In my last post talked about the structure and properties of helium. Or at least what I interpret the structure of helium to be, if I understand my theory correctly. Today, I decided to discuss the simplest of solid elements, that is lithium.
As a first disclaimer, the schemes that I show are meant to be understood as educated guesses. I have good hunch that the general guidelines are correct, but I can still be a bit off.
Lithium is a very ‘popular’ element nowadays, as it is what drives (quite literally) the electrification of transport. Or more precisely, it is the key component of the rechargeable batteries found in mobile phones, laptops and electric cars, just to name a few common applications.
Last time I described how the supramolecular shell of helium is stable, as it each helium atom can bind in four directions along the supramolecular shell. Rather curiously, adding a proton to allow for bonding in 3D appears to be the reason why lithium is such a reactive element (despite being stable in the sense that it doesn’t undergo nuclear decay).
As I mentioned in my last post, I have rather strong grounds to suspect that neutron is the mirror pair of the proton/electron orbital, which in turn is a single entity, despite the name indicating that it is composed of a separate proton and electron. In the below scheme is such a pair, with proton/electron in blue and neutron in yellow. The color order doesn’t matter here but will when the scheme is used to illustrate lithium.
Next, we take a leap of faith in guessing how three such pairs arrange in Lithium-6. Lithium is present in two isotopes: Lithium-6, with three neutrons, and Lithium-7, with four neutrons. While Lithium-7 is a much more common element, I’ll make my life easier by considering the simpler isotope to illustrate.
Our first clue on the arrangement of the protons is the crystal structure of lithium. This is body centered cubic (BCC), or a system where the atoms form a cube. Or more specifically a cube with an edge of another cube inside. Thus, it seems a good guess to copy a proton/electron/neutron ‘butterfly’ and twist it 90 degrees to first get a structure that resembles Helium-4. To get a cubic structure, a third ‘butterfly’ is copied and twisted so that the two edges of the proton are at a 90° angle to both protons. What you get looks like a huge mess, but its good to remember that the strings are only Planck length in thickness and thus will not interfere with each other. Below you can see eight of the guessed Lithium atoms in a cubic lattice. It’s immediately obvious that there is a lot of empty space between the atoms in this arrangement.
And below you can see 16 Lithium atoms in the true BCC arrangement. While it is impossible to distinguish an individual lithium atom any longer, the structure seems intuitively right. Or at least it does for me.
Do you remember what I told you about the reactivity of Lithium? It’s the least reactive alkali metal, but it’s not saying a lot. The Lithium metal will begin to react as soon as it is exposed to anything with which it can react. During my PhD, when doing synthetic chemistry, I used quite a bit of lithium. It was stored as a soft chunk of metal in a jar of mineral oil, to prevent it from reacting with air. Whenever one needed to use it, the piece was lifted with metal thongs or pliers and first patted with tissue to absorb the residual oil from the chunk. The surface of the chunk would have a thin layer of dark lithium oxide, which could not be avoided. Next, a suitable piece was carved from the chunk with a carpet knife. This gives an indication of how soft lithium is. Next, the chunk would be weighed and inserted into a solvent, where it would react with it to form a catalyst. Usually, the solvent that I used was pentanol, and the catalyst formed was lithium pentanolate.
How this is relevant to anything is to say that despite lithium being able to bond and form solids, its structure is apparently way too unstable to remain as it is. An important thing to note is that while the solid metallic structure are sheets of molecules on top of another, Lithium still has a supramolecular shell as well. This is observed in the absorption of Lithium vapor. In its solid form, Lithium might not display direct evidence of the supramolecular shell (although I couldn’t be sure about this). However, the melting of lithium can only be explained by the separation of the crystal structure into supramolecular shells. The temperature for this is 180.5 °C.
I’m still too in the beginning in my string model of atoms to say much more about the properties of lithium. However, after having read about the basic properties of lithium-ion batteries, I might have something useful to say.
You see, these batteries are all based in the property of intercalation, or “the reversible inclusion or insertion of a molecule (or ion) into layered materials with layered structures.” This sounds very much like the inclusion of a cubic lattice inside another cubic lattice to form the BCC structure shown in the lowest image. However, instead of forming a lithium metal layer, lithium is intercalated with sheets of graphite. Here, the lithiated state is LiC6, which has a high energy density.
I fear that if I try to go any deeper, I will fall too much into speculative territory. While there are bound to be inaccuracies in this model, I can’t help but be a bit giddy about offering the first discreet model of a solid. Or a model that attempts to describe a solid with strings of Planck spheres. While the images (especially the lowest one) might look messy and random, things couldn’t be further from the truth. The proton/electron orbital itself is based on solved trigonometry, so is topologically sound. Then, the mirror/chiral neutron follows the same topology, but only as a mirror image (and the chirality is only expressed in how the loops overlap at the center anyhow). Next, there are the three pairs of proton/electron/neutron ‘butterflies’, whose arrangement is guided by the known crystal structure of lithium. Similarly, the overlapping of the two cubic structures is taken from the crystal structure of lithium.
Thus, while only portraying the Lithium-6 isotope, the model is probably surprisingly accurate. I’m quite confident that no one would accept this initial idea as a manuscript. However, I think the reluctancy of sharing rough ideas within the scientific community is a major problem for the advancement of sciences. I would be already happy to show this to the world. I would just add huge label on it, saying where I am taking leaps of faith and clearly stating that I might be wrong in my approach. It appears baffling that this kind of embracing of uncertainty, while still making educated guesses, is entirely lacking in current peer-review. That is, if I clearly state that I do not know for sure, and that I am making an educated guess, it is an immediate ground for rejection, if the statement is not related to a graph showing experimental results. And even in the case of experimental results, one must keep speculation to the minimum. The reason being that if one is wrong, the sky might fall.
Here I might be ranting a bit, but I have a feeling that quantum mechanics has dropped into a territory of mathematical magic. This is to say that everyone working in quantum mechanics takes it as a given that nothing relating to quantum mechanics makes intuitive sense and that it can only be understood by solving equations. If the new equations are well grounded on old equations, they can be published. And if the new equations are backed up by experiments, they can be gradually added into the scientific canon. There appears to be no other way. I claim that the non-deterministic nature of the wave function itself masks the deterministic nature of life and that the only way to dig ourselves out of this mathematical animism is to build a new mathematical framework independent of the current wave-function approach, but still embracing all of the experimental results of the past hundred years. The problem is that this is a herculean task. I’ve decided not to touch the mathematics any more than needed, as what I propose is that the concepts are better understood intuitively. Only when the basic intuitive rules have been found, is it worthwhile to try to figure out the mathematical underpinnings of this intuitive approach. For instance the chiral nature of the neutron was purely a geometrical interpretation of mine of the observed properties of Helium and Lithium, and did not involve any mathematics higher than that.
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