Why Do Metals Exist?

The theory on this blog, "The Lowest Information Point", December 2017, offers a ready explanation of something that has never before been explained. This has been added to that theory. Why are there metals and non-metals? The usual answer to this question is something like "Oh well, that's just the way it is".

The majority of the elements in the periodic table are metals. Atoms have a positively-charged nucleus, consisting of protons and usually neutrons, with negatively-charged electrons in orbitals around the nucleus. There are 92 different naturally-occurring atoms, defined by the number of their protons, that make up the periodic table. Two or more atoms can join together, or can react chemically, by the interactions of their electrons in the outermost orbitals.

What makes metals different from non-metals is that a large number of atoms in metals share their outermost electrons. In non-metals, electrons are shared between atoms only in covalent bonds. These "communal" electrons that span a large number of atoms in a metal are referred to as "delocalized".

These delocalized electrons are what gives metals their properties, making them different from non-metals. It makes metals ductile so that they can be bent or shaped or drawn into wires. If an electrical potential difference is applied across a metal, the electrons will flow from the negative to the positive terminals in an electric current.

The periodic table is arranged in eight columns, with each column having those elements with the same number of electrons in the outermost electron shell. There are eight columns because the maximum number of electrons in the outermost shell is eight. Metals tend to be to the left of the table, with the fewer numbers of outermost electrons. Elements with 1, 2 or, 3 electrons in the outermost shell tend to lost those electrons, in a chemical reaction, to those that have 7, 6 or, 5 electrons in the outermost shell. That is why there is a strong tendency for metals to react with non-metals.

But the question, once again, is why metals are structured like this. Why would a large number of atoms in an element share their outermost electron between them? This is a very primal question but has never been answered.

Maybe the answer lies in the cosmology of the universe.

My theory is that the universe seeks "The Lowest Information Point", and that is the name of the theory. We know already that the universe always seeks the lowest energy state. we also see that energy and information is really the same thing because we cannot add information to anything without applying energy to it and we cannot apply energy to something without adding information to it. Another way that we see energy and information as really the same thing is that we can make our lives physically easier, through technology, but only at the expense of making them more complex. We can never, on a large scale, make our lives physically easier and also less complex.

So if the universe always seeks the lowest energy state then it should also always seek "The Lowest Information Point". Suppose that we have two related ratios, A / B = B / C and A / B = C / D. The first one should be preferred by the universe because it is the "Lowest Information Point". It has only three pieces of information while the other ratio has four. The first ratio has only three pieces of information because the numerator of one ratio, B, is also the denominator of the other.

But that means that the universe should have certain favored scales, the lowest information points, where the numerator of one ratio  is also the denominator of the other. In other words, A is to B as B is to C.

One of the first things that I noticed is that this explains why dust is so prominent in the universe. Our galaxy contains extensive clouds of dust that comprises so much of the matter in the galaxy. The reason for this "bias toward dust", as I call it, is simple. It is a matter of "The Lowest Information Point". The typical scale of a mote of dust is exactly halfway between the scale of the nearly-infinitesimal electric charges that comprise everything in the universe, and the nearly-infinite scale of the universe itself. I see no other way to explain why dust is so predominant in the matter of the universe.

So what does this have to do with metals? What about the scale of the large numbers of atoms within metals that share their outermost electrons which gives the metals their properties? Have you ever thought that this might be similar to the typical scale of a mote of dust, and for the same reason? The scale of an area of shared delocalized electrons in a metal is, like a mote of dust, halfway between the nearly-infinitesimal scale of the electric charges that comprise the universe and the nearly-infinite scale of the universe itself, and that is what produces metals?

How else is there to explain why there are metals and non-metals? For non-metals such as rocks, compounds of silicon and oxygen, and compounds of carbon this favored "Lowest Information Point" shows up as the preponderance of dust. For metals, it shows up as the area of atoms that share their outermost electrons and that is what makes them metals.

The size of this scale at the favored halfway point is not a strict rule, it depends on the size of the atoms and other factors. But it is a general rule. But it is not the same thing as the crystal arrangement of atoms in a metal.