Photo-Electric Conversions: the Corpuscles in an H-Atom
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | Photo-Electric Conversions: the Corpuscles in an H-Atom |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Francis Viren Fernandes |
| Keywords | Pair production, unification, light, gravity, ether, fine structure, base units, temperature, Ohm's law, Boltzmann constant, Bohr's model, Rydberg, Electron |
| Published | 2008 |
| Journal | Proceedings of the NPA |
| Volume | 5 |
| Number | 1 |
| No. of pages | 32 |
| Pages | 58-69 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
The true corpuscular or photon nature of an Hydrogen atom and a proton, is conclusively evinced in this paper. The ionization energy in an Hydrogen atom is observed due to pair production. In reality fusion of a Rydberg Photon with the 13.6 eV introduced photon mass produces an electron positron pair. A Rydberg photon mass is of 2.425434789 x 10-35 kg and its radius is precisely twice Bohr's radius. Furthermore, a mass similar to that of a proton fuses with the 9.382723128 x 108 eV introduced photon mass to produce an electron-positron pair. It is proven that this mass of 1.672622216 x 10-27 kg is comprised of 6.8961747 x 107 Rydberg photons. Pair production substantiates the absence of an electron in the ground state of a Hydrogen atom.
Overview
This is Part 5 of Francis V. Fernandes's eight-part 2008 monograph Photo-Electric Conversions, written from Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu. The archived PDF contains the whole series — Part 1 (Ether Model, One Force – Equal Energies), Part 2 (Pair Production in the Hydrogen Atom), Part 3 (Solution to the Fine Structure Constant), Part 4 (The Bohr Model, A Fresh Perspective), Part 5 (The Corpuscles in a H-Atom), Part 6 (The Source of Electricity), Part 7 (Ether as Charge Q) and Part 8 (The Foundation of Physical Constants) — and this page covers Part 5, which occupies pages 19–20 and depends heavily on Parts 1–4.
The claim is radical and stated without hedging: there is no Electron in a ground-state hydrogen atom. What the atom contains instead is a "Rydberg photon", a corpuscle of mass 2.425434789 × 10-35 kg whose radius is exactly twice the Bohr radius. When 13.6 eV of ionization energy is applied, that energy is itself a photon body of mass 3.421277314 × 10-26 kg, and the two fuse to produce an electron–positron pair. The observed electron is therefore manufactured by the measurement, not liberated by it. The same construction is then run at proton energies: a mass [X] = 1.672622216 × 10-27 kg fuses with the photon body corresponding to 9.382723128 × 108 eV to give the same pair, and since [X] is close to the CODATA proton mass, Fernandes concludes that the proton likewise is composed of Rydberg photons — 6.8961747 × 107 of them. He adopts the word "corpuscles" deliberately, crediting J. J. Thomson's 1906 Philosophical Magazine paper "On the Number of Corpuscles in an Atom".
The departure from the mainstream is total. Standard atomic physics has the electron bound in the ground state, ionization removing it, and pair production requiring at least 1.022 MeV of photon energy in the field of a nucleus. Fernandes has no bound electron, has ionization creating an electron–positron pair at 13.6 eV, and has photons carrying rest mass — mass which, in his scheme, is larger the lower the photon's energy.
The argument
The master equation
Everything in Part 5 rests on one relation carried over from Part 1:
- q2 = (mass of a particle) × (radius of a particle) × 107
with q = 1.602176537 × 10-19 C the elementary charge. Fernandes describes charge as "an effect of the mass of a photon pulsating through a distance up to a limit of the classical electron radius" — a bubble whose expansion and contraction limits are set by the electron's mass and radius, and inside which photon mass is exchanged with etheric mass. He verifies the relation on the electron itself: (1.602176537 × 10-19)2 = 9.1093826 × 10-31 kg × 2.817940325 × 10-15 m × 107.
The whole framework sits within the ether model of Part 1, in which G is factored as G = Rc2/M to give an "ether constant" R/M = 7.42604894 × 10-28 m/kg, so that one metre of radius contains 1.346611109 × 1027 kg of ether and every material body is far less dense than the medium it floats in.
Solution 1: the Rydberg photon and 13.6 eV
For the Rydberg photon, q2 = 2.425434789 × 10-35 kg × 1.058354422 × 10-10 m × 107. For the introduced 13.6 eV photon, q2 = 3.421277314 × 10-26 kg × 0.7502956931 × 10-19 m × 107. Multiplying the two gives q4, and taking the root returns
- q2 = 9.1093826 × 10-31 kg × 2.817940325 × 10-15 m × 107
i.e. the electron rest mass and the classical electron radius, with "charge squared having two outcomes" — one for the electron, one for the positron. Fernandes reads this as a physical fusion: the electron–positron mass and radius are "artificially created by a union of the two photon masses".
Solution 2: mass [X] and 938 MeV
The same operation is repeated with mass [X] = 1.672622216 × 10-27 kg (radius 1.534697799 × 10-18 m) and the photon body of 4.961123308 × 10-34 kg (radius 5.1741702 × 10-12 m) corresponding to 9.382723128 × 108 eV. Again the product yields the electron–positron pair at 9.1093826 × 10-31 kg. Fernandes concludes that "mass [X] is the arena for electron-positron pair creation by fusion of two masses", and notes that [X] sits close to the CODATA proton mass:
| Quantity | Value (kg) |
|---|---|
| Proton mass (CODATA) | 1.672621637 × 10-27 |
| Mass [X] | 1.672622216 × 10-27 |
| Difference | 0.000000579 × 10-27 |
The origin of the Rydberg constant
Putting the Rydberg photon mass into de Broglie's relation m = h/λc gives λ = 6.6260693 × 10-34 / (2.425434789 × 10-35 × 2.99792458 × 108) = 9.11267052 × 10-8 m, whose inverse is the Rydberg constant R∞ = 1.097373155 × 107 m-1. "The origin of the Rydberg constant is thus clearly identified as the wave number generated by the Rydberg photon mass." Its radius, 1.058354422 × 10-10 m, is precisely twice the Bohr radius 5.291772108 × 10-11 m.
Counting corpuscles
Finally, the mass ratio and the energy ratio are compared:
- [X] / mRydberg = 1.672622216 × 10-27 / 2.425434789 × 10-35 = 6.896174754 × 107
- 9.382723128 × 108 eV / 13.6056923 eV = 6.89617471 × 107
Their agreement is taken as proof that mass [X] "is comprised of 6.89617475 × 107 Rydberg photons", and hence that the proton, and the hydrogen atom, are corpuscular aggregates. Fernandes concedes that fixing the exact number "will be up-to future generations who will have more sophisticated technology at their disposal".
Assessment
The paper is unusually clear about what it is doing, and the arithmetic it presents is reproducible to the digits given — which is what makes it possible to test. Two of its observations are real and worth stating plainly. First, the master relation q2 = mR × 107 is dimensionally consistent, because 107 = 4π/μ0 in SI units, so the equation reads e2μ0/4π = mR. Second, and more importantly, that equation is not new: it is precisely the definition of the classical electron radius, re = e2/4πε0mec2, rearranged. Fernandes's move is to apply this single relation to arbitrary masses, so that every body he considers automatically satisfies mR = e2 × 10-7 = constant.
That observation dissolves most of the paper's results. If m1R1 = m2R2 = K for every object in the scheme, then the geometric mean pair (√(m1m2), √(R1R2)) satisfies the same relation identically. The "fusion" of Solutions 1 and 2 therefore cannot fail to return q2; it would return q2 for any pair of masses whatever, chosen at random, provided each was assigned the radius the master equation demands. The recovery of the electron's mass and classical radius is not a check on the model but a restatement of its input.
The Rydberg-photon result is the same identity in another guise. Fernandes defines mRydberg = hR∞/c (this is exactly what the de Broglie step does). Its radius is then forced to be R = e2 × 10-7c/hR∞ = e2μ0c/4πhR∞ = α/2πR∞. Since the Bohr radius is a0 = α/4πR∞, this is 2a0 exactly, as an algebraic identity between CODATA constants. The agreement to ten digits that the paper presents as a discovery is a tautology; nothing about hydrogen is being tested. Likewise, "the origin of the Rydberg constant is identified" only in the sense that R∞ was substituted in at the start and read back out at the end.
The corpuscle count fails in the same way, and this is the most consequential objection because it is the paper's headline claim. In Fernandes's own numbers the introduced photon mass is inversely proportional to the applied energy: 3.421277314 × 10-26 × 13.6056923 = 4.961123308 × 10-34 × 9.382723128 × 108 = 4.6549 × 10-25, to all digits given. The fusion condition then fixes the target mass as mtarget = me2/mintroduced, so mtarget is directly proportional to the applied energy. The ratio [X]/mRydberg is therefore identically equal to the energy ratio 9.382723128 × 108/13.6056923 — not because the proton contains 6.9 × 107 Rydberg photons, but because that is how [X] was defined. And [X] comes out near the proton mass because the input energy 9.382723128 × 108 eV is the proton rest energy, 938.272 MeV, entered by hand. The paper's conclusion is contained in its premise.
Even taken at face value, the numerical agreement is weaker than claimed. The quoted difference between [X] and the CODATA proton mass, 5.79 × 10-34 kg, is a relative discrepancy of 3.5 × 10-7, whereas the 2002 CODATA proton mass carried a relative uncertainty near 1.7 × 10-7 in the last digits shown — so [X] is not "nearly" the proton mass in the metrological sense, it is several standard uncertainties away. The paper's own summary table also mislabels: it lists "Rydberg photon radius, RRydberg = 7.502956187 × 10-20 m", which is the radius the text assigns to the 13.6 eV introduced photon, not to the Rydberg photon, whose radius the text gives as 1.058354422 × 10-10 m.
Against established measurement the difficulties are severe and unaddressed. Electron–positron pair production has a hard threshold at 2mec2 = 1.022 MeV, measured directly in photon-attenuation experiments and evident in every pair-production cross-section curve since the 1930s; it does not occur at 13.6 eV, and the hydrogen photoionization products are an electron and a proton, both detected, with no positron and no annihilation gamma rays. The claim that a hydrogen atom contains no electron in its ground state conflicts with electron scattering from atomic hydrogen, with the measured hyperfine splitting at 1420 MHz whose entire origin is electron–proton spin coupling, and with the Lamb shift, all of which are electron observables. Photons carrying rest mass — and, in this scheme, rest mass inversely proportional to their energy — contradicts the observed dispersion-free arrival of photons across the electromagnetic spectrum from distant sources, which bounds the photon mass at below about 10-51 kg, some twenty-five orders of magnitude smaller than the smallest "photon mass" appearing here. The paper offers no experiment of its own and proposes none.
What remains is a consistent piece of dimensional bookkeeping around the classical electron radius, presented as a discovery about the interior of atoms. The ether model of Part 1 that motivates it is genuinely in the dissident tradition — a dense pre-existent medium out of which matter is engendered, in the line of the nineteenth-century elastic ether — and Fernandes is right that no experiment forbids some medium. But nothing in Part 5 bears on that question, because every equation in it is an identity among CODATA constants that would hold whatever the underlying physics turned out to be.