-conducting states. If this would not be enough for an academic suicide, for week or two ago I went on to generalize this model, and proposed that mono-atomic elements could be manifestations of "partially dark matter" with a large value of Planck constant hbar (see earlier postings and previous link). My self-suicidical behavior mode continued. The need to formulate more precisely the theoretical basis for quantization of quantization I was forced to improve my understanding of the imbeddings of type II_1 factors of von Neumann algebras which originally had inspired the hypothesis about the quantization of hbar. This led to a beautiful general picture about the construction of S-matrix in TGD framework and a fascinating generalization of quantum theory to describe also the dynamics of cognitive representations in terms of inclusion hierarchies of II_1 factors: this means nothing less than Feynman rules for TGD inspired theory of consciousness! Of course, the extremely hostile and highly un-intellectual attitude of skeptics stimulates fear in anyone possessing amygdala, and I am not an exception. Therefore it was a very pleasant surprise to receive an email telling about an article A new kind of alchemy published in New Scientist.

1. Clusters of atoms mimick atoms

The article tells that during last two decades a growing evidence for a new kind of chemistry have been emerging. Groups of atoms seem to be able to mimick the chemical behavior of single atom. For instance, clusters of 8, 20, 40, 58 or 92 sodium atoms mimick the behavior of noble gase atoms. By using oxygen to strip away electrons one by one from clusters of Al atoms it is possible to make the cluster to mimic entire series of atoms. For aluminium cluster-ions made of 13, 23 and 37 atoms plus an extra electron are chemically inert. The proposed explanation is that the valence electrons form a kind of mini-conductor with electrons delocalized in the volume of the cluster. The electronic analog of nuclear shell model predicts that full electron shells define stable configurations analogous to magic nuclei. The model explains the numbers of atoms in chemically inert Al and Ca clusters and generalizes the notion of valence to the level of cluster so that the cluster behave like single super-atom.

2. TGD based model

My own explanation for mono-atomic elements was that valence electrons are dropped to a larger space-time sheet and behave as a super-conductor. I did not realize at that time that shell model could provide an obvious manner to quantify the model. The electronic shell model as such is of course not the full story. The open question is whether standard physics really allows this kind of de-localization of electrons. A fascinating possibility is that the dropped electrons might correspond to a large value of hbar increasing the Compton lengths of electrons. One cannot exclude the possibility that this mechanism might be at work even in the case of ordinary conduction electrons.

• The interaction strength of electron with atom is characterized by k=Z*alpha (hbar=c=1) in a complete analogy with gravitational case where one has k=GM_1M_2.
• Generalizing the formula for the gravitational Planck constant h_gr given by hbar_gr/hbar= GM_1M_2/v_0, one would obtain hbar_s/hbar= Z*alpha/v_0, v_0=about 4.8*10^{-4}. Now I hear a critical voice saying that k=Z*alpha for Na (Z=11) does not satisfy the proposed criterion k>1 for the phase transition increasing hbar to occur. Despite this I continue my argument.
• The Compton length l_e=about 2.4*10^{-12} m of electron would be scaled up by a factor about 15.2*Z. For Z=11 (Na) this would scale electron Compton length to 4 Angstroms and the atomic cluster contained within single electron could contain up to 64 atoms. This is not a bad estimate. Electrons with this Compton wave length would be naturally delocalized in the volume of the cluster as assumed in the model.

Matti Pitkanen