It's been a long time since I last posted anything. The reasons for this are quite complex, but the biggest one of them is that I finally received reviewer comments for my counterevidence paper.
You see, the reviewer comments were, as I feared, unfavorable. But not unfavorable in the sense that one could expect. It wasn't that the reviewers found anything that they considered incorrect.
I'll post the reviewer comments here in their entirety:
Reviewer 1:
The manuscript is not suitable for publication in scientific reports journal: the manuscript has been prepared very poorly; the novelty of this manuscript was not clearly described.
Reviewer 2
In this study, the author proposes a version of the Rydberg formula that is reinterpreted to represent the fusion of supramolecular shells of gas molecules into a huge intermediate shell. In my opinion, the presentation of the paper in its present form is not suitable. It would be preferable if the study's key findings (including figures, tables, and so on) were reported in the main text for the benefit of the readers. Besides, I may recommend that the author compare his model with previous studies. Furthermore, there are frequently no references for the provided formula. In the case of reference 1, I would advise the author to use more reliable data (rather than the site of the engineering toolbox). All in all, I strongly believe that the paper is not clear in its present form. especially for those who are unfamiliar with the subject.
Due to these responses the editor choce to rejected the article. That is, it was not considered for major revision, but altogether rejected.
When not occupied with work and family, I've been in the process of appealing the decision and in the process of rewriting the manuscript. Or more specifically, I've been trying to address the criticism by the reviewers in a constructive manner.
By evaluating the reviewer comments we can observe the problems in peer review, where there are no clear "peers". That it, when it is difficult to find someone whose breadth of knowledge in chemistry, physics and mathematics is sufficient to address what is said in the paper.
Reviewer 1 is especially problematic. They say that "the manuscript has been prepared very poorly", without clear examples of what makes the manuscript poor. It is almost impossible to improve the quality of the writing to the desired level, if the description is that is its "poor". But more importantly they say "the novelty of this manuscript was not clearly described." I have serious concerns about the abilities of referee 1 to assess the novelty of the manuscript.
I make very clear in the title of the manuscript that I suggest one of the key postulates of the kinetic theory of gases to be incorrect. While the validity of this suggestion can be critiqued, there is absolutely no possibility whatsoever to claim that if correct, the suggestion is not novel.
It appears clear that for reviewer 1, the novelty of a manuscript comes from new experimental data and not from the reinterpretation of old experimental data, even if the new interpretation fits the experimental observations much better and leads to the introduction of new postulates and the new elementary particle, for which I use the term dot. Dot being a particle in constant motion at the speed of light and the building block of both quanta of light and of conventional matter.
Reviewer 1 does not say that what I say is wrong, or that there are errors in the analysis of the data. They only say that the manuscript is poorly written and that there is no novelty in it.
Reviewer 2 at least has a point, saying: "In the case of reference 1, I would advise the author to use more reliable data (rather than the site of the engineering toolbox)." This is a valid criticism in that I already knew when writing the manuscript that this might be an issue. The Engineering Toolbox website doesn't cite the original source they used. And I couldnt' find the original source even by extensive search. After receiving the Reviewer comments I e-mailed Engineering toolbox, and was provided with the original, reputable, source for the data.
Otherwise, Reviewer 2 doesn't claim any factual errors in the manuscript. Their criticism is more related to its form and clarity: "All in all, I strongly believe that the paper is not clear in its present form. especially for those who are unfamiliar with the subject."
And to some extent I agree with Reviewer 2. The manuscript was as good as I could make it with the knowledge I had in August 2022. After five months of further study, I amconfident that I am able to rewrite the manuscript so that it will be much clearer.
I sent the appeal for the rejection on January 4th, or over three weeks ago. I was told that "Please note that appeals must take second place to new submissions, so they can take as long as several weeks to be decided. In addition, our experience at Scientific Reports suggests that, in the majority of cases, the original decision will be upheld"
While waiting for the decision, I've been looking at the basics of what I've already written and tried to clarify the text. There is very little chance of trying to introduce anything entirely new to the manuscript.
One new thing that I am planning to add is the movement (or propagation) of light (or the supraphoton) between the supramolecular shells. You see, it is known that light propagates at the speed of light only in vacuum and slows down when passing through gas, liquid or solid (= a medium). The speed of light in a medium is v = c/n, where c is the speed of light in vacuum and n is the refractive index of the medium.
What the refractive index is, is the ability of the medium to make the supraphoton spin. That is, light is not a wave in perfect vacuum (assuming there is such a thing as a perfect vacuum). The wave-nature of light is an emergent property, caused of the medium in which light moves. In a medium witha refractive index, the direct component of light is c/n, whereas the rotational component is √(c²- c²/n²) = c√(1- 1/n²). More importantly the sum of the direct and rotational components is √(c²/n² + (c²- c²/n²)) = c. That is, each of the dots in supraphoton always move at the speed of light, even though the supraphoton slows down.
So what does this movement look like? Below I used blender to draw the movement of supraphoton in three different media: first in air (n = 1.000293), then in water (n = 1.333) and then in white pigment (titanium dioxide/ rutile, n = 2.6). Depending on what direction this movement is observed from the quantum of light looks either like ring, or a wave
The movement of a quantum of light in air, water and white pigment
And what exactly causes the refraction of light? The very simple answer is the interaction of the dots in light with the dots of the supramolecular shell. A more satisfactory answer will have to be figured out, eventually. However, I don't have anything more concrete to say at the moment.
I also decided to reverse the x and y axes of the graphs in the manuscript This is because I use the correlation [H+] ∝ √T, in the text. Thus it's more logical to have √T in the x-axis and proton concentration ([H+]) in the y-axis. I also decided to show the data points from 0 °C to 100 °C, despite the data points close to 0 °C not backing the overall linearity of the correlation between density and proton concentration. However, it is clear that the only the latter correlation is truly linear.
Neither of the reviewers doubted the data on the density of water, but they did doubt the data on the pH of water. Well, the current best correlation of the pH of water and its temperature is described by this monster of an equation:
Source: J. Phys. Chem. Ref. Data, Vol. 35, No. 1, 2006
While this monster of an equation doesn't look like anything, the more important factor is the statement:
"It is known (Hill 1956; Lopatkin 1983) that the mean interaction energy between water molecules in bulk fluid should be proportional to density."
Here Hill refers to the standard textbook on statistical mechanics: Hill, T. L., Statistical Mechanics McGraw–Hill, New York, 1956.
But somehow no bells rang in the authors head to compare the proton concentration of water versus the density of water. Rather, the paper shows the graph
The y-axis is the ionization constant of water -log Kw, whereas the the proton concentration is Kw/2. This means that if we were just to play around with the ionization constant and density, we wouldn't see anything interesting. If we plot the density of water against Kw
we get this:
Rather, you need to divide pKw by half before raising ten by its negative to get the proton concentration:
Had someone guessed there was a correlation waiting, perhaps someone might have done it. What I guess is that there have been countless of students (bachelors to graduate students) over the decades, who've come up with this correlation and shown it to their instructor. And the response has probably been: that looks so obvious that it's probably well-known already. No need to bother yourself with it.
And a final point that I'll add to the paper is the smoking gun. You see, in the paper I presented no reason why the molecules would form supramolecular shells. Only after reading more on forces between molecules (intramolecular forces), I realized that the postulate of the free movement of gas molecules itself is contradicting with known intramolecular forces. But the contradiction was so small, that it was thought that it doesn't matter. The weakest forces between molecules is the pairwise attractive van der Waals interaction energy between H atoms in different H2 molecules. It was just assumed that when molecules evaporate, all van der Waals bonds break and the molecules become free.
Even if this took place when hydrogen molecules were to evaporate from liquid hydrogen (which by the way is quite a rare state), then wouldn't the hydrogen molecules bond with each other as soon as they touched? The assumption has been that the impact of the hydrogen molecules would be so strong that the collision would cause them to separate without bonding. However, if we assume that there is a case, where the two molecules would be traveling almost in the same direction and then touched, would they neverless separate? At least not in all cases. And then, once the two hydrogen molecules have bonded again (assuming that there have been free hydrogen molecules), what would be required to break the bond? Perhaps the hydrogen molecule of a pair could jump from a bonded pair to the impacting free hydrogen, like in a Newton's cradle, but the breaking of the bond would require something more. Then if we give the system enough time, this linearly bonded chain of molecules will grow until the impacts with other chains cause it to curve into a closed loop. And here we get to what I had been describing in my manuscript. Without breaking any 'laws', or without introducing new forces.
Next, I just have to rewrite the mansucript so that the reviewers cannot claim it to be poorly written. The best way to achieve this is to write it better. And now I think I know how to. And despite my feelings otherwise, I choose not to think too ill of Reviewer 2, despite this meme:
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