Nuclear Reactions In Terms Of Information

Today I would like to demonstrate just how useful and versatile is the principle of "The Lowest Information Point", December 2017, as described in the compound posting by that name on this blog. This posting has been added to it.

OPPOSITE NUCLEAR PROCESSES BOTH RELEASE ENERGY

The first thing that is confusing about nuclear science is that there are two basic major reactions, fission and fusion. Fission means "to split the atom" and fusion means to fuse atoms together. The two are thus opposite processes. But what doesn't seem to make sense is that if one process releases energy then shouldn't the opposite process either absorb energy, or at least not release energy? That is usually the way it works in chemistry. But yet both of these nuclear processes release energy, actually tremendous amounts of energy.

Fusion, the fusing together of small atoms into larger ones usually by the tremendous heat and pressure in the centers of stars, actually does require an input of energy, but only for elements that are heavier than iron. These heavier elements are formed only during the brief time that the star is actually exploding as a supernova, and the energy released makes the required fusion possible. That is why iron and elements lighter than it are exponentially more common than elements that are much heavier than iron. Many heavier elements, their component smaller atoms having been forced together by the energy of the supernova, are less-then-stable. They gradually emit particles or radiation in the seeking of a more stable state. These emissions are known as radioactivity.

At the time of this writing, all nuclear power that we use comes from fission of uranium. We can get smaller atoms to fuse together by lasers, which is fusion, but no one has yet succeeded in getting net energy from the fusion process. But so many people are trying.

In the centers of stars, smaller atoms starting with hydrogen are fused together into ever-larger and heavier atoms. Two prominent fusion processes, depending on the size of the star, are the Triple Alpha Process and the Proton-Proton Process. Sometimes light atoms, which are usually common, are broken back down by natural fission process, and this is why light elements such as lithium and beryllium are relatively rare.

INFORMATION AND ENERGY IS REALLY THE SAME THING

We have seen, in my information theory, that energy and information is really the same thing. We cannot add information to anything without applying energy to it, and we cannot apply energy to anything without adding information to it. Another way that we can see the two as really being the same thing is in technology. We can make our lives physically easier by using technology, but only at the expense of making them more complex. We can never, on a large scale, make life both physically easier and also less complex.

We can see that both of these opposite nuclear processes release energy, which is somewhat confusing. But what happens if we express the nuclear reactions as information, instead of as energy, since energy and information is really the same thing?

We have already seen how easily the speeding up of the expansion of the universe is explained if we see it in terms of information.

THE TWO SETS OF INFORMATION IN ATOMS

There are two sets of information within atoms. The first is the electrical repulsion relationship between the protons in the nucleus. There has to be neutrally-charged neutrons to hold the protons together, against their mutual repulsion, so that the electrical relationships between the protons vary due to the distance between them. Each proton has this electrical relationship with every other proton in the nucleus. These relationships are information.

Let's call this the Inter-Proton Relationships Information.

The second set of information in the atom is the outer surface area of the atom itself, that of the outermost electron orbital. Distance, and thus surface area, is information and energy. The size of an atom is typically about ten thousand times that of it's nucleus.

The outermost electrons, which form the surface area of the atom, have the highest orbital energy of all the electrons in the atom. We can see how higher electron orbitals have higher energy than lower ones in that radiation can sometimes shift an electron to a higher orbital, and more radiation is releases when the electron drops back down. This is the principle behind fluorescence and phosphorescence. One way to see how energy, which is also information, changes the surface area is that the energy in wind increases the surface area of water by creating waves.

Let's call this the Surface Area Information.

Simple arithmetic tells us that, when an atom is split in two by fission, the total number of protons will remain the same but the Inter-Proton Relationships will decrease. If a nucleus has 12 protons, and each has the electrical relationship with all of the others, then there are 12 x 11 = 132 interrelationships. But if we fission it into two nuclei, each with 6 protons, then there are only 6 x 5  + 6 x 5 = 60 interrelationships.

In practical terms, since heavier elements tend to have more neutrons per protons in the nucleus, this also means that several neutrons will be released. In fission, a nucleus is split initially by a high-speed neutron, and the released neutrons go onto split other nuclei. This perpetuates the process and is what is called a chain reaction, at least until enough energy is released to blast the mass of material apart.

This is a drastic decrease in the number of Inter-Proton Relationships, which is information and thus energy tat must be released. But when one atom is split in two in such a way, something else is also happening. The other set of information in the atom, the Surface Area Information, is increasing. This is because the two new smaller atoms have a greater overall surface area than the original larger atom. Surface area is also information, and thus energy.

In real terms, a 235 isotope of Uranium is typically split in such a way into an atom of krypton and barium.

But if we fuse atoms together, in the centers of stars, the opposite to this process occurs. The total surface area decreases but the number of Inter-Proton Relationships increases.

THE TWO SETS OF INFORMATION MUST BE EQUAL

The essence of what I have realized is that, in any ordinary atom with equal numbers of protons and electrons, these two sets of information, the Inter-Proton Relationships Information and the Surface Area Information, must be equal in terms of information.

This gives us a valuable bridge to understanding information and how it is the same thing as energy. There is no reason for the two sets of information to be not equal. The two electric charges, the positive of the protons and negative of the electrons, are opposite but equal. Having them equal means that we have two different kinds of information that we know much hold equal information simply because it is the Lowest Information Point. An equality is less information than an inequality.

The protons and electrons attract each other, because they have opposite electric charges, but it does not operate in quite the same way as a gravitational attraction. Electron orbitals in atoms are not free-ranging, like gravity, but are arranged in shells and sub-shells. Gravity is solely an attractive force but electrical repulsion is also factor in atoms as electrons in adjacent shells repel each other by like-charge repulsion.

THE ENERGY SURFACE AREA

This equivalence of the two information sets readily explains why the two opposite processes both release energy and can also give us a way to explain, in terms of information, exactly what is happening. But there is a factor that we have to take into account as to how it operates differently from gravity.

With objects in orbit around the earth, for example, the higher the orbit the higher orbital energy. If a satellite is given three times the orbital energy that is has, it will then orbit at 9x the distance but will move at only 1 / 3 the speed. This is because gravity, like electric charge attraction or repulsion, operates by the Inverse Square Law.

But inside the atom, the electrons in orbitals operate differently. As we move to the right across a row on the Periodic Table of the Elements, to successively heavier elements but with the same number of electron shells, each successive element has one more proton and one more electron (unless it is an ion) then the one before it. But instead of getting larger, with a higher surface area, as it would be with gravity, the atom contracts due to the increase in opposite charges pulling the electrons to the nucleus.

But since this means higher energy, and thus more information, we take not the literal surface area of the atom but what I will call the "Energy Surface Area". What we do to calculate the Energy Surface Area of the atom, which we know must be equal to the Inter-Proton Relationships Information, is to take the reciprocal of the difference between the radius or surface area of the given atom, subtract it from the radius or surface area of the atom in column 1 of that row on the Periodic Table, and then add it to the radius or surface area of the element in column 1 of that row.

Here is a periodic table, although it only has the symbols but not the names of the elements. A row is right-to-left, a column is up and down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table#/media/File:Simple_Periodic_Table_Chart-en.svg

Take, for example, the top row of the Periodic Table. There are only two elements in this row, the two lightest elements of hydrogen and helium with 1 and 2 protons each. The Wikipedia article, "Atomic Radius", under "Calculated Atomic Radii", states that a hydrogen atom has a radius of 53 picometers and a helium atom 31 picometers. Radius is proportional to surface area so that means that a hydrogen atom is considerably larger, although not heavier, than a helium atom.

But the helium atom must contain more information because it has 2 protons, while each hydrogen atom only has 1. The reason that the helium atom is smaller is the additional opposite charge pull of it's two electrons toward the two protons in the nucleus. So that we do is take the reciprocal of the relative size of the helium atom to the hydrogen atom.

31 is .5849 of 53. The reciprocal of .5849 is 1.71. 53, the radius of the hydrogen atom, x 1.71 = 90.6.

This is thus the Energy Surface Area of a helium atom, which is directly proportional to it's Energy Radius, even though it's actual radius is only 31 picometers.

WHY OPPOSITE NUCLEAR PROCESSES BOTH RELEASE ENERGY

The reason that these two opposite nuclear processes both release energy is the simple number of atoms. The split by fission uranium or plutonium atom only splits into two secondary atoms. But the fusion of a helium atom from hydrogen involves four hydrogen atoms being crunched into only one helium atom.

There is more information, and thus energy in the Inter-Proton Relationship of the helium atom than there is in the four hydrogen atoms with only one proton each, but the Energy Surface Area of the new helium atom is so much less than that of the four original hydrogen atoms, that the excess energy is released. That is why the sun shines since the sun's stage in the fusion process is now crunching four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom.

But in either nuclear process, the results are uneven and that is why energy has to be released. The reason that the process is uneven is the neutrons that are necessary to hold together the protons in the nucleus but do not participate in the Inter-Proton Relationships Information. Heavier elements must have progressively more neutrons per proton in the nucleus. Neutrons are readily formed during fusion by crunching an electron into a proton. This is known as K-capture and results in the neutron with it's neutral electric charge.

In the fusion of four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, there is the increase in Inter-Proton Relationship Information but the decrease in Energy Surface Area is so much greater that a lot of energy is released, and that is why the sun shines.

Obviously, large atoms tend to undergo fission while small atoms tend to undergo fusion into larger atoms. In fission, the splitting of a large atom such as uranium, there is an increase in the Energy Surface Area, as there is now two atoms rather than one, but this increase is less than the decrease of the Inter-Proton Relationships in the nucleus, as it is split in two.

This is why fission also releases energy, even though it is the opposite process of fusion. The release of energy by fusion tends to be much greater because so many protons become neutrons, by having an electron crunched into them, and are thus eliminated from the collective Inter-Proton Relationship Information, which does not involve neutrons.

WHY THE ORDINARY FUSION PROCESS ONLY GOES AS FAR AS IRON

This model of seeing nuclear reactions in terms of information, rather than energy, and realizing that the two sets of information in atoms must be equal because that is the Lowest Information Point, also explains why the ordinary fusion process only goes as far as iron and why the input of energy from a supernova is the only way that heavier elements can be formed.

The number of Inter-Proton Relationships decreases as lighter atoms are crunched by the successive fusion process into ever-heavier elements. This is simply because heavier elements must have more neutrons per proton in the nucleus. Protons must have electrons crunched into them to form neutrons, known as K-capture, and are thus eliminated from the Inter-Proton Relationship Information. But due to the increasing number of electrons that each electron shell can accommodate, as we move outward from the nucleus, the Energy Surface Area of atoms does not increase as fast as the Inter-Proton Relationship decreases.

The point where the two cross is iron.

The last element that can thus be formed by the ordinary fusion process, which releases energy and is known as the S-process for "slow" is iron. Elements much heavier than this require the input of energy from a supernova explosion, which is known as the R-process for "rapid".

Making use of this principle that energy and information is really the same thing, and seeing the two opposite reactions as information rather than as energy, shows not only why both release energy but why the ordinary fusion process only goes as far as iron.