The Theory of Supramolecular Motion, the Primary Structure of Lignin and its Application to Adhesives

In my last post I promised to very soon present the version of the manuscript on Quantum Gravity and Lignin Adhesive that I would be submitting to Nature. Today is the day that I do this.

To some extent I had expected that it would take longer, but as I read the publishing guidelines by Nature, it became clear that even though I had to make some changes, these changes weren’t extremely laborious.

The main text needed to be separate from the figures, as the layout of the Figures will be something that the magazine wants to have full control of. Otherwise, the main manuscript that I have shown before was quite close to publishable. I did have to shorten the title of the manuscript, as the guidelines indicated that the number of words should be a maximum of 20 and maximum of two lines (about 75 characters). So, I shortened the title quite a bit.

The bigger difference is with supplementary information (SI). I Initially thought that the supplementary information is even more restricted, as I read the guidelines for another Nature group journal. However, in the correct Nature guideline for supplementary information that the size isn’t as restricted as in some other journals. In the first guidelines I read it says that the supplementary information should contain no figures, but rather there should be a separate document called Extended data, where the figures are located. So, the documents you see in this post follow this general rule.

As the supplementary informations in Nature papers tend to be large, the guidelines are quite lenient, especially in terms of length. But there are still recommendations regarding structure. Specifically the recommended sections:

1. Supplementary Methods

2. Supplementary Table(s)

3. Supplementary Discussion

4. Supplementary Equation(s)

5. Supplementary Notes (including notes clarifying statistical analyses, acknowledgements, grant or other numbers)

I think I can still live with my initial idea of formatting the SI as an unabridged article. I’ll just have to figure out how to do this as close to the guidelines as possible. I don’t want to annoy the editor any more than is unavoidable (hopefully none at all).

There’s so much in the article that I think I won’t even try to be perfect. If the editor thinks that I could be right, he/she won’t mind a bit of imperfection.

Here are all of the files merged into one: 

CLP-ToE main plus SI 2025_10_24.pdf

Download PDF • 2.58MB

For the submission I will need to split these, but for now, it’s easier to keep everything in a single document.

The most observant of you might have realized that the title of today’s post is the title of the manuscript. As you can see from the title and the text in the manuscript (if you download it), I never use either of the terms quantum in the manuscript. I do use the term force a few times, but never referring to fundamental forces.

The only time I refer to fundamental interactions is when I say it in the sentences:

We coin the sum-effect of fundamental interactions of the molecules both within a single array and from its entangled neighbor as steric drag.

And in a sentence with gravitation:

Rather, even in the absence of any other interaction, the combination of reflections from within the moving helix and gravitation should be sufficient to explain the proposed steric drag.

Whether other fundamental interactions are involved requires more rigorous theoretical study.

This above sentence is both in the main text and in the supplementary information.

And finally in Appendix A ( Anticipated objections to the theory and responses to them) I say:

Objection 1. No direct link between the presented equations with fundamental interactions.

This is an objection that we take very seriously. The wave-like motion of molecules has been known for slightly over a century. And to our knowledge, nothing presented in this paper is in contradiction with experimental evidence. The observed ordered structure of lignin clearly points towards the proposed primary structure of lignin, which in turn points towards the proposed general theory of supramolecular motion.

It shouldn’t take too long for my colleagues to send me the description of their measurements. After that I should be able to submit the manuscript.

And this time as my manuscript is truly and experimental one, I should be able to submit it into a preprint service, like bioRxiv. And if things go well, the theory should get traction very fast.

But I’m still a bit of a pessimist. I would be surprised if everything went smoothly. Something bad is bound to happen. At least some kind of hurdle. However, I do hope that I’m wrong.

And as is my habit, I end this post with an image. This is already the bottom of the barrel. An illustration of how to derive the curvature of space-time for entangled molecules: