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What would happen if everyone on Earth had access to unlimited energy?

I am not a scientist. However, since I was old enough to read, I’ve enjoyed books about science. I think they call this category “popular science,” to differentiate these books, written for non-scientists, from much more technical books full of math or chemical formulas that require an advanced education to de-cypher.

Several years ago I worked my way through several books on quantum mechanics (QM) and relativity, two branches of physics that have yet to be unified into one consistent theory. One of the problems with popular science books on these strange branches of physics is that without the aid of advanced mathematics, they must oversimplify to such a great degree that they barely describe their most essential ideas. I had hoped by reading several books I could piece together some understanding. And I did learn interesting things. For instance, I learned which experiments demonstrate the oddities that make QM so mysterious, even to quantum physicist, who, as it turns out, don’t really understand what’s happening all that well themselves.

One of the things I learned from my amateur science education is that matter and energy are interchangeable, a principle capture by Albert Einstein in his most famous equation, E=MC^2. I also learned that despite their theoretical differences, relativity and QM both play a part in experimental physics, where the weird worlds they describe play out in physical reality, captured in the act by complex, sensitive instruments. You may be familiar with the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, a huge experimental machine buried underground along the Swiss-French border. Researchers built the LHC to bash protons together in hopes of breaking them down into the most fundamental particles, including the recently discovered Higgs Boson, known popularly as The God Particle because physicists believe it’s the one particle that makes it possible for matter to exist in the universe.

One of the oversimplifed statements scientists have used to help the rest of us understand the difference between relativity and QM is that “relativity describes the very large, while QM describes the very small.” In the more advanced version of Einstein’s theory, General Relativity, he explains the relationship between time, space, and gravity. For quantum physicists, gravity has so little impact, they don’t even factor it into their calculations. Ironically, however, the LHC depends on General Relativity (GR) to operate. As I said, the LHC bashes protons into each other at very high energies. To get those energy levels, the LHC uses powerful magnets to trap protons inside a circular tube and then accelerates them by bombarding them with radio waves. According to GR, as a particle’s velocity approaches the speed of light, it’s mass increases. As the protons accelerate around the LHC’s 17 mile circumference, they become “heavier” and therefore require a stronger magnetic field to keep them on track. Imagine swinging a tennis ball around your head on a long string. Then change the tennis ball to a bowling ball. The greater weight, or mass, tugs with greater force on the string as it tries to fly away in a straight line, which it will do if the string snaps. To contain the accelerating protons, the LHC must continuously adjust the magnetic field or the protons will slam into the walls of the tube instead of meeting their demise on cue in the collision chamber, where instruments can detect their bits and pieces.

If you’ve already read The Gemini Effect, you may see where I’m heading. But we’re not quite there yet.

It’s well known now that we’re living in an era of climate change, and most scientists believe that this increase in average global temperatures is almost certainly due to greenhouse gases, such as CO2 and methane, released into the atmosphere by human activity, especially from burning the so-called fossil fuels, coal and petroleum. Despite this serious problem, most of us have rejected a source of energy that releases no greenhouse gases, nuclear power. During the twentieth century, a couple of nuclear accidents, most notably the meltdown and release of radiation at Chernobyl, scared us into rejecting nuclear power, with the hope that wind and solar could fulfill our needs.

Nuclear power generates energy by changing the structure of atoms. In the case of fission, which is the process used in all nuclear power plants, heavy uranium atoms are split into lighter atoms. When this happens, the pieces, altogether, weigh slightly less than the original whole atom. The difference is a tiny fraction of mass that’s been converted to energy, which becomes the heat used to boil water into steam, which then drives the generator turbines. It’s actually fairly simple. The energy released compared to the reduction in mass matches Einstein’s equation. What makes nuclear power so complicated is controlling the fission reaction to keep it from running too fast or too slow, and containing the radioactive fuel and leftover waste. Radioactive materials are very dangerous to living things. The intense radiation inside a nuclear reactor would destroy a human body in seconds, and the radiation from the waste materials could do the same in hours. Smaller doses, if leaked into the air, water, or soil, will cause cancer and other serious diseases that eventually lead to death. Scary.

Another well understood form of nuclear energy is fusion. Fusion does the opposite of fission. Instead of breaking apart atoms, it combines light atoms of hydrogen into heavier helium atoms. Just like fission, however, this process sheds a small amount of mass, which becomes energy in the form of heat. Fusion has the benefit of producing less toxic waste and short-lived radiation. The problem is, we only know how to produce fusion in bursts, such as in nuclear bombs. The most advanced “controlled” fusion power reactors produce no more energy than they need to operate, and their reactions last for fractions of a second, not long enough to generate power continuously.

In both fission and fusion, a tiny sliver of mass “decays” into energy, in the relationship of E=MC^2. It’s not very efficient. In The Gemini Effect, Zeke’s father, Dimitris Kapopoulos, and his research partner, David Freeman, build a machine designed to disintegrate the mass of entire atoms into energy. If this were possible, extremely small amounts of matter would convert into huge quantities of energy. Energy would become so abundant that we’d think of it as limitless. Actually, energy is effectively limitless, it just happens to be locked up in atoms, which are difficult to break down.

Of course, in The Gemini Effect, things don’t go quite as planned. The experiment backfires, with strange and doomsday-threatening side effects.

Throughout history alchemists have tried to transform matter into different forms, most notably, ordinary metals like tin and copper into gold. They’ve never succeeded because atoms don’t change identities very easily. Now, a form of nanotechnology sidesteps that problem with the Quantum Dot, an artificial atom. Quantum Dots probably won’t fulfill the alchemists’ dream of golden riches, but they may someday lead to programmable, shape-shifting matter.[break]

QDs are already being used for their optical properties in televisions and photovoltaic cells, and it’s possible that someday QDs could be used to mimic the properties of elementary atoms.[break]

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An atom of any element consists of a cluster of protons and neutrons, the “nucleus,” surrounded by a cloud of one or more electrons. Physicists visualize the arrangement of electrons into lobes of various shapes, called “orbitals,” which are nothing like circular planetary orbits. Each orbital can hold two electrons. Orbitals, in turn, organize themselves into “shells.” The innermost shell has just one orbital, with a maximum capacity of 2 electrons, while the outermost shell holds 36 orbitals, with room for 72 electrons.[break]

[textwrap_image align=”right”]http://scottjarol.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Orbitals_Captioned1-e1424325369325.jpeg[/textwrap_image]The ability of an atom to combine, or “bind,” with other atoms depends on how many empty slots remain in its outermost shell. Certain elements are non-reactive because their shells are filled, and therefore offer no “slots” with which to share electrons with other atoms. Some common non-reactive elements we encounter in everyday life are neon and gold. Gold doesn’t tarnish because it can’t bind with oxygen. In contrast, carbon has four openings in its outer shell, and therefore binds easily with as many as four other atoms at one time. With it’s four connection points carbon can form complex molecules, such as DNA, as well as the rigid crystalline structure of diamond.[break]

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Which brings us back to Quantum Dots. A QD is a manmade structure that impersonates an atom by arranging electrons to behave like an atom’s outer shell. A QD has no atomic nucleus to attract electrons with the charge of its protons. Instead, a QD forms an electronic barrier, like a fence, which traps electrons in a confined space. Once captured and squeezed together, the electrons form orbital-like structures. From outside, the QD looks something like an atom.[break]
This is a bit of an exaggeration. The atomic nucleus has a distinct advantage over a QD because it’s positive charge holds its electrons together from the inside, and can roam around looking for other atoms with which to combine and form molecules. A QD, on the other hand, at least the QDs that exist today, are constructed on a “substrate” such as a silicon wafer, just like digital electronics, so they’re locked into position on two dimensional surfaces. What makes these QDs particularly interesting is that the control mechanisms that are used to contain electrons can also be used to alter their number and energy levels, simulating various types of atoms on demand. With more flexible substrates, it may  be possible to assemble QDs into fully programmable matter. Imagine what could happen if QDs were assembled into shapeshifting machines capable of reorganizing themselves for any purpose.[break]

For exciting speculations on future applications of programmable materials based on QDs, read Wil McCarthy’s novel, The Wellstone, along with his non-fiction exploration, Hacking Matter: Levitating Chairs, Quantum Mirages, And The Infinite Weirdness Of Programmable Atoms.

The pace of progress in longevity research is amazing. Kids born in the last 15 years may have the ability to live for well over 120 years.