NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/magick/6919

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-24 | 3.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!dziuxsolim.rutgers.edu!ruhets.rutgers.edu!farris
From: [e-mail] (Lorenzo Farris)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Doping Mercury
Keywords: Doping Mercury
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Jan 93 21:21:24 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 66

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Joshua Geller) writes:
:in other words, 'doped' mercury would look and act
:like mercury with maybe some odd elecrical properties,
:not like gold?
:
:of the metals which are said to be used in the preperation
:of the philosopher's stone, one (iron) has odd electrical
:properties (ferromagnetism, of course). I don't know that
:I see any immediate connection....
:
:most ionic substances exist as gases, eh?

-----------Rant begins here----------------------------

I'm certainly not one to stop beating a dead horse. ;-)

With a little bit of impurity, which is implied by doping, mercury
would be indiscernably different. With more, it would be an alloy.
Just like, when you add carbon to iron (and whatever else), you get
steel. Like I said, if there was some metallic alloy that acted like
gold, someone would be making a lot of money off it in various
industries.

Any transmutation of elements has *nothing* to do with chemistry,
physics, or metallurgy as understood today.

WRT ionic substances. The repulsive electric force would not allow a
bunch of like ions to stay together. I'm afraid I hadn't thought the
problem through completely when I emailed you Josh. To clue everyone
else in on it, 5 grams of Mercury, each atom stripped of one electron,
so that it would have the same electronic structure as Gold, would
create an electrical potential of 23 *trillion* volts at one meter
from the sample. If there were no way for the sample to become
electrically neutral (can you say HUMONGOUS electric arc), the
constituent atoms would fly apart *very* fast. I.e., kaboom.

Now, if you could assemble such a collection of ions, if we say that
the whole package started out at about 2 cc, so that each ion picks up
about 1 million TeV in the first meter away from the origin (a little
bang, maybe ;-) SSC, eat your heart out) you would not only transmute
atoms in the immediate vicinity, you would create all kinds of crazy
particles, with strangeness, charm, truth, and beauty, gluons, quarks,
klingons, vector bosons, Higgs bosons and all sorts of other things
that physicists haven't even thought of yet to give poetic names to.
In fact, you could even test string theory, I imagine, but I'm not
sure even that much energy is enough.

Please, stop looking to present scientific technology for explanations
of transmutations of elements. It just ain't there. I will happily
explain to you all the physics you have questions about, but I can
tell you, unequivocably, that the answers to your questions about
alchemy are not in there, unless you accept current scientific
knowledge as 'truth', in which case, elemental transmutation is
*definitely* metaphorical at best, silly at worst.

-------------------Rant ends here----------------------------

If there is any truth to it, I would vote for mind over matter myself.
;-)
    cheers,
        the nuclear meta-physicist
--
Happiness is just a                     ******************************
remembrance away.                       *  Lorenzo Farris            *
                                        *  [e-mail] *
                                        ******************************