The biggest alternative interpretation must surely be of quantum mechanics. So far there are at least three major interpretations, (Copenhagen, pilot wave, many worlds) with variations, but that should not let that deter one should it, after all, who understands quantum mechanics? After more than a little tiring effort, I have finally self-published an ebook on my alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics. (If interested, see http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GTB8LJ6 ). Why self-publish as opposed to publish a series of papers? There are a number of reasons, not the least of which is that any part of the foundation of the theory that could be condensed into a paper is not very convincing by itself, whereas any of the applications of the interpretation without the underlying foundation is more difficult to understand. There are further reasons, including at my age there is a desire to get this out rather than argue with a sequence of referees.
 
How can there be a yet another interpretation? Actually, quite easily. We start with the Schrödinger equation, from which we get a wave function. The wave function is a complex function, correct? Well, not entirely. If you take the standard wave function as seen in fundamental text books, and consider this from the point of view of Euler's presentation of complex numbers, then the wave function becomes real at the very extremes of the crest and trough of the wave. The first significant difference of this interpretation is the assumption that the wave only has physical effect on the particle when it is real.
 
If that assumption is correct, then it follows that the phase velocity of the wave has to equal the expectation velocity of the particle, so that the two can be in roughly the same place at the same time. That gives a further relationship, from which the square of the amplitude must be proportional to the kinetic energy of the particle. Since energy is proportional to mass, it follows that the probability of finding the position of a particle will roughly follow the Born interpretation. It does not quite, but that is a detail.
 
If this interpretation is correct, then all the results of the two-slit experiment follow (and a further experiment is proposed that will give a rather unexpected result), the reason why an electron does not spiral into the nucleus of an atom as expected from Maxwell's relationships follows by following Maxwell's relationships! The Uncertainty Principle and the Exclusion Principle are now derived. But the real great advantage, from my point of view anyway, is that you do not have to solve differential equations! The only physically real picture is when the action is quantized, i.e. occurs in some numbers of Planck's quantum of action. First order computations for simple systems merely require counting. The basics of chemistry are simply obtainable by requiring the quantization of action over the sum of separable components. More on this in later posts, but one final comment. Assuming I am correct, obviously action is a very important concept, but how many chemists know what it is? When is it mentioned in undergrad courses in chemistry?
 
So, why am I tired? Ever tried compiling an ebook with mathematical symbols? If you do not use Unicode (Universal code) symbols, and Microsoft Word frequently does not, almost anything can come out. And the problem is, in some cases you cannot work out whether the symbol is Unicode or not. Also, you might imagine there would be one Universal code, right? Sorry, no. And, apparently as the versions change to adopt new symbols, old ones drop out, but not all of them. Some sort of standardization would be good!

The recent Chemistry World highlighted a recent publication on astatine, in which the paper predicted that due to relativistic effects on the inner electrons, it would be metallic and monoatomic in the solid state. As some may recall, in previous posts I have questioned such relativistic corrections since I had previously published a paper (  http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/78/paper/PH870329.htm) in which I showed that ionization energies and lower excited state energies could be related through reasonably simple relationships involving quantum numbers. In this, the s electron of gold was actually more "normal", if that means agreement with the required relationship is better, than either copper or silver.
 
The reason I regard astatine as annoying comes from this consideration. In my paper cited above, the ionization potentials of valence electrons could be calculated from simple relationships involving only quantum numbers when there was only one electron in the level, while an additional term was required for others that approximated to a term only in the quantum number ℓ, but in practice was better with a minor empirical correction for each group. The important point was that this term was constant for a given column of elements in the periodic table, and there are relationships between groups. (This term is conceptually due to additional quanta of action being generated through the waves exploring all available space, and attenuates as ℓ increases because the number of orbitals to explore increases the number of cycles before the required quantum of action is completed. This lies outside standard quantum mechanics, and I shall elaborate my alternative interpretation in future posts.) Now, in principle if my alternative interpretation is correct and relativistic correction is not required, the ionization energies of the elements I did not calculate should still be given by the published relationships. (I regard the equations as predictions, even if I did not evaluate them.)
 
The relationships were not exact. There were two unexplained small regularities. The first involved a small term (st for this post) the sign of which depended on whether n and ℓ were odd or even, the magnitude of which increased with the distance from shell completion. There was also a positive term (+T for this post) that applied only to paired p electrons following d shell completion, thus Se, Br, Kr, then Te, I and Xe all required +T, as did Po. Recently ionization potentials have been measured for At and Rn, so how do my functions perform?
 
The prediction for astatine, with +T was 9.7606 ev; without it, 9.1893 ev; the observed value is 9.3175 ev. What should I make of that? Suppose we consider radon. Without +T, the predicted IP is 10.7457 ev; the observed value is 10.747 ev, which in my view, is fairly close, so my obvious conclusion is that there is some interaction with the d electrons that applies to Po when n = 6, not for Rn, and annoyingly, somewhere in between for At. In my opinion, admittedly somewhat biased since I am supporting my own theory, this would indicate that if the "non-hydrogen-like" wave functions are correct, there is no need for relativistic corrections here. Finally, it may be of interest that the IP of Fr is predicted without st to be 3.903 ev; the observed value is 3.938 ev.  These calculated values are based solely on the wave nature, without any terms for interference with other waves or resonances. The value of st required for Fr is of very similar magnitude to that for Rb and Cs, except that Cs is of opposite sign. Then, to confuse everything, the ionization potential for radium is such that some further effect might be operating, and that could be relativistic in origin.
 
What relativistic corrections are suggested? In one account (Chem. Rev. 112: 371-384) without relativistic corrections, the ionization potential of gold was 7.057 ev, and with it, 9.147 ev (observed, 9.2254 ev). Thus it would appear that contraction of the inner orbitals adds over 2 ev, and this should increase as the charge on the nucleus increases. I am sorry, but for me, this does not add up.
 
Perhaps chemistry would solve this issue? My calculation of the bond distance in At₂ is 150 pm, and the bond energy of hydrogen astatide is 273 kJ/mol. Would that settle the question? Perhaps, but annoyingly I can't see the data coming any time soon because the most stable isotope of astatine has a half-life of 8.1 hrs. 

A recent opinion in Chemistry World focused on the issues of the practicality of turning ideas into useful technologies. One of the arguments seemed to be that curiosity driven science was giving the world a false sense of what could be achieved, and worse, was taking funding away from where it could be more usefully spent. As usual in such issues, there are several ways of viewing the issue. First, look at the issue of why scientists make some of the outrageous claims. In my view, the answer is simple. It is not because the scientists have lost track of thermodynamics as implied in the article (although I guess some might) and it is not because they are snake-oil merchants. My guess is that the biggest reason is dressing up work to satisfy the providers of funding. Let me confess to one example from my own past.
 
My very first excursion into "the origin of life" issue came in the 1970s. I was supposed to be working on energy research, but funding was extremely tight, energy research needs expensive equipment that we did not have, so there was scope to do experiments that did not cost much. Gerald Smith and I had seen that the theory of the initial atmospheres required it to be carbon dioxide, which was thermodynamically very bad for biogenesis in terms of energy. Carbon dioxide is what life gets rid of at the bottom of the energy chain and is only returned to life by photosynthesis. So, if the geologists were correct, how did carbon biogenic precursors form from such an unpromising start?
 
Our idea was that the carbon dioxide could still be reduced through photochemistry. Water and carbon dioxide attacks olivine, and somewhat more slowly, pyroxenes, to dissolve magnesium ions and ferrous ions, and the concept was, Fe II and light would reduce CO₂ to formic acid and thence to formaldehyde, whereupon the magnesium carbonate could help catalyse the Butlerov type reactions. So, we did some photochemistry, and persuaded ourselves that we were reducing CO₂. It was then that a thought struck me. The Fe II must end up as Fe III, and what would Fe III do to organic materials? The answer was reasonably obvious: try some and find out. So we irradiated some dilute sugar with Fe III, and the carbohydrates simply fell to pieces, with an action spectrum corresponding to the spectrum of the iron complex. Many other potential biochemical precursors suffered the same fate. So, we wrote up the results, but then came the question, how were we going to justify this work? Well, since energy was the desired activity, we wrote a little comment at the bottom of the paper about the potential of photochemical fuel cells.
 
Did we think this was realistic? No, we did not. Did we think there was any theoretical possibility? Yes, while outrageously unlikely, it remained possible. Did it satisfy the keepers of returns to funding sources? Yes, because they never read past the keywords. You may say there was a little duplicity there, but first, this work cost very little and it did not distract us from doing anything else. We used equipment that otherwise would have been doing nothing, and the only real costs were trivial amounts of chemicals and the time spent writing the paper, because that was a real cost. Was the result meaningful? I leave that to you to decide, BUT for me, it was because it set me off realizing that the standard theory of atmospheric formation cannot be right. The carbon source for life could not have come from carbon dioxide initially, because in getting to reduced carbon from the most available source in the oceans, a much worse agent from the point of view of biogenesis was formed. Had we been able to show how CO₂ could be the carbon source for biogenesis, I think that would have been interesting, but just because you fail in the primary objective, that does not mean the time was wasted. The recording of the effects of a failed idea are just as valuable.

The  first round of results came in from Curiosity at Gale crater, and I found the results to be both comforting but also disappointing. The composition of the rocks, with one exception, and the composition of the dust were very similar to what had been found elsewhere on Mars. We now know the results are more general, but they are not exactly exciting. Dust was heated to 835 ^oC and a range of volatiles came off, and there was, once again, evidence of some carbonaceous matter, but the products obtained (SO₂, CO₂, and O₂, HCN, H₂S, methyl chloride, dichloromethane, chloroform, acetone, acetonitrile, benzene, toluene and a number of others) were almost certainly pyrolysis products.
 
An interesting paper (Nature Geosci. doi:10.1038/ngeo1930) found that when ices similar to those in comets were subjected to high velocity impacts, several aminoacids were produced. However, some were aminoacids such as α-aminoisobutyric acid and isovaline, which are not used for protein, and the question is, why not? One reason may be that our aminoacid resource did not come from such comets.
 
A circumstellar disk was identified around a white dwarf, and the disk was considered to have arisen from a rocky minor planet (Science 342: 218 – 220). There was an excess of oxygen present compared with the metals and silicates, and a lack of carbon, and this is consistent with the parent body having comprised 26% water by mass. This was interpreted as confirming that water-bearing planetesimals exist around A and F-type stars that end their lives as white dwarfs. Of particular interest was the lack of carbon. What sort of body could it have come from? I have seen suggestions that it would be a body like Ceres, in which case my proposed mechanism for the formation of minor planets would not be correct (because of the lack of carbon) but another option might be something that accreted in the Jovian zone, where I argue carbon is not accreted significantly.
 
Finally, Curiosity made a specific search for methane in the Martian atmosphere and put an upper limit of 1.3 ppbv, which suggests that methane seen on Mars did not come from methanogenic microbial activity, but rather from either extraplanetary or geologic sources. The latter fits nicely with my proposed mechanism of formation of Mars.