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Edo Kaal

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Edo Kaal
NationalityDutch
Known forStructured Atom Model
Scientific career
FieldsAtomic Theory, Nuclear, Chemistry


Edo Kaal (also published as J. E. Kaal) is a Dutch independent researcher known for proposing the Structured Atom Model (SAM), an alternative model of the atomic nucleus in which the nucleus has a definite geometric architecture rather than being described primarily through the mathematics of quantum mechanics. He studied analytical and environmental chemistry in the Netherlands and, after about a decade in the information-technology sector, turned to independent research. He is the founder of the SAM research group and the lead author of the book The Nature of the Atom: An Introduction to the Structured Atom Model.

Biography

Kaal studied analytical and environmental chemistry in the Netherlands. He then worked for roughly ten years in the information-technology sector before deciding to become an independent researcher, with an initial interest in the study of the natural environment.

He began developing the ideas that became the Structured Atom Model in 2006, working largely alone in the early years and using physical models — marbles and packed spheres — to explore how nuclear building blocks might arrange themselves. He first presented the model publicly at an Electric Universe conference in 2015, and continued presenting at Electric Universe conferences from 2017 to 2019 as well as at workshops in Italy. The SAM website was launched in the 2016–2018 period.

In 2019 the research effort expanded into a team of four, and this collaboration produced the model's first book. Kaal's collaborators include James (J. A.) Sorensen, who wrote the computer program that models SAM structures; Andreas Otte, a computer scientist based in Paderborn, Germany, who met Kaal at the 2016 Electric Universe conference and joined the team in 2019; and Jan Emming, an electrical engineer trained at Delft University who worked on space projects at ESO and as a systems engineer at Ball Aerospace. Alexander Kerkdijk, with a background in IT and urban planning, provides organizational support to the associated foundation.

Kaal's work is closely associated with the Electric Universe and Thunderbolts research community, and he has also presented the model to the low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research community.

Scientific contributions

The Structured Atom Model

The Structured Atom Model treats the atomic nucleus as a real, three-dimensional, structured object. Kaal's starting point was a deliberate rejection of inherited assumptions: rather than beginning from protons, neutrons, electrons, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and quantum mechanics, he set out to see how far one could get by assuming only that nuclear constituents are extended bodies with volume, arranged in space under a central attractive force. He has argued that conventional pictures of the atom, from Bohr's onward, are essentially two-dimensional diagrams, whereas "we live in a three-dimensional world" and the nucleus should be modelled accordingly.

Two assumptions underlie the model. The first is that the neutron is not a fundamental particle but a proton–electron pair. Placing electrons inside the nucleus reintroduces an ordinary electrostatic attraction there: the inner or "inter-nuclear" electrons act as electrostatic glue binding the positively charged protons together, so that no separate strong nuclear force needs to be postulated. The second is spherically dense packing: the nuclear constituents arrange themselves into the densest possible packings, which is what gives nuclei their characteristic shapes.

Working with physical sphere models, Kaal found that densely packed arrangements such as the tetrahedron and the icosahedron emerge naturally under a central pulling force. Milestones in this construction programme included identifying a pentagonal bipyramid of seven spheres as the structure of lithium (2008); structures for beryllium, boron and carbon, with carbon taking the form of a twelve-sphere icosahedron (2010); and, in 2012, a general method for building up the larger elements out of repeated carbon-like units, which the model calls nuclets. Larger nuclei in SAM are described in terms of these nuclets together with terminating substructures called endings.

Consequences and claims

From this structural basis Kaal and his collaborators attempt to account for a range of nuclear properties in geometric rather than statistical terms:

  • Isotopes are distinguished by how many extra proton–electron pairs are attached, and where they sit on the structure.
  • Nuclear stability and radioactivity become questions of whether a given geometric arrangement is well-formed or strained, giving a material rather than probabilistic account of why an element is radioactive.
  • Alpha decay and the instability of elements beyond lead are explained by the geometry of the outer shells of the packed structure.
  • Asymmetric fission — the observation that heavy nuclei tend to split into unequal fragments — is presented as a natural consequence of where the structure is weakest, rather than as an anomaly.
  • Nuclear transmutation and low-energy nuclear reactions are treated as structural rearrangements, which the group argues may make sense of LENR experiments and of plasma experiments such as SAFIRE.

An early observation that Kaal has described as pivotal was that argon-40, potassium-40 and calcium-40 share the same mass number yet are chemically distinct elements — which he took as evidence that the nucleus must have an internal organisation, since mass alone cannot determine identity.

SAM also proposes a new numbering of the elements based on deuteron count rather than proton count. This yields an alternative arrangement of the periodic table and, according to the group, points to elements not presently recognised.

The model is supported by software tools published by the group, including an interactive Atom Viewer and periodic table that allow the proposed three-dimensional structures of elements and isotopes to be inspected.

The Structured Atom Model is not accepted within mainstream physics and represents a dissident-science position on nuclear structure.

CNPS talks

He has presented in the CNPS online seminar series:

YouTube Videos

Talks presented in the Cosmology discussion sessions on Roger J Anderton's YouTube channel (@rogeranderton418):

Works

  • J. E. Kaal, J. A. Sorensen, A. Otte and J. G. Emming, The Nature of the Atom: An Introduction to the Structured Atom Model (Curtis Press, September 2021), ISBN 9781838128029.
  • "Nuclear Transmutations and Mass Defect", presented at the 22nd International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ICCF22), Assisi, Italy, 2019.
  • Presentations on the Structured Atom Model at Electric Universe conferences, 2015 and 2017–2019, and at workshops in Italy.

External links

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