The mysteries of Helium and Dark Matter
Quantum Mechanics, despite all of its successes, cannot properly account for the structure of even the 2nd simplest atomic structure: Helium. What's going on here?
According to this recent article, there are still details that we don’t know about helium, the 2nd most abundant element in the Universe after hydrogen—it is also the 2nd simplest, in terms of atomic structure.
Why, after all these years, has Quantum Mechanics—claimed to be one of, if not the, most successful physics theories ever discovered—still not been successful at resolving the discrepancy between theory and observation for something as simple as helium?
To place helium in proper context, first some backstory. When you peer out at the Universe through a telescope—for example, using the James Webb Space Telescope that is orbiting the sun in the special L2 Orbit, the Hubble Telescope in near Earth orbit, or even from a simple backyard telescope on Earth—you can see the “stuff” that makes up the “lit” (or visible) Universe in just one of two ways: you can either see the stars, galaxies and pulsars that glow and emit light as direct sources, or you can see the planets, rocks, or clouds of gas or dust that are interposed between you and either our local Sun or a distant star or galaxy.
These latter kinds of objects block, absorb or reflect either near or distant star light—which is how we can indirectly see them, since they don’t themselves emit light as stellar objects do.
Glow, block, absorb, or reflect—in order for us to directly see it, the matter in the Universe must do one of these four things to the light that is visible to us.
But did you know that astrophysicists have calculated that everything that we can see out in the Universe—everything that either emits, blocks, absorbs or reflects light, i.e., everything in the “lit” Universe—makes up only enough total mass to account for about 4% of the total mass that we believe must exist?
Of this, helium is a significant contributor.
Put another way, it is believed that there must somehow be more substance (mass-possessing matter) floating about in the Universe—much more than what we can see—in order to properly explain the gravitationally-influenced trajectory curvature and rotational motions of the galaxies, stars, and superclusters.
Notably, this “invisible” mass can also induce an effect known as gravitational lensing, a form of which Albert Einstein predicted from the theory of General Relativity before its effects were ultimately observed in 1919.
The presence of matter can sometimes, under just the right conditions, cause light from distant sources to bend as though it were moving through an optical lens. This phenomenon is now routinely exploited by astronomers to detect and explain distant stellar objects that we would otherwise not be able to study.
To put things yet another way: roughly 96% of the “stuff” that accounts for the mass and motion of the Universe is essentially invisible—it neither emits nor absorbs nor blocks nor reflects light.
We call these hidden components of the Universe “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy” —because we can’t see them using light but can only infer their presence from their substantial gravitational effects.
The simplest atomic element in the lit Universe—having one proton and one electron—is hydrogen; the next simplest, with two protons, two neutrons and two electrons, is helium.
Hydrogen makes up about 72% of the lit Universe’s visible mass, and helium 24%—in combination, these two substances comprise 98% of all of the “visible” matter (but again, this visible matter constitutes only 4% of the total hypothesized matter in the Universe.)
Now back to the topic of this article: despite helium being the 2nd simplest atom, its structure is still not properly understood using the much-championed Quantum Mechanics, even after all this time.
In fact, the disagreement between its predicted and measured properties may end up posing an unsolvable problem for current Quantum Mechanics and the Standard Model—requiring new physics that leads to their revision or abandonment.
After more than a century of development, Quantum Mechanics *should* be better at predicting the observed properties of the 2nd simplest atom—but it isn’t.
To expand this gap even further, note that there are a whole host of issues (with more being added every few months) in modern physics that are not resolved or are still in contention, many of which suggest Quantum Mechanics needs to be replaced or revised.
Often, however, those who vocalize this point of view are dismissed or shunned by their colleagues, and it falls to outsiders who don’t have career risk in speaking up to make these facts known, as I wrote about recently here.
In no particular order, here is a (not exhaustive) list of gaps or mysteries that I’ve collected through the years:
Identity of Dark Matter – no particle has yet been identified ( Dr. R. Mills claims it’s Hydrino, a.k.a. H2 (1/4) )
Origin of Dark Energy – origin not well understood; affects Universe expansion; relationship to dark matter is fuzzy
Million-degree Solar Corona Temperature: Why is the Corona of the Sun so hot vs. the Sun’s surface (around 6,000 Kelvin)?
Milky-Way like Galaxy at edge of Universe that shouldn’t exist and [2] mystery early-Galaxy results from the JWST
Missing Solar Neutrinos problem (a solution has recently been proposed, but is not accepted by all)
CERN progress has stalled after finding the Higgs Boson —no new particles or supersymmetries have been confirmed (supersymmetry was the much hoped for confirmation that was to come from CERN and was part of the reason for its funding; instead it appears to have been refuted.)
Temperature paradox of the Warm Hot Interstellar Media (WHIM)
White Dwarves radiation profiles (EUV at 10.1nm cutoff—same as Hydrino)
Cosmic Background Radiation anomalies
Acceleration of the rate of expansion of the Universe (Mills found this first)
Crisis in Cosmology: Disagreement on the value of the Hubble Constant (Two diff. values-both appear valid) — now with JWST update (crisis still persists)
Mysterious Galaxies too old to exist in the region of space they occupy [LPP Fusion or this recent finding from the JWST]
Methuselah’s Star – older than age of the Universe?
Unexpected “cosmic rays” detected by earth-facing Antarctic ANITA probe
Ratios of H to He to Li that invalidate BBN (Big Bang Nucleosynthesis) [LPP Fusion]
Big Bang math and Hawking “errors” – Neil Turok, Roger Penrose. I wrote about this on WordPress a few years ago
Matter/Anti-Matter dilemma and absence of proton decay (baryogenesis) (Sabine)
Unusual concentrations of Oxygen in the Universe
Chirality (handedness) discrepancy with neutrinos and anti-neutrinos [Sabine Hossenfelder]
New result for W-boson mass
Inability to match Helium experiment to theory (this article’s subject)
Muon wobble
New discovery about Pentaquarks
It’s clear that Quantum Mechanics and the Standard Models (of both the microscopic and cosmological varieties) are in need of revision. Dr. Randell Mills has a better model for helium than Quantum Mechanics does: among other things, it predicts the ground state electron configuration much more precisely. Mill’s theory also predicts certain cosmological phenomena better and more elegantly than other theories.
His painstaking work on electron orbitals of atoms and molecules can be found in Volume II of his GUT-CP series and his Cosmology-related work can be found in volume III.
Interestingly, Mills’ theory also suggests an answer to what Dark Matter actually is (which, as mentioned above, is still an unknown to Quantum Mechanics.)
He believes—and has experimental results that he’s convinced can prove this claim—that Dark Matter is nothing more than a special form of hydrogen: “hydrino”, or H2 (1/4)
This is an elegant thesis; if the vast majority of matter in the ‘lit’ Universe is hydrogen—72%—then why not consider the possibility that hydrogen is also the majority of matter in the ‘dark’ Universe—just in a non-reactive state?
Another interesting point that deserves more widespread attention: Mills own published work—as far back as 1995—predicted the acceleration in the expansion rate of the Universe many years before mainstream astronomy stumbled onto this fact in 1998.
Here is a quote from a book about Dr. Randell Mills in which he talks about the foundations of the theory that explains electron behavior, and the orbital structures of hydrogen, helium, and more—and also opens the door to a model for Dark Matter:
If this topic interests you and you’d like to learn more, check out Brett Holverstott’s book on Amazon (a well-written book that is suitable for all readers) or see Mills’ own three volume publication here (a highly technical read). There are also a few interesting papers linked here, like this one: "The Fallacy of Feynman’s Argument on the Stability of the Hydrogen Atom According to Quantum Mechanics".
Helium—it’s not just for making your voice sound funny when you inhale from a balloon anymore.
It may force a revision to our understanding of the Universe as viewed through the lens of Quantum Mechanics—and leave the door open to Mills revolutionary ideas as expressed in his GUT-CP series.
I hope you enjoyed this latest post! More to come this week on AI.
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I hope you follow up with a post on dark energy,
Have you had a conversation with Clif High? He appears to agree with you about QM. Interesting.