Virtual Photons

This all seems pretty standard except for the bit about "electrons are able to maintain a constant orbit around the nucleus by continuously emitting and absorbing photons".

The conventional theory states that they'll stay in the same orbit unless they can gain/release a quantum of energy. Something about ΔE=hv is often mentioned as well.

As theories go, it's fairly well tested. Are you saying it's not correct?

Are you aware of any natural situation where electron clouds remain perfectly static and absorb or release no quanta of energy?

Is the ambient surrounding void of particle interaction, like, ever ?

The theoretical state you described (although theoretically correct) is such a rare occurrence, is is pretty safe to say "It never happens"

It's like, Einstein was quoted to have said in 1939 "Not even light travels at the speed of light" - which statistically is true, in spite of the theory, which allows for it.

More likely, since even in such cases (other than filtration or a chemically active surface) where the photon emitted equals the wavelength of the photon absorbed, it is preferred in modern Quantum Electrodynamics, to assume that it's about two different photons, the one destroyed in the absorption, and the other created in the emission

"...In actual fact it is possible to get something (energy) for nothing providing it takes place in a very, very short span of time..." - Also called "The Locality Principle" - whereby it is assumed that symmetry and preservation laws are allowed to be broken, locally (at the the momentary expense of the rest of the universe) and briefly, before order regains control again.

The conventional theory states that they'll stay in the same orbit unless they can gain/release a quantum of energy. Something about ΔE=hv is often mentioned as well.

Precisely, and it is that very point that is under discussion. How can a charged particle maintain its orbit around the nucleus, without radiating away its energy and spiraling into the nucleus. Two alternatives have been presented that would prevent this (a) the electron is a wave particle (b) the electron is constantly absorbing and emitting 'virtual' photons , thereby allowing it to maintain its equilibrium and a constant distance from the nucleus.

Are you aware of any natural situation where electron clouds remain perfectly static and absorb or release no quanta of energy?

Is the ambient surrounding void of particle interaction, like, ever ?

The theoretical state you described (although theoretically correct) is such a rare occurrence, is is pretty safe to say "It never happens"

The Lamb shift is often quoted as the reason behind the postulation of an "electron cloud" kind of situation, where the charge of the electron is perceived as being smeared out. As for your statement that "It never happens!" Perhaps this reference on the Lamb shift, which incidentally is from the highly acclaimed hyer-physics web-site could answer the question better than I. Read the page to the end if you have the patience.

"Outside of a dog a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. Groucho Marx (I think or was it one of the others?)

A previous blog i read through peeked my interest in rainbows that a 5 year old grandaughter wanted an explaination of..It seems to me that the rainbow also has some inputs available to this discussion..Looking at the Lamb effect(g=2.023....)and ancillary info on the hyper link physics site recommended by a contributor expanded my current knowledge base rather nicely..if not precisely or experientially earned,.The rainbow effect of white light going through a prism highlights the different range of actual frequency/wavelength functionality of the entire EM spectrum showing the different energy levels in each discrete averaged band.(as each band could of course be looked at almost infinitely as made of sub bands).This somehow is relateable to your current discussion i think ...Ah its back..with no mathematical supports as i am virtually inept at the language..However photon/waveduality is generally the nature of the entire EM spectrum as we (humans)know it...The EM spectrum comes from atomic origins(not from a vacum)..SUMS OF MANY (UNIVERSE IN CONSTANT MOTION)ATOMS INTERACTING >>TRAINS OF EM GOING THROUGHOUT DISCRETELY IDENTIFIED WITH ELECTRONIC DECTORS>>SOURCE APPEARS LOCAL(INFRARED DETECTORS AT CHEMICAL ANALYTICAL LEVEL)OR LONGER DISTANCE(AM RADIO SIGNALS FROM HUNDREDS OF MILES AWAY) ETC>>So we have a universe detectable via signals at a distance and up close via signals both equally discriminatable...with appropriate receiver systems....Ah i better give up...But thanks for insight..Regards..Marty W

Wave-particle duality became one of the corner stones of QM, something to be never questioned on pain of being ejected form all credible scientific circles. But is there no alternative to this rather abstruse theory.

What bothers me about all this is that it smacks of the same PC positions often seen in scientific circles, to wit: Global Warming and also the furor over the Velikovsky Theory.

A previous blog i read through peeked my interest in rainbows that a 5 year old grandaughter wanted an explaination of..It seems to me that the rainbow also has some inputs available to this discussion..Looking at the Lamb effect(g=2.023....)and ancillary info on the hyper link physics site recommended by a contributor expanded my current knowledge base rather nicely..if not precisely or experientially earned,.The rainbow effect of white light going through a prism highlights the different range of actual frequency/wavelength functionality of the entire EM spectrum showing the different energy levels in each discrete averaged band.(as each band could of course be looked at almost infinitely as made of sub bands).This somehow is relateable to your current discussion i think ...

Absolutely, all forms of EM radiation are absolutely relevant to this discussion and I am glad you have raised the point. Firstly, there seems to be an idea, almost inbred by now ( even in physicists) that the absorption and emission of photons by electrons within an atom, is a kind of random event. Like you know, someone waiting at the station for a train to come through. Does this view really hold water. Think of looking out of a window on a sunny day. OK, say you are looking at the lawn ( to make things easier for me) which is predominantly green. Why is it green, simply because the electrons in the concerned atoms in the objects being viewed ( blades of grass) are absorbing and re-emitting photons at a frequency of 5.45 x 10^^14 times a second, and they can carry on doing this as long as the objects ( blades of grass are being irradiated). The act of absorption and emission is not something for which the atom needs a long rest period. It is an activity that goes on almost continually. Let's forget about 'waves' what the electrons are emitting are discrete packets of energy, each with its own distinctive wave-length and at a known frequency, this can by no known means be thought of or achieved by a wave!

So when you speak of green light having a wavelength of 550nm and a frequency of 5.45 x 10^^14 Hz/sec that is literally what the electron within the atom is doing it is emitting photons with an energy of 2.25 eV at the rate of 5.45 x 10^^14 photons a second. Observation seems to show that this emission of photons takes place in a straight line. (More confirmation of the Gestalt Theory way of thinking!)

What bothers me about all this is that it smacks of the same PC positions often seen in scientific circles, to wit: Global Warming and also the furor over the Velikovsky Theory.

I sincerely hope that you are not putting 'The Gestalt Theory on the nature of light and related phenomenon ' and the Vesilovsky Theory in the same category, although if you don't believe in global warming, then you are seriously out of touch with the amount of damage that we are doing to the environment. .

Classical (I assume,- Newtownian) Physics pretty rigorously explained in the 1700's by Newton and others, the mathematical relationships between mass and mechanical energy with respect to gravity, inertia, orbits etc. The framework for putting as yet unexplained electromagnetic radiation into equations involving energy (momentum and heat,) up until the early 1800's were worked out by Maxwell and Faraday. The identification of an electron as a pint sized point particle with a tiny (measurable)mass, "supposed to be orbiting" a much more massive nucleus, in a Newtonian fashion like Planets orbiting the sun, was first proposed and almost immediately rejected because of various paradoxes and problems for only a few years around 1900. If that long!!!!! The problems with this model had already become a slippery slope avalanche with Einsteins theory of relativity (was that 1904?), and had been pretty thoroughly demolished by quantum theorists, Bohr, Heisenberg, Shrodinger, etc in the late 1920's. Why do people still try to view the atomic and subatomic theory as though it involved very tiny particals orbiting around other particles? Probably because it is easier to picture, and is often pictured that way in textbooks, cartoons and so on. I like to think of electrons as cloud like elastic fields that follow the shapes roughly in the diagrams of S, P, etc orbitals that are really nothing more than polar plots of simple equations of R= sine theta to different powers or with different whole number ratios. When the cloud follows a whole number relationship with the circumference and the wavelength or rate of twisting or flipping it acts as though it has mass because it shares a whole number time frame with particles in its vicinity and therefore small changes in surrounding forces constructively reinforce or destroy (subtact from) its localization. This is what I think of as the Lamb effect or virtual transmission and absorbtion of a photon. So the model I use in my mind to picture quantum particles resolving with newtonian physics is that these so-called atomic particles with "mass" are just membrane-like standing wave electromagnetic fields that act like mass because of their synchronicity. Anyway the electron can't collapse into a nucleus because an electron is the shape of a field that twists at such a rate that its standard minimum radius puts it outside the nucleus and anyway the inside of an electron field would then be positive and repel the nucleus. Who said that basic particles are point particles that are infinitly dense?

I like to think of electrons as cloud like elastic fields that follow the shapes roughly in the diagrams of S, P, etc orbitals that are really nothing more than polar plots of simple equations of R= sine theta to different powers or with different whole number ratios. When the cloud follows a whole number relationship with the circumference and the wavelength or rate of twisting or flipping it acts as though it has mass because it shares a whole number time frame with particles in its vicinity and therefore small changes in surrounding forces constructively reinforce or destroy (subtact from) its localization.

Hi Geoffrey, I have always held that freedom of thought and expression, providing it doesn't impinge on others right to freedom of thought and expression, is a fundamental defining fact of human intelligence. While, your (or rather Schrodinger's ) cloud theory of the electron with different shapes is fascinating , if true, it does involve the visualization of something like 276 dimensions in order to explain the Uranium atom. To you this might not seem a complication, but to me even the three or rather four dimensions, that we deal with in everyday life, namely length, width, height and time seem to be enough !

What I am trying to get at here is that the more esoteric aspects of QM, don't apply and have never applied to what we experience in the macro world. We don't for instance see things that can be in two places at once, or that can disembody themselves and suddenly re-appear or that exist in a 276 dimensional world. So if , and it's a big 'if', a more prosaic solution is available that fits all the facts, I for one am willing to listen.

Well I certainly wasn't proposing that the whole number relationship of number of nuclear particles corresponded to numbers of dimensions. Actually we all have dayly experience with those micro "particles" called photons. They allow us to see!!!! And they do spontaneously disappear and reapper as stimulators of the photo receptors in our eyes, from Galaxies millions of miles away. In fact much of the evidence of the Universe that we sense is through these esoteric little "wave Particles" that really don't behave like point particles orbiting a massive nucleus like Newtownian planets.