Gold can come in many colors. Since ancient times, glass artists and alchemists alike have known how to grind the metal into fine particles that would take on hues such as red or mauve. Carbon nanotubes are the same, different sizes shade water in different colors.
At scales even smaller, clusters of just a few dozen atoms display even more outlandish behavior. Gold and other transition metals when combined with certain other atoms often tend to aggregate in specific numbers and highly symmetrical geometries, and sometimes these clusters can mimic the chemistry of single atoms of a completely different element. They become, as some researchers say, superatoms. Recently researchers have reported successes in creating new superatoms and deciphering their structures. In certain conditions, even familiar molecules such as buckyballs--the soccer-ball-shaped cages made of 60 carbon atoms—can unexpectedly turn into superatoms. Today at the cutting edge of science, researchers are already studying how superatoms bind to each other and to organic molecules. Tracking superatoms can help researchers learn how biological molecules move inside cells and tissues, or determine the structure of those molecules precisely using electron microscopes. And by assembling superatoms of elements such as gold, carbon, aluminum, titanium and tungsten researchers may soon be able to create entirely new materials. Such materials could store hydrogen fuel in solid form at room temperature, make more powerful rocket fuels or lead to computer chips with molecule-sized features. "Designer" materials made of superatoms could have combinations of physical properties that don't exist in nature. As Kit Bowen, a chemical physicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, puts it, it's as if you felt like eating something hot and something cold at the same time, and could have it both ways. "Like a hot-fudge sundae." Small numbers of atoms often form structures as symmetrical, and almost as intricate, as those of snowflakes. But while no two snowflakes, even if they have the same number of water molecules, are identical, a small, specific number of atoms of the same element typically will assemble into the same, specific shape. The quintessential example is how 60 carbon atoms form buckyballs. The strange behavior of atoms in small groupings has been known for a long time, though only recently have scientists begun to understand it in detail. The whole idea is that small is different, The physical properties of a material, such as hardness and color, are the same for a l-pound lump of the stuff as they are for a 100-ton chunk. But when you get to specks made of a few million atoms or less, properties usually begin to change. *A job for superatoms* For larger clusters, it's not always clear when atoms will aggregate into regular structures or into shapeless blobs with any number of atoms. For example, in clusters of gold atoms each cluster member donates an electron to the cluster, just as inside larger chunks of metal, where mobile electrons can conduct electricity. Forty-four of those electrons get immobilized in bonds between gold atoms, leaving 58 electrons free to roam. These 58 electrons then orbit the cluster's core--made of positive gold ions--just as they would orbit the nucleus of a stand-alone atom. And 58 happens to be a "magic number." It's the number of electrons needed to fill a shell around the superatom, so that it won't feel a desire to add or shed electrons, which would destabilize its structure. This process is similar to what happens in noble gases, which are chemically inert because they have just the right number of electrons to fill a shell around the atom. By tweaking the conditions in lab vials, researchers can obtain clusters of different numbers of gold atoms although they haven't determined the precise structure in those cases yet. "Magic numbers" are important in LENR. It is these cluster orbiting electrons counted by "magic numbers" that are important to the LENR process. *Spreading jellium* ** The story of the superatom begins when two physicists walk into a barber shop. Marvin Cohen of the University of California, Berkeley recalls how he and a colleague, the late Walter Knight, ran into each other at their favorite barber's one afternoon in 1984. While waiting for his haircut, Knight talked about some surprising data from an experiment in which he had baked a block of sodium and then measured the masses, and thus the sizes, of vaporized particles that came out. Knight's particles came in a range of sizes. But those made of eight, 20, 40, 58 (remember 58?) or 92 atoms were a lot more abundant. Cohen guessed what might be happening, and he started scribbling some back-of-the-envelope calculations. "Tony, the barber, thought we were figuring out a way to beat the stock market," Cohen recalls. Sodium is a metal, with a propensity to shed one of its 11 electrons. In a cluster, atoms share these electrons in a "socialistic" way. Cohen says. For simplicity, in his calculation he imagined the positive electric charge of a cluster's sodium ions (each of them an atom minus one electron) as being spread uniformly like jelly, rather than concentrated at the ions. Nuclear physicists use a similar model for atomic nuclei; they call it the "jellium" model. Jellium gave the right answer. The shared electrons orbiting the cluster do so in different energy levels, or shells, just as they would in an atom, Cohen figured. Computer calculations confirmed his guess. Like ordinary atoms, clusters with unfilled electron shells are chemically reactive. Full shells, with "magic numbers" of electrons, are not. Sodium clusters with eight, 20 or 40 atoms are the analog of helium, neon, and the other noble gases, which rarely form molecules. Clusters with non-magic numbers of atoms tend to lose or gain electrons, making them more likely to also lose or gain atoms (to get a magic number) through collisions with other clusters. A year later, Exxon Corporate Research Lab chemist Robert Whetten, now at Georgia Tech, and his collaborators noticed that clusters of six aluminum atoms could split hydrogen molecules at room temperature, something smaller clusters couldn't do. "Only aluminum-6 jumped up and shouted 'Here I am, I can do this!'" says Whetten. And in the late 1980s, Welford Castleman of Peimsylvania State University in University Park and his colleagues discovered that clusters of 13, 23 or 37 aluminum atoms, plus an extra electron, become chemically inert, even though pure aluminum usually reacts violently with oxygen. The researchers realized that Cohen and Knight's magic numbers could explain the perplexing phenomenon. In an aluminum cluster, each atom donates three electrons to the cause. The 13-atom cluster, or [Al.sub.13], for example, ended up with 39 common electrons (3 x 13), and the extra electron in the ion [Al.sub.13]--was just what the cluster needed to reach the magic number 40. But the team went further. It showed that the neutral clusters [Al.sub.13,] [Al.sub.23] and [Al.sub.37] get into similar chemical reactions as do elements that crave one extra electron. Those are the elements such as chlorine or fluorine, which in the periodic table are the halogens, the column directly to the left of the noble gases. Then in 1995, Shiv Khanna and Purusottam Jena of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond found a theoretical explanation for Castleman's discovery. While Cohen's calculation could predict which clusters would be stable, understanding chlorine like behavior required calculating the energetics of adding or removing an electron from the cluster, which is what Khanna and Jena did. They proposed the term "super atom" (two words, originally) for such clusters. *Hot-fudge sundae* Several teams are now trying to create superatom-based salt crystals--something that's proving trickier than expected, since once the molecules start aggregating, the superatoms tend to merge with each other, forming clumps more than crystals. "When you put them together, they slag themselves," Bowen says. One approach is to coat superatoms with other kinds of stuff. On the other hand, Castleman hopes that replacing potassium ions with larger molecules might prevent superatoms from coalescing. "You have a chance of keeping them away from each other," he says. The interest in making crystals out of superatoms goes beyond pure curiosity. By adjusting the types, shapes and sizes of a material's ingredients, scientists and engineers could tune physical properties to their likes. "You would have a way of making materials with tailored properties," Bowen says. For example, a material that can be transparent typically won't conduct electricity, and vice versa. But a suitable all-metal salt, say, might be able to do both. And with a stretch of imagination, all-aluminum salts could make airplanes with see-through fuselages possible; almost as cool as a hot-fudge sundae. When a superatom is ionized, it does not loss just one atom, it can loss hundreds based on its "magic number” A superatom ion can have a massive positive charge and if it is long and thin enough, the cluster will be superconductive. This can account for the vigorous destruction of material in LeClair’s cavatation fusion reactor where a huge superatom forms from water. It carries a ginormous positive superconductive charge. Rossi and PDGTG also have their “secret sauce” which is just an ionized heap of superatoms and the explanation for LENR+. Cheers: Axil On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 11:33 PM, Jojo Jaro <jth...@hotmail.com> wrote: > ** > Has your opinion changed again? > > First, there's Cesium thermionic catalysts, then Dipole structures in 2D > materials like Rydberg matter; then Quantum Charge Accumulation in 1D > materials, then charge screening in 1D nanotubes, then Field emissions on > SWNT rugs. then Papper Noble pixie dust, then Nickel Fission and now > SuperAtoms. At the rate you're going, by next week, you'll be endorsing > gremlims and then chameleons shortly after that. Hey, why not. Stewart > would say your SuperAtom is just the right candidate to collapse into a > gremlim :-) > > Maybe I'm just uninformed about your theory but it looks like you can't > make up your mind as to what your theory is. Has your opinion changed that > much in the last month? > > But, keep it coming. Looks like we're all struggling to make sense of all > this LENR magic :-) > > Is it possible that we're all crazy and Bob Parks is right. > > > > Jojo > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > *From:* Axil Axil <janap...@gmail.com> > *To:* vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> > *Sent:* Sunday, August 26, 2012 11:05 AM > *Subject:* [Vo]:Superatoms > > Superatoms are clusters of atoms that seem to exhibit some of the > properties of elemental atoms. > > IMHO, superatoms are fundamental to LENR. These clusters of atoms provide > a way to substitute and amplify the effects of a particular LENR responsive > element. The amplification of LENR effects all depends in the way that the > electrons behaves in these clusters. > > As an example, Superatom clusters could serve as building blocks for new > materials that are cheaper and more effective than materials currently > being used in LENR. > > > Read more at: > > http://phys.org/news199634925.html#jCp > > Electron configuration is the key to mimicking phenomenon. It has be shown > that certain combinations of elemental atoms have electron configurations > that mimic those of other elements. The researchers also showed that the > atoms that have been identified so far in these mimicry events can be > predicted simply by looking at the periodic table. > > "We started working with titanium monoxide (TiO) and much to our surprise > we saw the TiO was isoelectronic (having very similar electronic > configurations) with nickel," Castleman said. "This amazed us because we > started seeing behaviors where TiO looked like nickel. We thought this must > just be a chance happening." > > As an example, Titanium monoxide has a melting point of 1750 °C. In the > Rossi reactor, TiO might replace nickel to provide an even higher operating > temperature. > > I believe that clusters of cesium atoms provide the amplification of > thermionic effects seen in the Rossi reactor. Acting like a single > superatom. some 10,000 individual atoms combine together to amply the > positive charge accumulation to produce a High Density Charge Cluster > (HDCC). > > > In deuterium palladium LENR, superatom substitution is also possible. > > Zirconium oxide is isoelectronic with palladium, and tungsten carbide > which is also isoelectronic with palladium. This is why Zirconium oxide and > tungsten carbide will work just as well as palladium in a D/Pd system. > > Superatoms mimicking other elements can be predicted by simple arithmetic. > Titanium, for example, has four outer-shell electrons, atomic oxygen has > six, so move six elements to the right of titanium and you're at nickel, > whose 10 outer-shell electrons make it isoelectronic with titanium oxide. > > So why use a different element if the actual element is available? First, > the element mimic might be less expensive, as in the case of palladium, > which, at $100 a gram. At two cents a gram, zirconium oxide would be a > worthy substitute. > > Cheers: Axil > > > >
