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New Results Contradict Long-Held Chemistry Dogma
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Aug 02, 2008 11:54 AM
from the new-states-of-matter-oh-boy dept.
from the new-states-of-matter-oh-boy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have found that the long-held belief that only the outer, valence, electrons of an atom interact may be false. Computer simulations have shown that at pressures like those in the center of the Earth the inner, core, electrons of lithium also interact."
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Submission: New Results Contradict Long Held Chemistry Dogma by Anonymous Coward
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Poor choice of words (Score:4, Insightful)
Dogma?
If it was dogma the priests of chemistry would be denying the evidence and punishing its discoverers.
That's the difference between science and religion. For science, new information enlarges our understanding of the world. For religion, new information only threatens sanctified prejudices.
Re:Poor choice of words (Score:5, Informative)
If it was dogma the priests of chemistry would be denying the evidence and punishing its discoverers.
Evidence you are not a scientist. The word "dogma" just has a different meaning from what you are used to when talking about science. To wit: "The Central Dogma" [wikipedia.org]. You should call up Francis Crick and tell him he was using that word wrong. Maybe they will posthumously take back his Nobel Prize.
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Re:Poor choice of words (Score:5, Informative)
No need. Crick has already acknowledged that he really didn't understand the meaning of the word "dogma" when he used it. However, his ideas were so grond breaking that the word itself has changed/added meaning to accommodate him.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
'Dogma' is common in the sciences, but it implies something different than the formal definition you are thinking of. It is usually used to describe a highly simplified model of how a system works. It's just a useful way to think about something.
The most well known example is the central dogma of molecular biology [wikipedia.org]. By the time you finish freshman molecular biology in college, you know that it is a gross simplification of how a cell works, but that it is a very good first approximation.
Chemistry is no dif
Re:Poor choice of words (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed, there are several dogmas of science, and they are each found to be violated after a few years.
On the central dogma of molecular biology for example, the dogma holds that DNA is transcribed into RNA, which is then translated into protein.
With retrovirus though, it goes RNA--> DNA --> RNA --> protein, which is the most blatant violation. Regulatory RNA mollecules also violate the dogma, showing that whole protein step is non-essential.
Given the traditional definition of dogma as something that is inflexible to the point of causing violence, I think it's good that science has started to co-opt it and prove concretely that dogmas can be violated without the general veracity of them falling apart.
Maybe religions will take note. "Hey, the central dogma of mobio has some exceptions but still DNA gets turned into RNA and then gets turned into protein. Maybe if we admit the bread doesn't ACTUALLY become flesh, we won't all go to hell?"
Yeah, crazy thoughts that will probably get me burned at the stake.
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Re:Poor choice of words (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention that any 2nd year Chemistry student will tell you that it was never dogma. The reason why they don't consider the "interior" electrons is because analytical solutions are... difficult and there influence is negligible. So, they ignore the effects because it doesn't effect the outcome.
(Aside: Engineers do the same thing. If you saw the math that they use, they regularly assume that series converge and chop off all but a few terms because it won't change the outcome in context.)
Continuing, t
Re:Poor choice of words (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientific theories only hold out until something else comes along with more facts that change our understanding
Right. That's called the scientific method.
It's kinda the whole point. Do what you can with what you have where you are, and when you find out how you're wrong you adapt.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you're dealing with cosmology. Then, whenever your theory proves to be wrong or you observe phenomenon that it did not and could not have accounted for, you just patch up your existing theory without questioning any of the underlying assumptions and without examining alternative explanations. Or worse, you just ignore contradictory evidence.
Gravity alone can't account
Re:Poor choice of words (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, i'm not sure where you were going with all of that.
In any field where we cannot be reasonably certain of the tests we're doing let alone the results, it's going to involve a lot of conjecture. The scientists who refuse to say "We just don't know" are on the path to dogmatic thought not scientific thought. I would expect any field on the fringe of our knowledge to involve a lot of uncertainty and a lot of people being shown wrong....constantly. If they weren't being shown to be wrong constantly, that'd be about as likely as coding a huge project on the fly once with no debugging and have it work the first compile.
I don't see how that aspect of human nature has any bearing on the scientific method though.
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Re:Poor choice of words (Score:5, Insightful)
Good points. You don't really have "dogmas" in science, just hypotheses and results that you better not question because then you might piss off someone, lose you grants and be blackballed in peer reviews.
Sadly, the peer review system does not shield scientists from flaring egos and grant sucking. It's a great system where it works, and surely beats the old ways of taunting competitors with results they couldn't reproduce as was the case during the Renaissance. But it still breaks sometimes when seniority, ego and money are involved.
And of course, politics now play a role. Take something that should be as neutral as cosmology, namely, climate study. Now it's tainted with politics. That's rather disquieting.
The motto of the Royal Society -- the 500-year old British academy of sciences -- is "Nullius in Verba", meaning you are not compelled by the word of someone else, only by truth. I wish it were the case.
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Re:Poor choice of words (Score:5, Informative)
Oh dear... as someone said already, I expect this is probably an electric universe rant, and that responding to it will do almost nothing. I could moderate it down, but other mods probably wouldn't understand my reasons for doing so, as the parent avoided mentioning the crackpot theory itself.
It should be said, however, that the odd thing about the dark matter predictions are that they work very well, as do the dark energy predictions. We did many have other models that were put forward, some containing significant changes to various theories. None of them worked nearly as well as our current model with dark matter. There are many people in the community that don't like our lack of knowledge about dark matter, but it works so well that, as with many things in high energy physics, we can only assume that it is actually there until we come up with a better theory.
As for black holes, I would suggest that you actually learn modern GR before suggesting that you understand the theory better than everyone else in the community does. In fact, try learning real cosmology, and looking at results like measurements of CMB anisotropy, and Big Bang nucleosynthesis.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not so much anti-science as it is pro-electric-universe, which is a theory favoured by a bunch of kooks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if some electric universe proponents are electrical engineers, they are called kooks for a reason. But most are just kooks. Anyway, I would rather learn about electrical engineering from electrical engineers, and cosmology from cosmologists.
Electric universe-proponents are not interested in science. What they are interested in is to prove th
Re:Poor choice of words (Score:4, Insightful)
If science weren't dogmatic, there would be organizations and grants who would say "yeah we don't really think this Electric Universe idea is true, but let's devise ways to put it to the test anyway".
That is because there is nothing to test. It's up to the electric universe people to come up with actual, verifiable experiments. But they don't do that, they just make vague claims and complain about conspiracies against them.
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Re:Poor choice of words (Score:5, Informative)
500+ years ago scientists thought the earth was flat.
No, they really didn't. Hell, over 2000 years ago the Greeks already knew the Earth was a sphere. They even knew its diameter! The idea that everyone ever thought the world was flat is entirely false - go ready a history book and stop perpetuating such garbage.
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Re:Poor choice of words (Score:4, Interesting)
Generally, the dark ages weren't nearly as dark as historians from the 19th century depicted it to be.
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Re:Poor choice of words (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Poor choice of words (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only they knew, they had even measured the circumference of the Earth! It just drives me crazy that all this knowledge was somehow forgotten for over 1000 years... For example, even Colombus who knew the earth was round, should have also known the distance to India going the other way around, so it should be obvious to him that he found a new continent...
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Re:Poor choice of words (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy: he thought they were Indians, he said they were Indians, and nobody else had a direct look at them until much later. As the modern disputants of anthropocentric climate change have shown, all it takes it a little doubt or misinformation (intentional or not) to muddy the waters for a long time. And while the scientists are scratching their heads and giving him the benefit of the doubt, ordinary people become convinced of the easier-to-grasp "fact": rather than there being a giant landmass nobody had
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed. Columbus took the smallest available estimate of the size of the earth, and the largest available estimate of the size of Asia, and decided he could just barely sail there. It's the same kind of cherrypicking of favorable data that got us into Iraq.
Re:Poor choice of words (Score:5, Interesting)
It wasn't forgotten. The reason Columbus had so much trouble getting funding was that the royal courts of the time hadn't forgotten; they used Eratosthenes' old number (confirmed by the astrolabe), and then accepted Ptolemy's assessment that it was 180 degrees from one end of Europe to the opposite end of Asia. They knew there was no way that Columbus could reach Japan from the Canaries, 12,000 miles away, without running out of water (no ship of the era was big enough to carry enough for a trip of that length). So advised against giving him money, no matter how much Columbus insisted it was only 2,300. As it was, the reason why the terms of his contract with Fredinand & Isabella was so generous is that everyone expected him to die on the trip rather than make landfall.
And Columbus wasn't ignorant of Eratosthenes' number and Ptolemy's estimate; it was simply that he reached his error based on a different set of authorities:
1) That of Marinus of Tyre (from the first century AD), who thought that Eurasia was 235 degrees in width instead of about 180.
2) The measurement of Alfraganus that underestimated the size of a degree somewhat.
3) His own mistake of assuming that Alfraganus's mile was the same length as an Italian mile (which were 2/3rd the size).
Based on those numbers, it was perfectly reasonable to believe he'd reached Asia.
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Re:Poor choice of words (Score:5, Informative)
No, they didn't. It's called the flat earth myth [wikipedia.org].
Uh, yeah? That's the whole point of Science. Scientists try to create theories that best fit the available data. More importantly, they are always looking for new evidence which will either corroborate or contradict their theories.
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Re: (Score:3)
Really? How many are working on counter-theories to evolution? Yeah, sit down Skippy. SOME scientists are just as religious about their theories as religions themselves.
Re:Poor choice of words (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? For science I rather find the more we understand, the more we realize we don't understand.
This is true. But this also increases our understanding, not decreases it. known unknowns > unknown unknowns.
Scientific theories only hold out until something else comes along with more facts that change our understanding.
To a degree, yes. But a new theory doesn't usually completely obviate the old one. Newtons F=MA still works for the vast majority of the time for things us humans are likely to come into contact with, it just begins to break down as you approach the speed of light. Special relativity only becomes relevant in special cases.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? For science I rather find the more we understand, the more we realize we don't understand. Science is full of unexplained holes that theories postulate answers for. 500+ years ago scientists thought the earth was flat. Scientific theories only hold out until something else comes along with more facts that change our understanding. My 2 cents.
There was a brief period after the loss of Greek natural philosophy from ~500 to ~1000 CE that some (but not all) Western natural philosophers thought the Earth was flat. Other than that, the only time that some prominent Western natural philosophers thought the Earth was flat was prior to Socrates. On the other hand, Chinese philosophers believed the Earth was flat until the 17th century.
It is important to note that Platonic and Aristotelian natural philosophy had a significant effect on people believing
"It leans far left and toward science" (Score:5, Insightful)
For supposedly trying to be neutral, a lot more posts negative of religion or the right get modded up.
Who promised you "neutrality"? Good posts that are negative of religion or the right are just easier to write. You see more of them modded up because more of them are posted.
Instead of whining that everyone is biased, why don't you just mod up posts you agree with if you don't like it, or start writing posts "positive of religion or the right" that are actually insightful or interesting?
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When crazies say God / Science / cowboy neal made me do it, chances are they're just crazy (except maybe the cowboy neal part). We should treat them as crazies and not their respective religion, science, or nealism.
Religion, much like science has done a lot for humanity. Don't forget the early humanism movement which came from the church methodically explored science as a means of understanding their r
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The catholics use the bible as some sort of starting point for their dogma but the exact rules are set by the leadership, not the book (and are often mutable). The protestants are the ones who follow only the book (of course different groups follow it in different ways...). That's where the big division came from.
arXiv link (Score:5, Informative)
For anyone who wants to read the actual paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2781 [arxiv.org]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Valence != Outer Core (Score:5, Informative)
Thats why (Score:3, Funny)
Aahhh, that's why all the experiments I made while standing in the center of the earth sometime failed!
Re:Thats why (Score:5, Funny)
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Sensationalist Bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)
Now that's a fucking shocker. Most Chemistry today focuses on conditions either similar to STP or than can be created within STP. STP is "Standard Temperature and Pressure" Usually defined for the purpose of convenience of communication as 298K and 760 Torr. They define this as "standard" because everybody in Chemistry knows that chemistry changes as you change conditions, and it's useful to have a standard to compare to, even an arbitrary one (298K, 760 Torr is "average" sea level temperature and air pressure). The standard is also very useful for Chemical Engineering.
The article is poorly written garbage.
Goes against chemistry dogma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Goes against chemistry dogma? (Score:5, Informative)
For example, a lot of research is being done now utilizing ultra-high pressure water as a replacement for organic solvents, for greener chemistry.
I think you mean ultra-high pressure carbon dioxide, not water. Supercritical CO2 [wikipedia.org] is indeed an interesting area of research, as it can be used to replace dangerous organic solvents, making industrial chemistry safer and greener.
And I agree that there is likely a rich unexplored landscape of interesting chemistry beyond standard temperatures and pressures.
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give him a break (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a reasonable statement. Anyone in the business (chemical engineering) would be likely to make it. Supercritical CO2 is much more advanced tech than supercritical H2O. Arguably it's more useful, too, since you probably get better interaction with nonpolar substances, the critical pressure for CO2 is a lot lower than for H2O, and the critical temperature is near room temperature (as opposed to nearly 300 C for water). Supercritical H2O undoubtably has applications, but so far as I know supercritical
core correlation (Score:5, Informative)
Chemists already know that core electrons do influence bonding and such. It is simply a short cut to ignore them. Hence, when one wants to get the last few digits on your answer you turn on "core correlation" which treats the core and valance regions the same.
Furthermore, the conditions in question here are so extreme as to border on being a plasma or some such. So I am not really surprised to see some effect that are negligible under "normal" conditions to grow and become important.
Interesting results, but (Score:4, Informative)
was any 'dogma' really overturned? My understanding was always that the basic chemical rules were first order approximations, not a comprehensive description of how everything must behave. For example, xenon is an 'inert' element, with the outer shell full, but xenon tetra-fluoride (XeF4) is a stable compound. I learned that in high-school in the 1980's.
Not news. (Score:4, Insightful)
Chemistry's rules exist because they functionally explain chemistry in an accessible manner. Physicists have known that there are more accurate models for a while. Unfortunately, these models are too complex to be useful to someone trying to synthesize a chemical. If this has any significant applications, we will still be seeing classical chemistry for at least a century to come (barring the singularity.)
I mean, it's been almost a century since relativity and quantum mechanics came on the scene, but for the majority of engineering tasks, they remain useless. Between processors hitting the atomic scale and more probes hitting the atmosphere, that may change. However, I don't see chemistry getting to the point where we even begin to see practical chemistry that doesn't rely on classical models. The new ones are simply to complex to use.
Electron-Nucleus Interactions (Score:5, Informative)
IAAC (I am a chemist)
Honestly this result is not unexpected. The interactions of electrons and nuclei depend on several factors: distance, energy, and charge. There is also the factor of election-electron interaction, which is where the idea of valence electrons comes about.
Normally the outermost electrons of an atom are far enough from the nucleus that the distance from the nucleus and the repulsion from the other electrons on the atom allows them to more easily interact with other atoms. This is how bonding works, an electron gets "shared" between two atoms or the electron completely jumps off the atom and turns the atom into an ion which is attracted to other, oppositely charged, ions. Yes, I'm oversimplifying quite a bit for the layman.
Every electron in an atom can interact with another atom, it's just MUCH less likely to happen for the inner electrons of an atom and the interactions of the inner electrons to other atoms are much weaker than those of the outer electrons. Increasing the pressure allows the inner electrons to interact more strongly with other atoms.
Under higher pressures and energies two things happen. First of all atoms are pressed closer to each other. This means that all of the electrons are closer to other atoms. This increases the likelihood that an electron will interact with another atom, forming a bond. The second effect is that the increased energy tends to cause the electrons in atoms to jump to higher energy states which are further out from that atom's nucleus. This means less crowding which means less repulsion from other electrons which means that each atom's nucleus is more exposed to interaction with other atom's electrons. Again, I'm oversimplifying for the layman.
The extreme of this is when the pressure is great enough that each nucleus gets close enough for the nuclear force to overcome the electrostatic repelling force between the two positively charged nuclei. When this happens you get neutronium, the core of a neutron star. Obviously you don't normally see these levels of pressure on Earth!
What is really in question is the exact numbers of the interactions. At what pressure does a certain phase of atom to atom interaction appear? How does the increased pressure affect rates of reactions between atoms? Scientists are trying to measure hard numbers of the effects of pressure on chemistry. There already is a good deal of theoretical work but the experimental work is a bit tough to do given the conditions needed.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Man I hate it when you re-read something you wrote and find stupid little errors:
There is also the factor of election-electron interaction
Apparently I have the upcoming presidential election on my mind too much these days, it's even starting to creep into my chemistry...
Of course I meant electRon-electron interaction, not electIon-electron interaction. Still, I'm pretty sure that electrons will be vitally important in the upcoming elections!
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Funny)
Computer simulations?
You mean like the computer simulations that say the earth is warming? Hahahaha...
Indeed. Between your intuition and computer simulations running on super-computers based on decades of research on predictive models designed by the most competent and dedicated researchers in the domain, always trust your intuition.
This is why I never watch the weather channel, I just look at how leaves move in the wind, how menacing clouds look, then I wet my pointer finger, put it in the air and I can tell you how the weather will be tomorrow. Well I can tell what it will be, doesn't mean I turn out to be right, but hey, the Weather Channel is wrong sometimes too!
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm... maybe it's better to say that Philosophy tries to explain some of the who and why of things. Some of it happens to be wrapped in a religious context, but much of it tries to step outside of a strict religious context.
Religion is mostly a social construct, more often than not concerned with maintaining and justifying a given status quo amongst its leaders and followers.
"Anything outside the world around us (aka: God) is, by definition, not bound by the rules of science. "
Well, if all the world is crea
Re:Proof that Proof isn't Always Right (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, you can scientifically prove that God doesn't exist all you want given the small amount of information we know about our universe.
well, we know where you get your bias against science.
Science tries to prove testable positives. You know a theory is "wrong" if the observations don't match the hypothesis. Even then, it doesn't necessarily mean the theory must be completely disregarded (example: newtonian and quantum mechanics coexist today).
You can't "disprove" god with science because god is not rationally testable. You can't "prove" it either because of that, though, and as such no man of science will accept "the will of god" as an explanation for something, or a reason to perform/avoid certain actions.
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Re:Proof that Proof isn't Always Right (Score:4, Informative)
No, you cannot. Its impossible to show scientifically that anything doesn't exit. You can just show that something actually does exist. Thats why we were able to prove that, under condition XYZ, only valance electrons react. As long as we didn't test it in every possible scenario (and even then, we cannot prove that there aren't any other possibility), we cannot say that there aren't some ways where that theory doesn't hold. And as this showed, there was a scenario we hadn't tested.
Scientists (real ones) will never say that its impossible for God to exist. They'll just say that all of the currently provided evidence are bogus, and that there isn't any valid theory that shows its existance beyond wishful thinking by a few zealots. Doesn't change that God may exist. We just have nothing to lead us to think it does.
If some scientist claims to be able to prove that it doesn't exist (or that ANYTHING ELSE doesn't exist), they're doing faux-science.
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