What holds the Atom together?

David Gould

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Today at 06:23 AM MartinM said this in Post #73

It's worth noting that there is no minimum energy a photon can carry, so 'less than a photon's worth' is meaningless in the more general context. That is, unless we're going to get into the QFT trick of invoking a closed Universe to cut off the extreme infrared. The energy levels a bound electron may occupy are determined by the structure of the potential, not some fundamental discretization of the photon energy spectrum.

From your other posts, it's pretty clear that you know all this. I just thought it was worth clarifying.

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't know how to express myself properly to Tacoman. Hopefully he will read this and think about it.
 
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MartinM

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Today at 11:36 PM DNAunion said

DNAunion: But electrons do sometimes "crash into" the nucleus, during K capture (mediated by the weak force). So it can't be literally impossible.

We don't need to go as far as electron capture to find electrons in the nucleus - it happens all the time. But it has nothing to do with the orbit decaying - it is a simple consequence of the fact that the probability density of a typical electron orbital is non-zero even within the nucleus.
 
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David Gould

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Today at 12:40 PM tacoman528 said this in Post #84

So then what happens to the atom when the electron crashes into it?

It would depend on the circumstances, I would imagine. To be honest, I am not sure of all the implications.

I am sure someone else can answer this, although I will look up some stuff and see if I can find out anything.
 
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David Gould

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High speed collisions (close to light speed) between electrons and protons result in the proton breaking up into other particles and the electron bouncing off.

This would be unlikely to happen in a low speed collision. I would imagine that in some instances the proton and the electron would remain locked together, although there are probably other effects.

http://www.anl.gov/OPA/factsheets/r10-02.htm

This looks at using electron proton collisions as a way of examining the atom. It is talking about high speed collisions.
 
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David Gould

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Today at 12:49 PM tacoman528 said this in Post #86

How do they know if the electron actually does crash into the nucleus?

In the experiments from the above web site, they had detectors set up. Thus, they could see what path the electrons took. If they deviated a long way - bounced straight back or nearly so, for example - they must have hit something large like a proton.

Then they could also detect for the break up of the proton, which would be confirming evidence.

With these collisions, however, we are not talking about the collapse of an atom - simply electron proton collisions.

As I say, I am unsure what would happen in the event of atomic collapse.
 
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David Gould

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Today at 12:55 PM tacoman528 said this in Post #89

Well of course that happens all the time, especially inside the sun. What I mean is when the electron suddenly spirals into the nucleus.

I would not know what happens when an electron does that, as as far as I am aware it cannot happen unless other things are also happening.

Others will know more than me, I am sure.
 
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David Gould

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Today at 01:08 PM tacoman528 said this in Post #91

And also,
why, again, doesn't the nucleus fly apart because of the proton's positive charge?


This question has been answered. It is because of the strong nuclear force, which i smuch stronger than the electromagnetic force but only operates over very small distances, such as the ones in the nucleus of an atom.

The evidence for the existence of the strong nuclear force is easy to see - watch a film of an atomic explosion.

When we split the atom, we release this energy.
 
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Joe_Sixpack

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"And also,
why, again, doesn't the nucleus fly apart because of the proton's positive charge?"

Quantum chromodynamics answers this question quite well - check it out sometime. Murray Gell-Man got the Nobel prize for coming up with it - you might learn something about it if you read up on it.

BTW - gluons have been detected in particle accelerators - they are carrier particles of the strong nuclear force (also called the chromo or color force) and are interchanged between quarks that make up protons and neutrons.
 
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lucaspa

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5th February 2003 at 08:06 PM tacoman528 said this in Post #1

We know that an atom is composed of protons and electrons. If the protons are positive and the electrons are negative, then what keeps the electrons from crashing into the positively charged nucleus. If the nucleus is completely made of positive material, what holds it together? Wouldn't it fly apart because of the like charges. We know that gluons don't because they have never been observed or measured. How would they hold the atoms together anyway, no force is really strong enough to keep electrons away from the nucleus or to keep the nucleus together. That is, except the power of god.

This is the worst of god-of-the-gaps.  It is completely antithetical to orthodox Christian theology because you have just reduced God to a material creature to keep atoms together.

Others have given you the scientific answers (although you do not accept them), below is the theological fallacy of your position.  This is one of the biggest dangers of creationism: total ignorance of theology and the failure to see what their ham-handed attempts to "prove" God do to theology.

"There are profound biblical objections to such a "God-of-the-gaps," as this understanding of God's relation to the universe has come to be called.  By "gap" it is meant that no member or members of the universe can be found to account for regularly occurring phenomana in nature.  God is inserted in the gaps which could be occupied by members of the universe.  This is theologically improper because God, as creator of the universe, is not a member of the universe.  God can never properly be used in scientific accounts, which are formulated in terms of the relations between members of the universe, because that would reduce God to the status of a creature.  According to a Christian conception of God as creator of a universe that is rational through and through, there are no missing relations between the members of nature.  If, in our study of nature, we run into what seems to be an instance of a connection missing between members of nature, the Christian doctrine of creation implies that we should keep looking for one. ...But, according to the doctrine of creation, we are never to postulate God as the *immediate*  cause of any *regular* [emphases in original] occurrence in nature.  In time, a "God of the gaps" was seen to be bad science as well as bad theology.  Science now is programamatically committed to a view of nature in which there are no gaps between members of the universe."

Diogenes Allen, Christian Belief in a Postmodern World, pp. 45-46.
 
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lucaspa

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Yesterday at 09:08 PM tacoman528 said this in Post #91

And also,
why, again, doesn't the nucleus fly apart because of the proton's positive charge?

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/stronginteract.html  be sure to use the link at the bottom to "Experiments"

http://www.schoolscience.co.uk/content/4/physics/particles/particlesmodel2.html

http://aether.lbl.gov/www/tour/elements/stellar/strong/strong.html

http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae268.cfm

You might want to join this last link, Tacoman, and then you can ask your questions to a physicist and get your detailed answers.
 
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Joe_Sixpack

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"What keeps things around atoms spinning? Is it perpetual motion energy or something?"

Depends what you mean by "spinning?" This is another example of using a macro-world term to describe a quantum-level event in a simple way. The problem with such analogies is that they always break down at some point.
 
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Morat

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I once saw a guy on Leno with a "Spin Battery", where he claimed to have stored energy in the "spinning" electrons and sucked it out when needed.

Amusingly, it might indeed be possible to have a spin battery. But it would not work anything like described by our putative inventer.

Of course, upon testing, it turns out he was augmenting his "spin battery" with regular ole' normal batteries.
 
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chickenman

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God holds atoms together

so the energy that is released when atoms undergo fission is really god's energy

so......we don't have to worry about iraq building nuclear weapons, because they're trying to unleash god's energy, and clearly, being non-christian infidels, god won't allow that to happen?

YAY! we don't have to invade iraq!
 
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