Re: Disproving evolution

Walter Bushell <proto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <ssr9u4d7370k96d66el2qu0hfnsuted853@xxxxxxx>,
Matt Silberstein <RemoveThisPrefixmatts2nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

But that was not the state in 1890. It was well known that there were
some very real problems with Classical Mechanics. The nature of light
was a serious problem and it was clear that the lack of a solution put
the system at risk. M-M did not come from nowhere nor did Einstein,
they were working on the critical problem in the field.


According to classical theory atoms should not be stable. The electrons
should spiral inwards, radiating electromagnetic energy as they did.
THAT was certainly a big problem. The fact that each element had it's
own characteristic spectrum was also not classically predicted. But
still physicists still believed it was only a matter of filling in the
blanks.

Sure. But I wouldn't call the radiation problem "classical". It
all, from Maxwell to the discovery that electrons existed, dates
to the 19th century.

But there were theories of the atom that did not have radiating
electrons. They involved positive and negative charges "stuck"
together to form atoms. What was lacking there was a theory
of chemical bonding.

The Rutherford Experiment is the one that showed that the electrons
were outside the nucleus. The experiment (actually done by Geiger
-- he of the counter fame and Marsden, with the former being a
post-doc and the latter the grad student who did the grunt work)
was done in 1909 -- 20th century. The Rutherford model of the
atom came in 1911.

The objection that such electrons would radiate was made right
away. The Bohr model (the first quantum model) was in 1913.
The entire thing was incestuous, since Bohr also was a post-doc
in Rutherford's lab, though he'd gone back to Denmark by 1913.

The Bohr idea was that for reasons nobody understood, an electron
in special orbits around the hydrogen nucleus simply did not
radiate. Period.

This was not explained until the modern quantum theory was
developed in the 1920's (note how rapidly all this progressed)
which developed the wave-particle duality. Electrons in Bohr
orbits don't radiate because in a static atom the electrons
must be thought of as waves, standing waves. And as such
they don't move. So they don't radiate.

This rapid development really puts the lie to the notion that
one has to wait until a whole generation of scientists dies out
before new ideas can be accepted. A good new idea backed by
proof is accepted rather rapidly.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

.

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