My last post was supposed to be a bit more philosophical, but I ended up realizing that I had refined the Theory of Everything to such a point where I would need to rewrite the manuscript. So, I never ended up being philosophical. So, let’s try a second time.
This time I’m going to talk about the similarities and differences of bonds and knots. You see, I’m not the first person at all to think about knot when dealing with molecular bonds and string theory. But before a couple of days ago, there was no way of defining what a bond is and what a knot is, when it comes to the elementary particle of energy (dot). Or more specifically people who had a better grasp of current string theory (i.e. pre-dot string theory) might have some interesting ideas about strings, knots and bonds, but they wouldn’t be very useful without knowing of the existence of the dot. And conversely, I’m not familiar enough about pre-dot string theory to know what has been said about knots and bonds in this context.
So, what is a knot of dots? Very shortly, it is four (or possibly more) loops of dots refracting off of each other, forming a closed orbital where the loops are inseparable. An example of this is a hydrogen atom. Here the minimum number of loops is four times two or eight loops in the knot, but only four orbitals.
So, what is bond knot of dots? It is a larger knot, formed when the two knots from knots of dots and share the same space. This is a molecular bond, such as the bond in a hydrogen molecule. Here the minimum number of loops is four times four, or sixteen loops in the knot, but only eight orbitals.
So, what is a chainmail knot? It is two interlinked knots of dots, where one knot forms a knot around a second knot, but where the two knots are not directly linked. And why do I call it a chainmail knot? Because that is pretty much how it behaves. It links a multitude of molecules into a loose chain, which is kept tight by their common movement. While a regular chainmail is held tight by gravity, the effect of gravity in a gas can be neglected and the chainmail is kept tight by the movement of the closed chain in an orbit around a center. Here is half of such an orbit:
If you include gravity or some other source of pressure (such as in a spaceship), you can have other such shells pressing against each other, filling the shell with chainmail-knotted molecules, creating a liquid. Solids can exist without gravity or other sources of pressure but not liquids.
So, if this the chainmail knot is not a bond, then what is it? At first I was toying with the term “steric attraction”, but this term is already in use. One option is steric drag. However, even this term can be found by googling and is not used in the same context. The term should convey that the movement of one molecule pulls the molecule ‘behind it’, refracting it from a linear path that it would be on were it not for it being knotted with neighboring molecules.
So, “steric refraction” it is! I only came up with this term while writing its description! I’m quite confident that this is the final term.
Again, I thought I would be writing more of a philosophical post, but as soon as I tried to define terms, I found something new! I guess I would have much more to say, but I’ll end this post with a minor cliffhanger. I’m sure I’ll be exploring steric refraction in future posts.
Comments