At the end of the year it is traditional to survey the major events as seen by the surveyor, but I must confess that this year struck me as one in which, for chemistry at least, a massive amount of data was added to the literature, but there was little that really grabbed my attention. This may say more about me than the year.
 
One example that struck me was Curiosity rover on Mars. What struck me the most was that everything we have heard so far is more or less what we might have predicted. The dust has the same composition as dust analysed elsewhere, the rocks were the same basalt as seen elsewhere, there was evidence of water, but the evidence was more or less what would have been predicted. So what is the problem? For me, if you send the same set of instruments, you will get the same set of results, and the instruments are designed to be sure to get results. There will be no gene sequencing equipment because we do not believe there are genes to sequence. Nevertheless, do we really need more billion dollar dust analyses? Could the money have been better spent? Worse, there was evidence of organic material, but only because we detected carbon dioxide, methylene chloride and chloroform after pyrolysing the sample. What does that tell us about Mars? (Other than there is a strong oxidizing surface and chlorine present, which we knew.)
 
Another recent event was that in Chemistry World, the question of why chemists are more likely to be climate sceptics was raised, and the answer – chemists are ornery. At the risk of being labelled ornery, perhaps I should mention that I am sceptical, but not about the planet being warming. I am sceptical about the relevance of computations, and of the effectiveness of politicians. Regarding the modelling, models consistently state that as the climate warms, Australia will get progressively drier. The trouble is, observation says that rainfall at Alice Springs has actually increased steadily since about 1930. Regarding effectiveness of politicians, gas emissions are steadily increasing. Carbon trading might seem a solution to economists, but is it not just another excuse to generate paper, and derivatives, and make lots of money?
 
Finally, this will be the last post for the year. (As a partial ex-seaweed chemist in the middle of summer, the beach calls!) However, I should leave readers with something to think about, especially those buried in the depths of winter. In my view, science is not about generating data, although that is necessary, but rather it is about drawing conclusions from them. So, a quick commercial and a problem. I have also published at Amazon some fictional ebooks in which I try to show something about science, and the latest, Athene's Prophecy, has this problem: a young Roman soldier must prove the heliocentric theory. He starts by reviewing the literature (as available in the first century) he does a couple of experiments to correct one of Aristotle's mistakes (Aristotle did not apply his own methodology twice!) but then he has the problem: how can he prove the Earth goes around the sun with what he could see? Could you? Try it over the festive season. Meanwhile, I shall post again in mid January.
 
Merry Christmas to you all, and may the molecules behave as desired through 2014.
 

In my new ebook entitled Guidance Waves, An Alternative Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, I wrote in the introduction, . . . you to tread a path that differs from the well-trodden path. Your friends will shake their heads in despair, as if to say, "What are you doing going off there?" Don't you hate it when you are right? What inspired that is that down in this part of the world we have just completed the NZIC Chemistry Conference, and at the first morning tea (and let's face it, the real benefit of conferences lies in the conversations over tea, lunch, etc) one of my oldest friends asked me what I was up to, so naturally I told him about my alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics. There was the predictable smile and the shake of the head. So why? I followed that in the ebook introduction with This is a real problem regarding quantum mechanics, because when calculations based on the Schrödinger equation always give agreement with observation, the main path is "obviously correct". The question is, is it "obviously correct"?
 
First, I must say at once that I do not dispute the Schrödinger equation; what I dispute is what it means. One of the examples I give is the particle in a box with walls with infinite wave impedance, and where the walls are close enough together to require a clear zero point energy. Let us restrict it to the one dimensional box, in which case you get a wave with one antinode in the centre and two nodes at the walls, which is the classical stationary wave. The particle now has a zero point energy because the Schrödinger equation requires the particle to have motion; it cannot be stationary with respect to the box walls. So, the motion now must go along our chosen axis, and it must go equally in each direction, averaged over sufficient time. Now, the question is, how does the particle turn around?
 
What you will initially think (and there is no evidence to suspect this is incorrect) is that it will strike the wall and bounce back – a fully elastic collision. However, that cannot happen within the Born interpretation, the reason being, the probability of a particle being at a point is proportional to the square of what I call the wave displacement (the amplitude is the displacement at the antinode). Now, at the wall there is a node, which by definition has zero wave displacement, so the surface of the wall is the one place the particle cannot be. The same argument comes through, say, the ground state of the valence orbital of the caesium atom: how does the electron cross the nodal surfaces? You cannot go from positive to negative without going through zero, and the square of zero is always zero. I would be very interested to hear a lucid statement on that point within the Born interpretation.
 
Leaving all that aside, I should add that the conference was, in my view, a success, and it showed conclusively that chemistry is not only alive and well in this rather remote part of the world, but it is also vibrant, as shown by the number and enthusiasm of the younger chemists. Finally, a reminder that the promo mentioned in last post starts this coming Friday.

There were three papers in November that pleased me quite a bit because they gave additional support to my theory of planetary formation. The first (Earth Planet. Sci Lett. 385: 110) examined the Se and Te systematics of mantle derived peridotites on Earth, and showed that the ratios are not consistent with melt depletion alone. The results indicate no firm evidence for chondritic S-Se-Te signatures in the primitive upper mantle, which challenges the simplistic perception that near-chondritic Se/Te ratios may readily trace the Late Veneer composition. This is of importance because these ratios are often cited as "proof" of a massive late accretion of chondrites, which would be the source of the volatiles on Earth. In my opinion, the volatiles were accreted by other means, and it is good to see the "opposition view" have its main evidence removed. The second (Nature  503: 513 ) showed that a meteorite from Mars is a regolith breccia with zircons of an age 4.428 + 25 My. The evidence implies that Martian crust formed in about the first 100 My of Martian history, which in turn implies no magma ocean. The magma ocean is a requirement of the standard theory where massive embryos collide to form protoplanets, and the inherent gravitational energy would provide so much heat that a magma ocean is inevitable. If no magma ocean, then a different mechanism of formation is required. Finally, (Planet. Space Sci. 87: 130) a trough within Noctis Labyrinthus displays a diversity of hydrated minerals and fluvial channels, including opal, Al clays, gypsum and polyhydrated sulphates., and furthermore, these different minerals had to be laid down under different conditions. Accordingly, there should have been several periods of aqueous alteration.
 
For those interested in seeing more of my theory of planetary formation, Planetary Formation and Biogenesis will be available for 99 cents  as a special promo on Amazon.com (and 99p on Amazon.co.uk – these are the lowest prices permitted on each case) on December Friday 13, and the prices increase daily for about 5 days until they reach normal price. Also on the promo is my novel Red Gold, which is about fraud during the settlement of Mars.  This ebook was written in the early 1990s, and to expose the fraud, a surprising discovery was required. The surprise was the discovery of what remained of the Martian atmosphere, which provided the nitrogen fertilizer necessary to make the settlement viable. The very first version that led me to the theory in the first book is outlined in the appendix, so this is one of the very few examples of how a theory got started. How important this is depends on whether the theory is correct, and I would love to know the answer to that one.
 
As an aside, that is the main difference between the experimentalist and the theoretician. If the experimentalist gets the wrong idea, the evidence usually (but not always) becomes evident quickly, such as when the wrong result is obtained. For the theoretician, the required evidence may not be easily obtained, and he is kept in suspense for some time. Thus Peter Higgs had to wait from the mid 1960s until now. At my age, I cannot afford that time, so I probably will never know for sure. Of course, I am convinced!