Today I’ll continue with my writing exercises. This time trying to give a literal interpretation for the process of converting light into matter. Again, I’m trying carefully not to introduce concepts that haven’t been experimentally verified. Rather, I’ll try to show how the conversion of light to mass is very much a physical process understandable by a person without a degree in sciences, when understood from the context of the elementary particles I’ve dubbed dots.
The drive for me to write this post comes from having to explain why I think that the molecular orbital looks like this:
In the original counterevidence manuscript I had put the orbital into the supplementary information and had primarily stated that it refers to the simplest supramolecular shell. I had also stated that the supramolecular shell of hydrogen would be comprised of orbitals depicted above. The reviewers had no clear objections to what I wrote. I have a strong feeling that neither of the reviewers had even read the supplementary information. Apparently it is seen as a repository of irrelevant information that doesn’t need to be read by the reviewers.
This time I’m inserting the scheme into the main manuscript and explicitly state that the shape is the simplest possible on for a hydrogen (H2) molecule. But as I do that, I must be able to make my case. And I must do it without hand-waving. I’m pretty confident that my case for the quantum of light being a ring of dots is logical and follows from experimental evidence. Because light moves at the speed of light (duh!), there’s nothing else that’s contrary to the understanding of what light is. Well, at least once the concept of photons being linked into a supraphoton, but that shouldn’t be difficult to accept…
But the conversion of the straight movement of light first into rotation and then conversion into matter? To begin with I need to find instances for this. Luckily, we have the Breit–Wheeler process, introduced 89 years ago.
The Breit–Wheeler process or Breit–Wheeler pair production is a proposed physical process in which a positron–electron pair is created from the collision of two photons. It is the simplest mechanism by which pure light can be potentially transformed into matter. The process can take the form γ γ′ → e+ e− where γ and γ′ are two light quanta (for example, gamma photons).
And here is the image from the Wikipedia article:
To be honest, the Wikipedia page says that:
Although the process is one of the manifestations of the mass–energy equivalence, as of 2017, the pure Breit–Wheeler has never been observed in practice because of the difficulty in preparing colliding gamma ray beams and the very weak probability of this mechanism.
But fear not, a slightly altered version of the process, the nonlinear Breit–Wheeler process has been shown to work. There, the process is aided with a strong electromagnetic field such as a laser.
So, what happens in a Breit-Wheeler process? In it, the collision of gamma rays creates an electron-positron pair. I might have mentioned that anti-matter is otherwise identical to regular matter, but rotates in the opposite direction. What happens when an electron (matter) collides with antimatter (positron), is you get a phenomenon called electron–positron annihilation, where this collision creates two or more gamma photons.
So, what is it that’s happening in the (regular or nonlinear) Breit–Wheeler process? Try as I may, I get bogged down by trying to understand what an electron looks like. I am not alone in this. currently it is understood that it is a point particle, possibly with no size. Assuming that the idea of an electron being a point particle is baloney, what else could it be? There is a calculation converting the mass of electron (0.511 MeV, or 9.1x10^-31 kg) to a a distance of 2.426 pm with the equation hc/0.511 MeV. So at least the starting point for the energy/mass of an electron is the same as for a gamma photon.
So, what’s the minimum that needs to happen to the gamma photon? Its linear movement has to be converted into rotation. What can make this happen? Possibly just the right kind of collision where the individual dots aren’t recoiled, as in a mirror, but rather where the angle of collision is just right, so that all of the dots begin moving sideways and end up pushing each other into a circular orbit.
Perhaps, but I had this general idea almost two months ago and couldn’t really develop it further. Then what? Then a miracle occurs and this circular orbit turns into an inward spiralling orbit that splits into two halves: an electron spinning in one direction and a positron spinning in another direction. Yeah, I don’t buy it either. For two months I’ve been stuck.
I know the process really takes place, because it can be done in the lab, but is my explanation any less hand-waving than the current explanation. At least the current explanation has the mathematics right, even though the general concept of energy transforming into mass is more hand-wavy than my interpretation. But complaining about other people’s flaws while hand-waving one’s own flaws would land me into crackpot territory. So, I won’t hide the fact that I don’t know what an electron, or a proton looks like or how they behave.
Perhaps a thought experiment helps. The diameter of Van der Waals molecule at the Lyman limit is 91.2 nm, equating to a circumference of a 286.5 nm (or 286400 pm). If the size of a hydrogen atom is 53 pm, then there are roughly 5406 hydrogen atoms, or 2703 hydrogen molecules in a single loop. So we have a ring that can be sliced to 2703 wedges, with 0.133° for each wedge. Could it be that a perfectly linear (as in no bent) hydrogen molecule existed only when separated from the Van der Waals molecule? That the bend that allows hydrogen to form a Van der Waals molecule comes from the twisting of the intersection of the hydrogen molecule into two electrons, with protons on either side? Perhaps. You might remember an older post of mine where I toyed with the concept.
However, back then, almost half a year ago, I placed the twist between the hydrogen molecules. And back then I think I thought the basic orbital depicted a single hydrogen atom and not a hydrogen molecule. Now my idea has matured a bit, but it’s probably still too vague for the revised manuscript. The question arises: 1) Should I try to figure out the theory properly, so no one has any objections? 2) Should I include the current rough idea and just be honest that it’s still a guess? Or 3) Should I just not try to explain why the hydrogen molecules twist into Van der Waals molecules of very specific sizes?
The perfectionist in me would like to understand everything an spend an eternity with the theory, only showing it to the world when I am ready with the Theory of Everything. But then again, if I can just get the revised manuscript accepted, there will be plenty of people willing to try to crack the code, if they just are convinced enough that I have a point.
So, after this exercise I’m convinced that I should just write what I know and try not to make too specific claims about things I know that I can’t yet explain.
This post started with so much gusto, with the idea that I can explain the conversion of light into matter with a few easy-to-follow examples. But I only managed to introduce a very rough outline of the Breit–Wheeler process, but not really explaining how after stopping, light could twist into an electron positron pair, where either side spins to different directions. At least I got to place the electron to a more probable location in a hydrogen molecule within a Van der Waals molecule. But the idea can still be wrong.
This reminds me a bit about Andrew Wiles and his Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. In 1986 he started working on a famous mathematical problem, called Fermat's Last Theorem. I won’t bore you with the details of what the theorem is, but he basically worked on the proof for six years until he found the solution. The Wikipedia article says:
He dedicated all of his research time to this problem for over six years in near-total secrecy, covering up his efforts by releasing prior work in small segments as separate papers and confiding only in his wife.
In my case I don’t have the luxury of devoting all of my time to this anymore, but from late 2014 onwards I’ve been working on understanding the self-assembly of lignin spheres. Of this time, I don’t know how many hours have gone first into understanding the physical chemistry of what I only recently realized were Van der Waals molecules. Only for roughly a year, I’ve realized that what I had been working on was the fixing of string theory and indeed the fixing of the theory of everything.
I’d be happy to get this off my hands and let other people have a look at it and try to prove, or disprove it. To some extent I would be happy if someone looked at it closely and was able to prove that the theory is wrong. At least then, someone would have properly read it and tried to understand it.
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