The Structure of Atoms as Interpreted by Model Mechanics

Scientific Paper
Title	The Structure of Atoms as Interpreted by Model Mechanics
Read in full	Link to paper
Author(s)	Ken H Seto
Keywords	Atoms, relativity theory, forces, SRT, E-Matrix, CRE force, absolute motion
Published	2008
No. of pages	17

Read the full paper here

Abstract

A new model of the current universe called Model Mechanics has been formulated. Model Mechanics proposes that all the forces and processes (including the processes of life) of nature are the results of absolute motions of objects in a stationary, elastic and structured light-conducting medium called the E-Matrix. The unique structure of the E-Matrix leads to the discovery of a new repulsive force called the CRE force that exists between all objects in the universe. The CRE Force, in turn, leads to a new theory of gravity called Doppler Theory of Gravity (DTG) and unites gravity with the electromagnetic and nuclear forces naturally. Model Mechanics also leads to a complete theory of motion called IRT (Improved Relativity Theory). IRT includes SRT as a subset. However, unlike SRT, the equations of IRT are valid in all environments—including gravity. Model Mechanics also leads to a new interpretation on the structure of atoms and the mechanism by which atoms emit light. This paper gives detailed description of the processes involved in the formation of the various atoms from the Basic Particles.

Overview

Ken H. Seto's paper is the atomic-structure instalment of a larger programme he calls Model Mechanics. The programme's single premise is that space is not empty and not a mathematical construct: all of "pure-space" is occupied by a stationary, elastic, structured light-conducting medium, the E-Matrix, composed of very thin three-dimensional elastic filaments called E-Strings. Motion of matter through this medium is absolute motion, and every force and process in nature — Seto includes "the processes of life" — is the reaction of matter to distortions and waves in the E-Strings to which it is confined. The paper builds up from this premise through particles, the four forces and a fifth new one, to a picture of the hydrogen atom and of atomic emission.

Seto's departure from the mainstream account is diagnostic as much as constructive. He argues that the unification problems of modern physics — no quantum gravity, an undetected Higgs particle, an unobserved proton decay, renormalisation infinities — are direct consequences of having denied absolute time and physical space, and that both General Relativity and quantum mechanics smuggled physical space back in as an unconstrained mathematical construct (spacetime, the field/virtual particle). "The difference between these math constructs and physical space is that the math constructs have no physical constraints," he writes, "and this lack of physical constraints leads to the infinity problems that plagued both." He quotes Paul Dirac's 1975 Christchurch remark that renormalisation "is just not sensible mathematics" in support. Model Mechanics is offered as the constrained replacement: E-Matrix for spacetime, distortions in E-Strings for fields and virtual particles.

The argument

The E-Matrix and the S-Particle

Away from matter the E-Strings are randomly oriented, so any slice of the E-Matrix looks the same in any direction. Near matter they organise, and the number crossing unit area follows the inverse-square law. The strings repel one another and are held together by "an unknown outside force that is compacting them"; the two are in equilibrium, which is what permits matter to move freely. Light is a wave-packet travelling in neighbouring E-Strings and following their geometry — a construction Seto says "embodies duality" without needing a separate wave and particle account.

Matter reduces to a single object, the S-Particle, a three-dimensional sphere that repels the E-Strings around it. All the properties of ordinary particles come from how an S-Particle orbits an E-String:

An S-Particle orbiting an E-String helically counterclockwise, at the fastest speed possible in the E-Matrix, is an electron and carries one unit of negative charge.
The same motion at 1/3 that speed is a down quark, carrying −1/3 charge.
Clockwise helical orbiting at 2/3 the speed is an up quark, carrying +2/3 charge.
An electron neutrino is an S-Particle in counterclockwise corkscrew motion moving away from the charged particles, so the E-Matrix distortion it makes has dissipated before any charged particle can respond — Seto's explanation of why neutrinos do not interact electromagnetically.

Mass is then defined by fiat: "mass is the evidence of the orbiting diameter of its S-Particle." Non-orbiting S-Particles carry no charge, interact only gravitationally, and are identified with Dark Matter.

Forces from absolute motion

The engine of the whole scheme is one rule, taken by analogy from parallel current-carrying wires: absolute motions in the same direction produce attraction, absolute motions in opposite directions produce repulsion. Applied to the orbiting S-Particles of two charged particles, this yields the electromagnetic force — with the striking consequence that the force between any two charged particles alternates between attractive and repulsive over one complete S-Particle orbit, the net sign being set by the relative directions at closest approach. Seto reads this as agreeing with the alternation of electric and magnetic field in Maxwell's account. Because charge is not resident inside the particle, he argues, no self-energy infinity arises and no renormalisation is needed.

The strong force becomes stacked interaction: two like-charged quarks stacked on top of one another have S-Particles moving in the same direction and therefore attract. A proton is two stacked up quarks plus a down quark bound electromagnetically; a neutron is two stacked down quarks plus an up quark. Seto notes that stacked attraction operates only within about 10⁻¹³ cm and turns repulsive beyond, and that pulling stacked particles apart distorts the surrounding E-Strings further, so their recovery pushes back harder — his account of confinement.

The weak force is de-coupling of stacked interactions. In a heavy nucleus, neutron capture weakens the stacking at the capture site and the repulsive CRE force separates it. Free-neutron decay is given step by step: a free S-Particle joining the orbit of the neutron's up quark becomes a second up quark and stacks with the first; the down quark between them is drawn closer, the stacked down quarks shift laterally, and once the lateral displacement exceeds a down-quark radius their mutual force turns repulsive, so one peels away and combines with a free S-Particle to give an electron and an antineutrino.

The CRE force

Seto's proposed fifth force is repulsive and, he says, already familiar: "it is what we commonly refer to as inertia" — the resistance of two objects to a change in their state of absolute motion. It arises because the E-Strings emanating from any object diverge according to the inverse-square law, so two objects confined to that diverging geometry tend to separate. Unlike Einstein's Cosmological Constant, the CRE force is not constant: it "increases with the square of the distance". Seto states that Model Mechanics predicted it in 1993 and that the 1998 supernova discovery of accelerated cosmic expansion confirmed it, making the reintroduced cosmological constant unnecessary.

Doppler Theory of Gravity and IRT

Gravity is the sum of the attractive same-direction effect and the repulsive CRE effect — which, Seto argues, is why it is so weak compared with the other forces. He writes a modified Newtonian law in which GM_aM_b/r² is multiplied by the ratio F_ab/F_aa of measured light-source frequencies and by the dot product of the two bodies' absolute-motion direction vectors j_a·j_b. Since that dot product can be negative, "not all objects in the Universe attract each other gravitationally": locally it is +1 and gravity attracts; beyond the observable horizon it is −1 and gravity repels.

The accompanying kinematics is IRT (Improved Relativity Theory). Its move is to reinterpret c not as a universal physical constant but as "a constant mathematical ratio" — the light-path length of a rod divided by the absolute time content of a clock second co-moving with that rod. Because both numerator and denominator scale with the same factor, the ratio is invariant while the underlying quantities are not. Hence: physical rod length is the same in all frames but light-path length grows with absolute motion; clock rate slows with absolute motion; absolute time exists, and a clock second contains more absolute time the faster the clock moves; and — the sharpest break with Special Relativity — Simultaneity is absolute. The transformation equations are written with frequency ratios f_aa, f_ab in place of the Lorentz factor, and Seto claims they hold in gravitational environments too, so that IRT contains SRT as a subset and replaces GRT. He lists GRT's failures as he sees them: the observed acceleration of expansion, galactic rotation curves, the Pioneer 10 trajectory, the non-detection of black holes, and the failure to predict dark matter and dark energy. He sketches, but does not carry out, a procedure for getting Mercury's perihelion precession from IRT by plotting transformed future positions.

Cosmic-ray muon survival is handled in the same style: the muon decays in 2.2 microseconds in its own frame, but that interval "is worth (F_aa/F_ab)(2.2 × 10⁻⁶) seconds on the Lab clock", giving the observed decay length without relativistic Time Dilation.

The atom

The atomic picture follows. A hydrogen nucleus is two stacked up quarks with a down quark orbiting them in the same (clockwise) sense as their S-Particles; the electron orbits in the same sense as the down quark. The stacked up quarks attract both the down quark and the electron; the down quark repels the electron. The ground-state orbit is where these balance, and it is the diameter of the hydrogen atom. Two electrons fit there, orbiting in opposite senses — which Seto identifies with opposite spin and claims satisfies the Pauli principle.

Emission and absorption follow from the force profile: inside the ground-state orbit the electron feels net repulsion, outside it net attraction. An absorbed quantum lifts the electron to a higher orbit where it feels net attraction and spirals inward losing energy gradually; when it passes behind the nucleus it is "cut off from the energy source completely" and drops back at once, releasing the remainder in a lump. This, he argues, is why spectra are sharp, and the gradual-loss phase is offered as the physical origin of the Lamb shift, in place of the quantum-electrodynamic vacuum fluctuations. Nuclei built by stacking are cylindrical rather than spherical when viewed edge-on, and diagrams are given for helium, lithium, beryllium and boron.

Assessment

The attractive feature of Model Mechanics is its refusal of unexplained formalism. Seto's objection — that spacetime and the quantum field are mathematical constructs standing in for a physical medium, and that their lack of physical constraint is what generates the divergences — is a serious and long-standing one, and his choice of Paul Dirac's own dissatisfaction with renormalisation as its witness is apt. The construction is also admirably economical: one substance (the E-Matrix), one particle (the S-Particle), and one rule about parallel and antiparallel motion are asked to deliver charge, mass, all four forces and atomic structure. Identifying inertia with a real repulsive interaction rather than a brute property, and deriving both the short range and the pull-apart stiffening of the strong force from the elastic recovery of the medium, are the kind of moves that give a mechanical picture explanatory work to do. And the model is at least stated in falsifiable terms: cylindrical nuclei, a repulsive force growing as r², and gravity that reverses sign at cosmological distance are all checkable claims.

They are also, as stated, in trouble. A repulsive force that "increases with the square of the distance" is not a small correction: between the Earth and the Sun it would exceed any laboratory-scale value by some twenty-two orders of magnitude, and the paper offers no accounting of why the inverse-square Newtonian term nonetheless describes planetary orbits to the precision at which lunar laser ranging tests them. Identifying that same force with inertia compounds the problem, since inertial mass is measured to be independent of the distance to any other body, and the equality of inertial and gravitational mass is confirmed by torsion-balance experiments to parts in 10¹³. Neither result is addressed. The claim of a 1993 prediction of cosmic acceleration is likewise weakened by the fact that the paper gives no quantitative prediction to compare with the supernova data — a repulsive force of unspecified magnitude is not a prediction of the measured acceleration.

Several of the central steps are asserted rather than derived. That mass "is the evidence of the orbiting diameter" of an S-Particle is a definition, not a mechanism, and no orbital diameter is calculated for any particle, so no mass ratio is predicted — the electron-to-proton ratio, the most obvious test available, is not attempted. The charges +2/3 and −1/3 are obtained by postulating orbital speeds of 2/3 and 1/3 of the electron's, which assumes the answer. The neutron decay account explains the mechanism but not the number: it does not yield the 15-minute lifetime, and Seto's own text elsewhere in the paper gives "about sixteen minutes" while criticising quantum mechanics for not specifying it. The muon treatment reproduces the observed decay length only because the frequency-ratio factor is defined to equal the Lorentz factor; nothing independent fixes it, so this is a relabelling of the standard result rather than a rival derivation of it.

The atomic model faces the sharpest empirical difficulties. Two electrons of opposite S-Particle sense in one ground-state orbit is a planetary picture, and planetary electron orbits do not reproduce the observed spectrum: the Uncertainty Principle aside, the hydrogen fine structure, the Zeeman and Stark patterns, and the angular distributions measured in scattering all require orbital angular momentum states that a single circular orbit cannot supply, and the Pauli principle constrains four quantum numbers, not two orbital directions. Seto's emission mechanism — the electron spirals inward gradually, then dumps its remaining energy when it passes behind the nucleus — predicts that a substantial fraction of the absorbed energy is radiated during the gradual phase, which would broaden lines rather than sharpen them, and gives no account of why emitted frequencies satisfy the Rydberg relation. Attributing the Lamb shift to this gradual loss also sits badly with the fact that the shift is a fixed energy difference between the 2S_1/2 and 2P_1/2 levels, measured to better than a part in 10⁶ and predicted to that accuracy by Quantum Electrodynamics — the very theory whose infinities Seto objects to. Finally, absolute Simultaneity combined with a preferred E-Matrix frame is not in itself refuted by experiment — Lorentzian aether theories of that type are empirically equivalent to Special Relativity — but Seto goes further and claims IRT differs from GRT in gravitational settings while giving "the same correct predictions". Both cannot be true, and the paper supplies no worked calculation, not even the Mercury precession for which it gives only a three-step recipe. That missing calculation is where the theory would have to be judged, and it is not here.