Our Nuclear Physics All Wrong!
Our current theory to explain nuclear energy is very likely all wrong. The readers may immediately respond with : “If nuclear energy physics is all wrong, how come we still could build nuclear reactors?” Physics theory and technology are two different aspects. In 1945, they would still have succeeded in developing the atomic bomb whether E=mc² was correct or fictitious; their knowledge of nuclear physics then was empirical, without yet a theoretical basis. They knew that huge energy were released in the fission of U-235. It is the same with gunpowder. The ancients need no theory of chemistry of the elements as they knew that sulfur, fine charcoal and saltpeter (potassium nitrate) would combine to produce gunpowder. But having a correct nuclear physics theory should be better than holding on to a fictitious theory. A correct theory may point to the way to real advancement in physics; it may be our “bad” nuclear physics that is the cause that our tokamak fusion reactors (to produce unlimited clean fusion energy from water) deliver only “news” and not any tangible results – news and more news – despite 7 decades and billions of dollars spent.
The real culprit is the mass spectrometer – with their most sophisticated equipment on planet earth like the Penning trap, used to weigh atoms. These ultra high-end equipment of nuclear physics proves to be not reliable after all! They weigh atoms and deliver atomic mass values which the particle physicists embrace wholeheartedly. So the physicists found that when U-235 splits into smaller fragments, some mass goes missing, leading them to formulate a “theory of mass defect”. They happily put the “missing mass” in the famous Einstein equation E=mc² and transformed it into a huge figure for energy and – “Eureka! I have unraveled the mystery of nuclear energy!“. The Almighty God created the world perfect with nothing missing! God made sure that when atoms redistributed themselves during nuclear reactions, He still consider each and every atom uniquely his creature with their mass well preserved.
For the past months, I was examining mass spectrometry, a very advanced technique in physics that could sort charged particles and ions, e.g. electrons, protons, ²H⁺, He²⁺, ¹²C⁺, and then to compare the masses of two of the particles giving their relative atomic mass. Today, the physics community has their experimental measurements of the atomic masses of every possible nucleus of atoms and their isotopes collected into a shared CODATA database. One has just to look up the open database to know the atomic mass of an element; e.g the 2012 data has:
neutron 1.008 664 915 850 amu (atomic mass units)
H-1, hydrogen 1.007 825 032 231
H-2, deuterium 2.014 101 778 120
He-4, helium 4.002 603 254 130
I Have a 10 page paper (unpublished), the pdf file of which is available for download at my website:
“Is Mass Spectrometry Accurate?”
From the official site of ITER (International Thermonuclear Energy Research) :
Fusion, the nuclear reaction that powers the Sun and the stars, is a potential source of safe, non-carbon emitting and virtually limitless energy. Harnessing fusion’s power is the goal of ITER, which has been designed as the key experimental step between today’s fusion research machines and tomorrow’s fusion power plants.
When will tomorrow arrive? And the “potential” may be very low with a “bad” nuclear physic’s backing.
Some basics. In nuclear physics, their basic unit for mass is the amu and we have a knowledge about its conversion to kilogram. In earlier days, the chemists started with Hydrogen as 1 amu; so oxygen weighs 16, nitrogen 14. Today we take the amu scale to have carbon-12 as 12 exact; then oxygen-16 (the most abundant natural isotope, 99.8%) is no more a whole number, but 15.99491461957(17). This “(17)”, 17 in bracket, represents the uncertainty in the last two figures.
Even before the 20th century (mass spectrometry invented about 1920), chemists already had the ability to “weigh” atoms. They analyzed the ratio of the amount of elements that would combine to form a compound. As they had already knowledge of their chemical reactions, they could also find the “relative atom mass” – say of oxygen/hydrogen, about 16. The could do electrolysis of water and collect the gases released, oxygen and hydrogen; as the formula of water is H₂O, they could weigh the amounts of hydrogen and oxygen collected and they would be able to calculate the ratio of one atom oxygen to one atom hydrogen. The figure they got in 1900 was 15.87; they could get only about 2 decimals as the accuracy of their balances – as well as technology then – were limited.
Then in the 1920’s, they invented mass spectrometry. Mass spectrometry relies on the fact that if a charged particles or ions (say an atom of oxygen with one electron removed would have a +1 positive charge, as ¹⁶O⁺, a positive ion of oxygen-16) are injected into a uniform magnetic field, they would be deflected by amounts that depend on their masses. In this manner, they could sort and identify ions according to their atomic masses. They then developed the method to compare atomic masses of the various atoms. The precision of their technique kept improving until they were able the weigh atoms more precisely then their chemists counterparts. The chemist then could at most weigh atoms to the 2nd or 3rd decimal place (eg, H = 1.008, C = 12.01), but the new technique soon surpassed the chemist and it could reach precision to the 4th or 5th decimals.
An English chemist William Prout in 1815 found that the atoms of elements all seemed to have a mass that are whole numbers of the mass of the hydrogen atom – the so called ‘whole number rule’ of atomic weights known as Prout’s hypothesis. When the mass spectrometers started to weigh atoms more “accurately”, they found that the mass figures “don’t add up properly” – something’s missing. They expected the helium atom to weigh 4 times that of the hydrogen, but hydrogen has mass 1.008, but helium was just about 4; there was a loss of mass in the synthesis from hydrogen to helium. The physics community then accepted this “mass deficit” or “missing mass” to be correct. They could just stuff this missing mass into Einstein’s famous equation : E = mc² (E = energy, m= mass, c = light speed) to explain nuclear fusion/fission to be the new source of energy of the sun. What E=mc² means that if you could transform mass to pure energy, the formula would give you the figure! because c² is a huge factor, a little “missing” mass converted to energy became enormous (you could try calculating if planet earth could survive if someone could completely convert 1 kg of rice fully into pure energy!). When U-235 splits into smaller fragments due to radioactivity, only a tiny fractions of the mass involved gets converted to energy – not the whole U-235 atoms! That’s how extremely “dirty” fission reactors work.
Well, when they first found the “missing mass”, no one then entertained the idea it was their new fancy spectrometers that were playing tricks! There never was any experimental test to verify if their spectrometers were reliable – not ever! The little (about 0.1%) missing mass could well be their weighing scales were only approximately good. It could even be that if they were to be able to weigh atoms with our verified and high precision beam chemical balances of today, all atoms would have atomic masses equal to that of the mass number (a whole number equal to the number of protons+neutron) in atomic mass units! If this is true, then it would mean the law of mass conservation is again revived – there is not need of E=mc² to combine mass and energy to our current “law of mass-energy conservation”. It is just mass alone being conserved – and much simplified without being entangled with energy. This would put and end to the nuclear physics theory of today. We would need to find a new explanation for nuclear energy.
Until today, the accuracy of mass spectrometer that weigh atoms to 10¯¹⁰ has not been verified to be reliable. They could only give precision reached in their measurements – but precision and accuracy are two independent aspects. The most prestigious equipment today for mass spectrometry is the Penning trap that could trap a single particle/ion in a small space of about 1 – 5 centimeters. It seems China is just still building ONE Penning trap (the first) called the LPT (Lanzhou Penning Trap) – we can imagine how costly this piece of equipment should be. You would read news in the media every so often as, in 2017, physicists from Germany and Japan of RIKEN determined the mass of the proton to the “highest precision” to date:
“The resulting mass of the proton, determined to be 1.007276466583(15) three times more precise than the presently accepted value.”
If any of you were to care to stop for a minute and ponder quietly about what 1.007276466583 means – I believe very few did. The particle physicists are infringing into a domain that once were the preserve of the gods! I can’t express with words what it means to “weigh an atom to 11 decimal places!” – you have to use your imaginations. It should be no wonder that such particle physicists from the top universities are commanding such respects and prestige – even the ancient sage emperors of China of Yao and Sun could not achieve such prestige with their magical powers! It is no wonder the whole world now bows in humility to the present day sages with their command of their miraculous science. Fortunately – or unfortunately depending on which side you are on – there is a simple chemical experiment that could be done to conclusively decide if mass spectrometry is correct, or wrong which may mean a full revival of the law of mass conservation; this latter outcome would mean a total collapse our nuclear physics theory.
The relative atomic mass of Na/F based on the current atomic mass from mass spectrometry is : 22.989769/18.998403 or 1.210089; this figure may be taken to be without uncertainty as the atomic masses have no uncertainty in the 6th decimal. The ratio of the mass number of Na/F is : 23/19 or 1.210526. So the problem reduces to doing a chemical analysis of sodium fluoride NaF using our chemical balance to determine the relative atomic mass of Na/F, whether it agrees with 1.210089 or with 1.210526. Our analytical balances today has enough precision for the experiment, it could measure 1 gram to 1 part in 100,000 or a million. With a fresh analysis of NaF today, we could come out with a value of : 1.210089 ± 0.000012 confirming the accuracy of mass spectrometry; or the value may be 1.210526 ± 0.000012 rejecting mass spectrometry and confirming the law of mass conservation – unequivocally.
Chan Rasjid Kah Chew,