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Atoms
Don't Exist |
Why Atoms Don’t Exist In the 1980s, some enterprising young men performed a sequence of experiments to show the weirdness of quantum theoretical phenomena. They used a very nifty laser that emitted identical photons one after another in single file. First, photons were proven to be particles. Then, they were proven to be waves. Finally, a photon was proven to be a particle and a wave at the same time. This is the sort of thing that might have elicited a shouting match across the dinner table between Niels Bohr and Wolfgang Pauli. In fact, Niels Bohr might have become quite upset and disturbed the meal. The problem is that a particle has a particular location in space-time, whereas a wave is spread out over space-time; obviously, a particle cannot be a wave, and a wave cannot be a particle - they are mutually contradictory things. A wave-particle is an oxymoron. It's rather like a chair-table or a red can of blue paint. This problem exists for all quantum theoretical things. Atoms are quantum theoretical things. Historically, atoms have been called particles. However, if an experiment is done to show their wave properties, then they don't look like particles at all. The problem can be solved sort-of by saying an atom is like a particle and like a wave. This leads to a different problem. What are these things we call atoms? They can't be particles, because they're waves. They can't be waves, because they're particles! What are they? If you don't say what an atom is, you're just saying that an atom is "something". How do you know that something exists? Uh, I dunno, just 'cause, I guess (scratch ma head). Saying that something exists without saying what that something is is meaningless. Existence of meaningless things is meaningless. Therefore, the only meaningful thing to say is that they don't exist in a meaningful world. No one can meaningfully argue for the existence of a meaningless thing. Another problem arises. Boy, problems, problems! What about chemistry? Chemists play with atoms! Can we say that a chemist's toys don't exist? No way! Yes, way! This is very important: If the model works, then it's a useful model. If the model is wrong, then so what! The idea of an atom is a theoretical construct. The very complicated and abstruse mathematical equations become doable when we use the approximations involved in saying that there are these tiny things called atoms. Saying that something exists is a bit like naming a child with every name in a phone book. Call any name, and the child will answer. Who is the child? This reason why atoms don't exist is a bit more esoteric than most. You see, these things we call photons behave in a strange way. Due to Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction, a photon's meter stick has zero length, and a photon’s clock never ticks; therefore, an inhabitant of a photon will not measure a distance to travel. Therefore, from the standpoint of a photon inhabitant, there is no distance between the electron it is emitted from and the electron it is absorbed by. Furthermore, a clock on a photon won't tick, because it takes zero time (as measured by photon inhabitants) for a photon to travel from one place to another. In fact, there is reason for inhabitants of a photon to believe that the emitting electron and the absorbing electron are the same electron. Since the paths of photons overlap, all photons would necessarily exist in the same position (according to their point of view). Therefore, the Universe is zero dimensional. This does not allow for enough space for an atom to exist. Pretty esoteric, huh? |