Parson magneton
- Alfred Lauck Parson improved the Bohr model by adding particles that can emit and absorb electromagnetic radiation.
- Parson broke up Bohrs orbiting electron into a host of infinitesimal charge elements that circulated in a stable toroidal ring.
- Parson’s electrons and protons were both made of bundles of fibers that twist about the toroid like a Slinky.
The full article:
A magneton theory of the structure of the atom
(with two plates)
by Alfred Locke Parson November 29, 1915
Published by Smithsonian Institution
See the entire 80 pages of Parsons at:
In the
history of chemistry, Alfred Lauck Parson (1889 Lucknow, India - 1970 Allonby, England) was a Harvard graduate student noted for his "
magneton theory" of the
atom.
Significantly, to note, between 1913 and 1915, Parson was a visiting student at the University of California, Berkeley, where coincidently
Gilbert N. Lewis was working as the chair of the department of
chemistry. During these years,
Lewis read a paper by Parson, which argued that the electron, in the
Bohr model, might be a ring of negative electricity spinning with a high velocity about its axis and that a
chemical bond results from two
electrons being shared between two
atoms.
Parson published the final draft of his theory in 1915. Stimulated by this paper,
Lewis published his famous 1916 article "The Atom and the Molecule", in which a
chemical bond forms owing to the sharing of pairs of electrons.
See:
https://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/Alfred_Lauck_Parson.html
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroidal_ring_model
Of special note is the following on electron spin and a refutation of Parsons and his toroidal field:
The Wikipedia article on the
toroidal ring model also refers to Alfred Locke Parson’s magneton. See Parson’s 1915 paper
A Magneton Theory of the Structure of the Atom. He said “the essential assumption of this theory is that the electron is itself magnetic, having in addition to its negative charge the properties of a current circuit”. Spot on, Alfred. This was spot on too: “It may be pictured by supposing that the unit negative charge is distributed continuously around a ring which rotates on its axis (with a peripheral velocity of the order of that of light)”. On page 16 he said for the magnetic forces between magnetons to be great enough to account for chemical reactions, velocity “v must not be much less than c. It is simplest, therefore, to assume v to be equal to c”. Have a read of the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on
displacement current, which plays “a central role in the propagation of electromagnetic radiation, such as light and radio waves, through empty space”.
The electron has a definite magnetic polarity which on account of gyroscopic action does not change rapidly in direction
The Wikipedia article on the
toroidal ring model also says Parson’s theory attracted the attention of Arthur H Compton, who wrote a series of papers on the properties of the electron. One of these was
the size and shape of the electrondating from 1919. You can find a
non-paywalled copy on Sci-Hub.
Compton proposed three alternatives, namely a rigid spherical shell of electricity, a flexible spherical shell of electricity; and a thin flexible ring of electricity. He concluded that “the diameter of the electron is comparable in magnitude with the wave-length of the shortest γ-rays”. There’s also Compton’s 1921 paper on the
possible magnetic polarity of free electrons. Again you can find a
non-paywalled copy on Sci-Hub. Compton talked about Charles T R Wilson’s cloud chamber pictures showing electrons moving in converging helices. He said this: “Mr. Shimizu accordingly suggested that Mr. Wilson’s photographs may be explicable on the assumption that the electron has a definite magnetic polarity which on account of gyroscopic action does not change rapidly in direction”.
The electron has a more nearly isotropic form
Last but not least there’s Compton’s 1921 paper
the magnetic electron. Again see Sci-Hub for a
non-paywalled copy. Again he referred to the
Parson electron which featured a rotation with a “peripheral velocity of the order of that of light”.He also said this: “Whilst retaining Parson’s view of a magnetic electron of comparatively large size, we may suppose with Nicholson that instead of being a ring of electricity, the electron has a more nearly isotropic form”. On page 6 Compton says this: “The only adequate explanation of these experiments seems to be that interference occurs between the rays scattered from the different parts of the same electron. Such an explanation clearly implies that the diameter of the electron is comparable with the wave-length of the radiation employed, which means that the effective radius of the electron is of the order of 10ˉ¹⁰ cm”. He also gives C T R Wilson’s cloud chamber pictures:
Here’s Compton nearly a hundred years ago, giving us the crystal clear evidence that the electron has an appreciable diameter and spins like a tiny gyroscope. With a “peripheral velocity of the order of that of light”.
Formed like an anchor ring
The Wikipedia
toroidal ring model article also refers to Herbert Stanley Allen. He was still writing papers on the electron in 1921. See
The Angular Momentum and Some Related Properties of the Ring Electron. Allen referred to Samuel Bruce McLaren, who was killed in the war in 1916. Allen said this: “Rejecting entirely the idea of magnetic or electric substance, he regarded the magneton as an inner limiting surface of the aether, formed like an anchor ring”. See McLaren’s very brief
letter to Nature of 2013. Make a note of that inner limiting surface, because the eye of the storm is not the storm. Unfortunately Allen also talked about a very thin ring. Not a very fat ring. Unlike Compton, he didn’t share Nicholson’s view that “the electron has a more nearly isotropic form”. I should mention
The Atomic Theory of John William Nicholsonby Russell McCormmach dating from 1965.
Sci-Hub is your friend. There’s no mention of displacement current.
Electron spin is real
I should also mention that Einstein did an experiment on all this stuff. With a little help from Wander Johannes de Haas, who was Hendrik Lorentz’s son-in-law. See
a simple experiment to demonstrate Ampere’s molecular currents. When you surround a metal cylinder with a solenoid and turn on the current, the cylinder rotates. It’s something like the impulse that makes your garden hose reel rotate when you turn the water on – see page 11 of David Topper’s article on
The Quirky Side of Scientists. It’s now known as the
Einstein-de Haas effect, which “demonstrates that spin angular momentum is indeed of the same nature as the angular momentum of rotating bodies as conceived in classical mechanics”. It perhaps ought to be called the
Richardson gyromagnetic effect, because it was predicted by Owen Willans Richardson in 1908. His paper was on
a mechanical effect accompanying magnetization. He said “the moment of momentum acquired by the revolving electrons must thus be balanced by an equal reaction elsewhere”. And that “it would be made evident by a twisting of the suspended system as a whole”. The effect is the opposite of the
Barnett effect. Samuel Barnett’s 1915 paper was on
magnetization by rotation. When you rotate a body, you magnetize it. Barnett said “the cylinder will become magnetized in the direction in which it would be magnetized by an electric current flowing around it in a direction opposite to that of the angular velocity imparted to it”. The bottom line is that electron spin is real. There’s definitely something going round and round in there.
Knot Singularities in the Field
There’s other things I ought to mention of course. Like Gustav Mie’s 1913
foundations of a theory of matter. That’s where Mie said electrons “are not, as has been believed for twenty years, foreign particles in the ether, but they are only places at which the ether takes on a particular state”. Mie’s chapter 2 is Knot Singularities in the Field. How cool is that for 1913? Then of course there was the
Stern-Gerlach experiment in 1922. It demonstrated that “particles possess an intrinsic angular momentum that is closely analogous to the angular momentum of a classically spinning object, but that takes only certain quantized values”. Then there was the 1926
discovery of electron spin by Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck. Their paper on
spinning electrons and the structure of spectra was published in Nature. Then came Llewellyn Thomas’s 1926
paper on
the motion of the spinning electron. After that came Erwin Schrödinger’s 1926 paper
quantization as a problem of proper values, part I. He said things like “a closer definition of the surface harmonic can be compared with the resolution of the azimuthal quantum number into an ‘equatorial’ and a ‘polar’ quantum’” and the “main difference is that de Broglie thinks of progressive waves, while we are led to stationary proper vibrations”. This was followed by
quantization as a problem of proper values, part II. That’s where Schrödinger talked about wavefunction and phase and geometrical optics, and on page 18 said classical mechanics fails for very small dimensions of the path and for very great curvature.
His
quantization as a problem of proper values, part III continued on similar lines. He said “since then I have learned what is lacking from the from the most important publications of G E Uhlenbeck and S Goudsmit”. He referred to the angular moment of the electron which gives it a magnetic moment, and said “the introduction of the paradoxical yet happy conception of the spinning electron will be able to master the disquieting difficulties which have latterly begun to accumulate”. After that in December 1926 came Schrödinger’s
Undulatory Theory of the Mechanics of Atoms and Molecules. This is where he said
material points consist of, or are nothing but, wave-systems.
It possesses a quantity of a real motion
Then there was Franco Raseti and Enrico Fermi’s 1926 paper
on the rotating electron. Special thanks to
David Delphenich for the translation – his paper
on the risk of premature unification is worth a read. Raseti and Fermi said “the electron has almost always been considered to be a material point up to now”. They also said this: “it was only in recent years that Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit made the hypothesis that the reason for some spectroscopic phenomena – in particular, the anomalous Zeeman effect – was to be found in a structural element of the electron. Those authors assumed precisely that the electron is animated with a rotational motion around itself, in such a way that it possesses a quantity of a real motion, namely, a magnetic moment”. Raseti and Fermi also said “despite the grave energetic difficulties that have been pointed out, one can conclude that the hypothesis of the rotating electron must not be abandoned”. Then came the 1927
Davisson-Germer experiment and the
diffraction experiments by George Paget Thomson and Andrew Reid. These
proved the wave nature of matter, which is why de Broglie got his Nobel prize. Then there was Charles Galton Darwin’s 1927 Nature
paper on
the electron as a vector wave, which talked about a spherical harmonic for the two directions of spin. Darwin also wrote a 1927 PRSA paper on
the electron as a vector wave. He said we must regard the electron as a wave, and its motion in free space or weak fields can be treated by the ordinary theory of waves. He said “it is possible to regard the wave of the electron as in ordinary space”. Darwin’s 1928 papers included
the wave equations of the electron,
the magnetic moment of the electron, and
on the diffraction of the magnetic electron.
The wave nature of the electron
So, that was the company de Broglie was keeping. That was his context. He was awarded the
1929 Nobel prize in physics “for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons”. Hence his Nobel lecture was entitled
The Wave Nature of the Electron. He talked about a small trajectory which is closed or else turning back on itself. He also said “the phase of the associated wave must be a uniform function along this trajectory”. He finished up by saying this: “The electron can no longer be conceived as a single, small granule of electricity; it must be associated with a wave and this wave is no myth; its wavelength can be measured and its interferences predicted”. It all sounds cut and dried. Especially since
Carl Anderson discovered the positron in August 1932, and
Patrick Blackett and Giuseppe Occhialini
discovered pair production in March 1933. Electron-positron annihilation to gamma photons was also discovered in 1933. Tim Dunker
says it was discovered by Theodor Heiting rather than Frédéric Joliot and Jean Thibaud. But I’m not sure it matters. What matters is that you can make matter out of light:
Strip images by me, GNUFDL spinor image by Slawkb, see Wikipedia
The minimum and maximum field variation combine, along with all points between, to form a standing wave that’s the same all round. There’s no discernible phase change, hence it looks like a standing field. And there is no outer edge to this field. The result is an electron. Or a positron. But the standing wave isn’t really standing. It goes round and round with a “peripheral velocity of the order of that of light”. It’s wrapped round twice in a double loop, hence it’s “a worble embracing itself”. Hence “the magnetic moment of an electron is approximately twice what it should be in classical mechanics“. Then when you annihilate it with the positron what you get is light. So let’s see now. What could be going round and round in there?
The inner angular momentum
Max Born and Leopold Infeld knew the answer. See their 1935 paper
on the quantization of the new field theory II. On page 12 they said this: “the inner angular momentum plays evidently a similar role to the spin in the usual theory of the electron. But it has some great advantages: it is an integral of the motion and has a real physical meaning as a property of the electromagnetic field, whereas the spin is defined as an angular momentum of an extensionless point, a rather mystical assumption”. On page 17 they said this: “the rest-mass occurring in our theory is not, as in Dirac’s, an absolute constant of the system but the total internal energy, depending on rotation and internal motion of the parts of the system. An external field will influence not only the translational motion, but also these internal motions”. On page 23 they said this: “in the classical theory we got the result S = D x B = E x H”. They’re talking about the
Poynting vector. The thing that’s going round and round is light. The current is displacement current. The electron is a “dynamical spinor”. Strictly speaking a
spinor is a mathematical thing. William “Weylmann” Straub
hates spinors. But like Wikipedia
says: “in the 1920s physicists discovered that spinors are essential to describe the intrinsic angular momentum, or ‘spin’, of the electron and other subatomic particles”. You start with the anchor ring, then you inflate the torus through the horn torus stage all the way to the spindle-sphere torus. Then you’ve got a spherical symmetry that matches the S-orbital. Then “the electron has a more nearly isotropic form”:
Torus animations by Adrian Rossiter, S-orbital image from the 2010 Encyclopaedia Britannica
It all seems cut and dried, especially when you know about gravitomagnetism and frame dragging and optical vortices. And about the eye of the storm and the way counter-rotating
vortices attract whilst co-rotating vortices repel.
But it isn’t cut and dried. Take a look at de Broglie’s 1934 book on
the magnetic electron. Again special thanks to
David Delphenich for the translation. Amazingly, incredibly, de Broglie talked about a wave of probability. He talked about Max Born’s
probability amplitude for a point particle. He’d gone over to the dark side. He surrendered to the Copenhagen quacks who promoted Yakov Frenkel’s
point-particle electron to spite Schrödinger. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. The Copenhagen quacks who peddled the lie that quantum mechanics surpasseth all human understanding. Quantum quacks like Dirac who referenced Charles Galton Darwin’s vector-wave electron in
1927, but in
1938 was still peddling point particles.
Thank goodness the dark ages are nearly over. Because we now have people who refuse to shut up and calculate. We have people thinking for themselves. People like
Williamson and van der Mark. People like Qiu-Hong Hu, who wrote a 2005 paper on
The nature of the electron. Then there’s
An Electron Model Consistent with Electron-Positron Pair Production from High Energy Photons by Donald Bowen and Robert V Mulkern. There’s
Origins and demonstrations of electrons with orbital angular momentum by Benjamin J McMorran et al which talks about a quantum vortex model of matter. There’s
A classical approach to the electron g-factor by Jaromir Chalupsky. There’s
how electrons spin by Charles Sebens. There’s the
Helical Solenoid Model of the Electron by Oliver Consa. There’s
Hydrodynamics of Superfluid Quantum Space: de Broglie interpretation of the quantum mechanics by Valeriy Sbitnev:
Ring torus transformations from Hydrodynamics of Superfluid Quantum Space: de Broglie interpretation of the quantum mechanics by Valeriy Sbitnev
To understand the electron is to understand the world
Because it’s like Frank Wilczek
said: “to understand the electron is to understand the world”. Of course, to understand
the electron you also have to understand
the photon, and
how pair production works. Then you’d know that that renormalization was a kludge and that the Standard Model is a patchwork-quilt Frankenstein’s monster of a theory. It would also help if you knew about the
polarizable vacuum approach to general relativity and
how gravity works. And if you also knew what Bohm said in 1965 about matter being where the energy path is
inward reflecting to-and-fro. Then you’d know that
the mystery of mass is a myth. You’d also know that for a worble embracing itself, the embrace is strong. And that electron capture does what it says on the tin. And that the neutron’s charge disposition exactly matches
the nuclear force. It would also help if you took in what Williamson and van der Mark
said about space being curved and charge being topological. And about identifying a quark with a confined photon state which is not sufficient in itself to complete a closed loop. It “would then only be possible to build closed three-dimensional loops from these elements with qqq and q̄q combinations”.
Why, if you knew all that, you’d have the beginnings of a theory of everything.
See:
https://physicsdetective.com/a-worble-embracing-itself/
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroidal_ring_model
To conclude the rebuttal to Parsons, the highly successful modern theory called the Standard Model of particle physics describes a point like electron with an intrinsic spin and magnetic moment.
The pointlike electron would have a diverging electromagnetic field, which should create a strong vacuum polarization. In accordance with QED, deviations from the Coulomb law are predicted at Compton scale distances from the centre of electron, 10−11 cm. Virtual processes in the Compton region determine the spin of electron and renormalization of its charge and mass. It shows that the Compton region of the electron should be considered as a coherent whole with its pointlike core, forming a physical ("dressed") electron. Notice that the Dirac theory of electron also exhibits the peculiar behaviour of the Compton region. In particular, electrons display
zitterbewegung* at the Compton scale. From this point of view, the ring model does not contradict QED or the Dirac theory and some versions could possibly be used to incorporate gravity in quantum theory.
The point like electron, accepted by the Standard Model, as well as the wavelike motion of the electron, proved by De Broglie and evidenced by his Nobel Prize, when its beam is used in the double slit experiment, indicate that the Parsons theory of toroidal rings, while interesting from an experimental viewpoint, is no longer considered part and parcel of the Standard Model.
All experiments to date agree with the Standard Model of the electron, with no substructure, ring-like or otherwise. The two major approaches are high-energy electron–positron scattering and high precision atomic tests of quantum electrodynamics both of which agree that the electron is point-like at resolutions down to 10−20 m
Hartmann352
* Zitterbewegung (zbw) ("trembling" or "shaking" motion in
German) - usually abbreviated as
zbw - is a hypothetical rapid oscillatory motion of the electron. Erwin Schrödinger found this motion to be a solution to Dirac’s wave equation for free electrons. Paul Dirac was intrigued by it, as evidenced by his rather prominent mention of it in his 1933 Nobel Prize Lecture (it may be usefully mentioned he shared this Nobel Prize with
Schrödinger).
Zittebewegung theorists think Compton scattering involves electron-photon interference: the energy of the high-energy photon (X- or gamma-ray photons) is briefly absorbed before the electron comes back to its equilibrium situation by emitting another (lower-energy) photon (the difference in the energy of the incoming and the outgoing photon gives the electron some extra momentum). Because of this presumed interference effect, Compton scattering is referred to as inelastic. In contrast, low-energy photons scatter elastically: they seem to bounce off some hard core inside of the electron (no interference).
Some experiments also claim they amount to a simulation of the zitterbewegung of a free relativistic particle
See:
https://www.vixrapedia.org/wiki/Zitterbewegung