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New Zealand Science Review

Peeking and poking at atoms with laser light

Niels Kjærgaard

Published Nov 17, 2023• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

​Richard Feynman, in his famous Lectures on Physics, toyed with the idea of all scientific knowledge being wiped out and facing the choice of passing one single idea down to future generations (Feynman et al. 1989). He believed it should be the hypothesis that all things are made of atoms. The idea that matter is built up from discrete fundamental units can be traced back to several ancient cultures (the word atom deriving from the Greek word atomos ‘cannot be divided’). It is only within the last century or so, however, that theories for atomic structure were developed to explain a series of phenomena observed throughout the 18th–19th Centuries. Many of these phenomena were optical, such as Melvill’s observation in 1752 that a mixture of sea salt and alcohol would burn with a yellow flame (see Figure 1) or Wollaston’s observation in 1802 that sunlight contains black lines in its spectrum (Cajori 1962). Further refinement and characterisation from people like Fraunhofer, Kirchoff, Bun-sen, Balmer, and Zeeman followed, but it was not until 1913, with the introduction of the Rutherford-Bohr atomic model, that a cornerstone was laid for what would become a quantum mechanical description of the atom.

DOI
10.26686/nzsr.v72.8606

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The description of the physical and chemical properties of matter is a central issue that has occupied the minds of scientists since the age of the ancient Greeks. In their route to dissect matter down to what cannot be divided any further, they coined the term atom , the indivisible . Matter became then a collection of atoms. More than twenty centuries had to pass until the development of a more precise concept of atom, thanks, amongst others, to the systematic studies of Mendeleyev and the establishment in 1869 of the periodic table of the elements (Mendeleyev, 1869). The discovery of the electron in 1897 and the first modern model of the atomic structure by Sir Joseph Thomson were soon refined by his student, Sir Ernest Rutherford, who in 1910 showed that an atom was made of a positively charged small nucleus and a number of negatively charged electrons that neutralize the nuclear charge. Much in the spirit of planetary systems, and drawing from the analogy between gravitational and electrostatic interactions, scientists in the beginning of the twentieth century built an image of the atom that consisted of a number Z of electrons – of elementary charge – e – orbiting around the nucleus of charge Ze . A number of experimental observations, though, were incompatible with this idea of orbiting electrons. In particular, according to the successful electromagnetic theory, charged electrons in orbital (radially accelerated) motion should radiate energy, thus decelerating and eventually collapsing onto the nucleus. Clearly, such a picture would imply that matter is essentially unstable, in flagrant contradiction with our everyday experience of the very existence of matter.
This article takes the form of 3 microarticles. They are 1) Relativity says science overvalues experiments, 2) Time dilation to co-moving and non-comoving observers and 3) EXPLORING VENUS, MARS, ETC BY ENTANGLING THEM WITH EARTH. Each microarticle was originally written to stand alone, but I decided they should be combined into one article. Everybody (even including Nobel-winning physicists) seems to have a preference for experiment instead of theory. This reminds me of a movie I saw about Alexander the Great. Aristotle (played by Christopher Plummer) was teaching the young Alexander and said Greeks use their minds while rely on their senses, and what they can see and hear etc. While science acknowledges the importance of theory and mind, it appears to be following Aristotle's other races when it declares that observation and experiment always have the last word. This is justified by saying the ancient Greeks made mistakes because they didn't always rely enough on mathematics and experiment. However, it's well known that experimenters make mistakes too - from the days of Galileo to the recent experiments with faster-than-light neutrinos, and with the cosmic microwave background. This article hopes to plant a seed that will grow into a science which doesn't automatically assume observation and experiment must always have the last word. The entire universe, along with all of the past and present and future, appears to be becoming unified by our science into one entity/event. Consider the 19th century's union of electricity and magnetism into the one force of electromagnetism (light, and every type of radiation, are forms of this). Consider the unifying attempts of Einstein's Unified Field Theory, as well as the union of space and time into space-time, in the 20th century - and of physics' subatomic String Theory and Theory of Everything in the 21st century. A vital player in this trend is quantum mechanics, with its experimentally verified quantum entanglement that says particles can affect each regardless of distance in space-time. The way things are going, the mathematics used on Earth will end up being revised. After all, it's based on the limited perceptions of our senses and the idea that a virtually unlimited set of separate observations and experiments can be made ie it says 1+1=2. But if absolutely everything is actually a single thing/event, 1+1 will have no choice but to equal 1.
Abstract As the end of the nineteenth century, the search for Nature’s basic laws seemed close to its goal. There was a sense of a task accomplished. Physics presented an orderly scene that fit the proper Victorian mood of the day. Objects both on Earth and in the heavens behaved in accord with Newton’s laws. So, presumably, did atoms. The nature of atoms was unclear. But to most scientists the rest of the job of describing the universe seemed a filling in of the details of the Great Machine.
A few days later, while finishing his dinner, Mr Tompkins remembered that it was the night of the professor's lecture on the structure of the atom, which he had promised to attend. But he was so fed up with his father-in-law's interminable expositions that he decided to forget the lecture and spend a comfortable evening at home. However, just as he was getting settled with his book, Maud cut off this avenue of escape by looking at the clock and remarking, gently but firmly, that it was almost time for him to leave. So, half an hour later, he found himself on a hard wooden bench in the university auditorium together with a crowd of eager young students. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ began the professor, looking at them gravely over his spectacles, ‘In my last lecture I promised to give you more details concerning the internal structure of the atom, and to explain how the peculiar features of this structure account for its physical and chemical properties. You know, of course, that atoms are no longer considered as elementary indivisible constituent parts of matter, and that this role has passed now to much smaller particles such as electrons, protons, etc. ‘The idea of elementary constituent particles of matter, representing the last possible step in divisibility of material bodies, dates back to the ancient Greek philosopher DEMOCRITUS who lived in the fourth century B.C. Meditating about the hidden nature of things, Democritus came to the problem of the structure of matter and was faced with the question whether or not it can exist in infinitely small portions.