General science thread

Apparently that electrons 'orbit' the nucleus of an atom like planets orbiting the sun is no longer viewed as exactly what goes on. They just say that electrons exist in an atom only in discrete energy levels, mechanism unknown

It occurs to me that this is the overlooked original 'spooky' characteristic of quantum mechanics. In the model that electrons orbit, then it should happen that electrons with insufficient energy would crash into the nucleus due to the immense force of opposite charges, with plentiful opportunity. Yet it never happens, it's never given as a reason for atomic decay. It simply seems to be decreed that electrons are only accepted into atomic structure in one way

the old model:



perhaps what you might see today

.

Seti@home did 2 decades of search for ET. I had that on my computer for a while. (probably when Pentiums were the modern PC). They still have 100 promising signals to further focus on.

Like a much science, discovered things they didn't know, mistakes they made, things they could have done better, tangential to the actual goal.