Ponderable matter

In spite of the apparent acceptance of the particulate nature of solid matter, the imponderable fluids of heat, magnetism, and electricity of Newtonian tradition were still indispensable instruments of discussion. In chemistry, phlogiston and the matter of heat, later called caloric, were typically treated as continuous fluids. John Dalton, who finally made the atomic idea functional for chemistry, continued to utilize heat or caloric as a fluid atmosphere that surrounded each atomic particle in the gaseous state. Though he did speak of the caloric as having particles, he always treated those particles collectively, never as discrete entities as he did the atomic particles of ponderable matter. Hence, early in the nineteenth century the vocabularies of both particulate and continuous views of matter remained in simultaneous usage. 

Baryons are held together in atomic nuclei by strong interaction and at least one further level of reduction at which protons and neutrons are separated, can be envisaged. Since a free neutron disintegrates spontaneously, ponderable matter can be considered as made up of protons, electrons and neutrinos. Each of these carry characteristic amounts of mass, charge and spin. The neutrino apparently has zero mass and charge. 

Although Black imported thermometric techniques into chemistry from other physical sciences, to describe his view of heat as physical would be inaccurate. Rather as chemistry was understood in terms of heat, so heat was understood by Black in terms of chemistry. As Robison clarified, Black perceived the latent presence of heat in bodies in terms of its chemical combination with ponderable matter...23... 

It was Schrodinger s intention to associate Zitterbewegung with electron spin, but such an assumption would serve simply to clarify one mystery in terms of another. Instead, one could try first to understand the nature of Zitterbewegung within the region identified as the electron. The only substance available to support the periodic motion is space itself and there seems to be two possibilities either space consists of continuous stuff or of compacted particles. Winterberg [68] explored the latter possibility. Wave motion in a continuous aether is probably easier to visualize and needs fewer assumptions. The only postulate is that ponderable matter and its properties represent special configurations of space. Hence flat Euclidean space (-time) in dimensions of any number, is featureless and empty. 

This quotation is from J.S. Bell [5]. The event referred to, marks the beginning of a slow, but certain return to the original spirit of quantum theory to understand the stability and structure of ponderable matter. Bohm s ideas have been resisted by the physics community but, as pointed out by Bell,... 

Imagine that a material S3rstem be absolutely isolated in space around it there is nothing, neither ponderable matter nor ether nothing that may furnish it with heat nor take away heat. 

Ether, which the occultist terms astral light, determines the constitution of bodies. Hardness and softness, solidity and liquidity, all depend on the relative proportion of ethereal and ponderable matter of which they are composed. 

Figure 5.4 signifies more than elemental or nuclide periodicity. It summarizes the appearance of ponderable matter in all modifications throughout the universe. Following the extended hemlines from top left at Z/N = 1.04 — bottom left at 0 —> top right at Z/N = 1.04 bottom right at 0, and back to top left, the involuted closed path, which is traced out, is mapped to the non-orientable surface of a Mobius band in Figure 5.7. The two sides of the double cover are interpreted to represent both matter and antimatter.

In 1811 Berzelius said that the electricities must follow the same laws as hold for ponderable matter in respect of the proportions in which they combine with bodies — an adumbration of Faraday s laws. In his first account of Faraday s paper of 1834 (Series VII, see p. 116), Berzelius says the law that the same quantity of electricity produces the same amount of decomposition, although perhaps correct, had not been so fully proved as could be wished. That the same current should decompose water and fused lead chloride, and liberate equivalents of lead and hydrogen had been shown, but the acid in the water must have had an effect, and the idea that the same quantity of electricity could separate an atom of potassium from an atom of oxygen as would separate an atom of silver from an atom of oxygen was not probable, the force of affinity being so much larger in the first case. He also corrected Faraday s chemical results on sulphide of antimony. ... 

In 1812 (V XI, iv, 187, 359, 364) Davy distinguished between undecom-potmded substances (the ordinary elementary bodies) and true elements of bodies . Of hydrogen he says its extreme lightness, and the small quantities in which it enters into combination, render it. unlikely that it should be resolved into other forms of ponderable matter, by any instruments or pro-i cesses at present within our power the metals and inflammable bodies may be supposed to be different combinations of hydrogen with another prindple... 

As in wave mechanics, the simulation of chemical phenomena by number theory is characterized by the appearance of integers, in this case associated with chemical structures and transformations. An obvious conclusion is that the elementary units of matter should be viewed as wave structures rather than point particles, which is consistent with the first appearance of matter in curved space-time. Even 3D wave packets behave in a manner convincingly like ponderable matter and rationalize the equivalence of mass and energy in a natural way. There is no compelling reason why this simple model should be concealed with the notion of wave/particle duality and more so on realizing that the wave-like space-time distortions are strictly 4D structures. In response to environmental pressure, an electronic wave packet can shrink to the effective size of an elementary particle or increase to enfold a proton as a spherical standing wave. 

These elementary waves coalesce into bigger units that exhibit all the known properties of ponderable matter. 

It is not unexpected that problems often occur in the fundamental analysis of emergent properties. Maybe the prudent response of the chemist should then be a critical reexamination of those assumptions that underpin the partially successful theory. In any theory, there is a reductionist limit, beyond which there are no data to guide the recognition of more fundamental principles. In the theory of matter, this limit occurs in the vacuum, or sub-ether [2], seen as the primaeval form of matter, continuously spread across the endless void. On deformation of this featureless cosmos, ponderable matter emerges from the void as elementary distortions, which are perpetually dispersed, except in a closed system. We propose such a structure as... 

Like Dalton, Avogadro believed that gases were composed of particles of ponderable matter each surrounded by a sphere of caloric that was retained by an attraetive force between it and the particle. It was this force, he maintained. 

Although largely chemically inert, the ether did, according to Mendeleev, interact chemically with ponderable matter in the extreme gravitational circumstances of the environment of very heavy atoms like those of uranimn or radium. Radioactivity was then explained as the release of energy produced by this gravitational — yet stiU chemical — interaction between heavy atom and ether. 

Alfred Ditte, Revue des cours scientifiques de la France et de I itranger, 46, N°20, 15 nov. 1890, 209-219. Ditte was a professor of chemistry at the Sorbonne and author of a Traitiilimentaire de chimie fondie sur les principes de la thermochimie [A Textbook of Chemistry, founded on the Principles of Thermochemistry] (Dunod, 1884) Ditte advocated a mechanical view of individual elements as he concluded that each substance was a step in a continuum on ponderable matter and that a natural classification should he based on the quantity of movement and mass. 

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