Under QM, the position of an election in an atom is stated as a probability density function. That is, under QM we can only state that an electron has a certain probability of being any particular location at any time.
Apparently this very ordinary bit of QM doesn't appear in W-L theory. The authors of this paper are saying "this can't be right - W-L says nothing about the electron's position, but we obviously can't have a theory that gives the same answer regardless of whether the electron is near the proton or on Mars." So yes, it's sarcastic, but I read it as sarcasm in a "this can't be right!" way rather than a "you're an idiot" way. There are many reasons my assessment may be wrong, however. Jeff On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Alan J Fletcher <a...@well.com> wrote: > *Disclaimer : I'm TOTALLY out of my sphere of competence here. > > *Most WLT-disprovers bring the electron from infinity (or Mars) and > collide it with the Proton. > > But I think they need to look at the naturally occurring Electron Capture. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_capture > > eg A proton in Berrylium-7 can "snatch" an electron from the K-shell with > a half-life of 53 days -- and that rate can be changed 1% depending on its > environment (metal or insulator), by perturbing the electron shells. (And > Ni-56 has a half-life of 6 days). > > Aren't there other ways of tweaking the shells to increase the reaction > rate? eg Rydberg H (as proposed by Defkalion). >
