Fundamentals of Physics 5b)

Falsification of Kinetic Theory

Phase Changes

The Ideal (Perfect) Gas Laws are another example and are an imperfect model of the reactions of gases to changes in pressure and temperature, and even then in a limited range of conditions. Even with numerous subsequent modifications and adjustments they still fail to produce a model which can be relied on today.

For example a textbook states that ‘ The ideal-gas equation is not valid at high pressures’ and ‘the ideal gas equation is valid for all gases at sufficiently low densities and sufficiently high temperatures’.

A clear example is that these laws completely fail to predict the behaviour of gases during the change of state from gas to liquid. An example is Carbon Dioxide at the point of liquidisation. Another textbook quote ‘for carbon dioxide at 60 ATM all similarity to perfect gas behaviour is lost’.

Let us look at this particular change of state more closely. According to Kinetic Theory the progression from gas to liquid should follow the progression as shown in the graph below for a ‘Perfect Gas’ and this is valid initially. Which means that in Kinetic Theory terms the molecules, being confined into less and less ‘space’ due to the increase in applied pressure, collide more and more often with the walls and each other thus generating an increasing resistance to the applied pressure.

According to Kinetic Theory atoms in a gas at Standard Temperature and Pressure are positioned in relation to each other at 10 molecular diameters and in a liquid at less than one molecular diameter apart.

The progression in the graph above shows that at a point where the molecules are on average about 4 diameters apart there is suddenly no additional resistance to the applied pressure and the molecules essentially move to 1 diameter apart and the gas liquefies.

Current teaching of Kinetic Theory principles attempts to explain this anomaly by saying that at Standard Temperature and Pressure separations there is no attraction between the molecules of a gas and that as the separation reduces progressively they begin to attract and the attraction increases strongly at around 4 diameters and then, in the liquid state at 1 diameter, the force between molecules then reverses and becomes strongly repulsive.

This explanation is illogical. How can there, at one point in the progression, be no attraction, then attraction increases and then decreases to a point where there is neither attraction or repulsion, then finally strong repulsion develops?

What are these attractive and repulsive forces and what is causing them to vary in an irregular fashion? How do they act through and in a vacuum?

There is no rational explanation for these changes from attraction to repulsion.

This pattern follows the whole development of Kinetic Theory from Clerk Maxwell’s Laws to the present day, in that where natural phenomena or experimental results have not conformed to the theory then ad hoc ‘adjustments’ have been made one after the other in order to try and tailor the theory to suit the observed phenomena. This leaves us today with a theory which is so convoluted and ‘adjusted’ so that even where it is capable of practical application is extremely complicated and cumbersome. It needs to be reiterated that it is of course a ‘theory’ which means that there is no experimental evidence which unequivocally proves that molecules are moving a high velocities in a vacuum in any gas. Any contrived experiment that has been carried out to prove this theory have been on the basis of assumptions whereas the examples above are naturally occurring phenomena.

Fundamentals Of Physics 5c)

 Falsification of Kinetic Theory

Convection

Kinetic Theory gives no clear explanation of heat transference between different materials, it fails to explain, for example, how this in a gas or a liquid causes a localised convective movement.

Textbooks brush over this very important heat transfer process by vague phraseology such as ‘In free convection the heating process produces a temperature and density gradient in the fluid and fluid motion is induced by the action of gravity’ and ‘temperature gradients induce convection in fluids, a phenomena that involves the movement of gases or liquids’.

The example above is a hot object placed in contact with a ‘kinetic’ gas that is at a lower temperature. What occurs in practice is that where the gas meets the object convection currents are clearly observed rising close to the surface of the object.

Kinetic Theory states that ‘Molecules that move more rapidly because they are in a region of higher temperature collide with molecules in a neighbouring region, giving the adjacent molecules more kinetic energy and consequently more thermal energy’, and that ‘heat applied to a gas results in an increase in the velocity of the molecules and a corresponding increase in collisions’ and that this increase in collisions results in a greater average molecular separation.

Clearly this would mean that where this occurs there would be fewer molecules per unit space and the total mass and therefore the density of this unit volume would be reduced by comparison with adjacent cooler unit volumes of gas.

However if a gas consists of molecules moving independently of each other in a vacuum and as the mass of these molecules remains the same and further there is ‘no attraction between molecules’, then gravity can only act on individual molecules and not the gas as a whole because the theory states that the gas as a whole is 99.9% a vacuum and this component cannot be influenced by gravity. In any case the theory also suggests that as far as individual atoms are concerned “gravity can be ignored”.

If we put this into a different perspective, this is like saying that if a number of ball bearings are suspended on wires (as in the diagram below) with a separation between them of say 20mm, and beside this suspend a similar number at separations of 40mm, then the second group would collectively have a lesser gravitational attraction to the centre of the Earth than the first group. This of course is absurd.

It follows therefore that an individual molecule in a larger volume of space has the same gravitational attraction as another molecule of the same mass in a smaller volume of space.

But Kinetic Theory is suggesting that a single molecule in a larger area of ‘space’ moving at greater velocity has a lower gravitational attraction to the earth than a slower one of the same mass in a smaller area of ‘space’. However it is the ‘space’ that has expanded and the ‘space’ cannot be affected by gravity as it is devoid of matter.

Or to put it in another way if the mass of the molecule remains the same, the gravitational effect in a vacuum would be unchanged, and it is quite clear that this kinetic process, in itself, would not result in these observed convection currents.

The only way this could occur in such circumstances is for there to be some instantaneously acting force of attraction acting between these atoms, but as the theory states that there is ‘no attraction between molecules’ the natural phenomenon of convection cannot be described by the kinetic atomic theory of gases.

Fundamentals of Physics 5d)

Falsification

Gravity

In 1647 Gassendi resurrected the ancient ‘kinetic’ atomic theory of the ultimate structure of macroscopic matter and later in this century Christaan Huygens introduced his seminal work on the propagation of light and Newton his Law of Gravity, which introduced the problem of their transmission through and within a vacuum.

369 years later this atomic theory remains securely in place today as the foundation upon which the science of theoretical physics is based.

As a result theoretical physicists today have absolutely no idea how gravity is transmitted between any two masses, and when light, in many thousands of experiments, has been proven unequivocally to propagate as a wave, they have no sensible, verifiable suggestion as to how a wave of light can propagate through the hypothetical, non-material, zero-inertia ’empty space’ or vacuum.

After nearly four centuries of attempts by great minds to solve this problem, it is therefore indisputable that there is no possible modification or ‘adjustment’ to the core assumptions on which kinetic theory is based that could enable such a structure of macroscopic matter to sustain these transmissions.

No doubt this is the reason why theoretical physicists for the last 90 odd years have expended little energy in studying the interactions of atoms at this level, and have instead focused their energies, and an enormous amount of funding by governments around the world, on dissecting the nucleus of the atom itself into hundreds of ‘virtual’ particles (which apparently are now not particles in the true meaning of the word).

Perhaps all this effort was in the vain hope that this internal atomic structure will somehow provide a solution to this impasse, but as to how they could collectively come to the conclusion that this would lead to an understanding of how gravity is transmitted through a structure of macroscopic matter composed of atoms moving in a universally permeating vacuum defies logic.

For the propagation of this, and any other, force Newton’s 3^rd Law of Motion states that action and reaction, attraction and repulsion are essential.

For example take two tennis balls and if we place them close together on a level surface they are attracted to one another, but will not move closer due to extraneous factors such as the friction between them and the surface.

We can exaggerate the small attractive force by holding them and pushing them together, which will result in the deformation of the balls at the point of contact, and if we maintain the pressure and hold them in that position, there is a repulsive force acting between them at that point.

So here we have action and reaction, an(artificially induced)attraction and a natural repulsion, and this replicates the interactions of any two massive bodies that come into contact through the motion of one or both.

The two massive spheres shown below, suspended against the Earth’s gravity on long cables, are observed to incline towards each other, away from their natural alignment to the centre of the Earth, and there is obviously an attractive force acting (somehow) between them, which can be precisely calculated if the masses are known and, according to Newton’s 3^rd Law, a repulsive force must also be acting between them. But there is no possibility of such forces acting through the vacuum of a kinetic gas.

Kinetic atomic theory today states that the intervening space is occupied by atmospheric gases composed essentially of diatomic molecules of nitrogen and oxygen that are moving at velocities of around 500 metres per second and colliding with each other, and with the surfaces of these spheres, and that collectively these molecules occupy just one thousandth of the total volume of the gases, while the remainder is a vacuum. (This situation is indicated in the second diagram below, and while the numbers are of course incorrect, it serves to illustrate the issue.)

The collisions of atoms with the facing surfaces of these spheres can only exert a repulsive force on the spheres, so no attractive influence could possibly be envisaged by the intervening cloud of kinetic atoms, and accordingly the force of gravitation in these hypothetical circumstances must be transmitted through the intervening, non-material space.

Newton wrote that “one body may act upon another – through a vacuum – through which their action or force may be conveyed – is to me so great an absurdity that – no man who has a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it” (In other words he would be stupid.)

Today physicists say that this vacuum is not ‘empty’ (this of course being a contradiction in terms),and that it is ‘full’ of (let us say) ‘characteristics’ such as ‘waves of energy’ etc. etc..

But at the same time the theory requires that this, extra-atomic intervening space (of any speculative composition)cannot have any characteristic that can impede the kinetic motion of molecules and atoms within and through it.

So we have the absurd situation where physicists, after centuries of failure, continue to believe, or rather hope, that somehow this must be possible in terms of the currently accepted hypothetical structure, however it is a simple, and undeniable, fact that the transfer of an attractive force between these two, and between any other two massive objects of any dimension is, in such circumstances, an impossibility.

The application of logic would suggest that this demonstrates that there is something inherently false with kinetic theory.

But todays physicists have, for the last 80 odd years, focused their efforts on examining the internal structure of the atom itself and appear to have ignored this dimension, perhaps because it is considered to be elementary, having being instilled, effectively as proven, in physics students during their secondary education.

This focus has cost taxpayers around the world huge sums, for example CERN alone has to date cost over $13 billion and its annual running costs are over $1 billion.

One commentator apparently argued that this “is a small price to pay for the secrets of the universe”, but no doubt he or she did not consider that the secret of the transmission of the force of gravitation, in particular here at the Earth’s surface, was so important.

But in the real, macroscopic world, where atoms have been proven to be the ultimate, natural, material entities, the forces of nature can only be the result of an inter-connection, a transmission of forces and energy between atoms.

In such circumstances, where the interactions of atoms are still unexplained, the question is:-

Why is it believed by the vast majority of physicists that they can discover the “secrets of the universe” and the origins, the causes of the transfer of forces through macroscopic matter, by dissecting the nucleus of the atom itself?