electrons jumping down energy levels

A great definition of what an electron does, but what would you say about the original question in regards to "teleporting"? You have already answered it in part.

 

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When atoms of different size form a molecular bond by sharing an electron or more. Do they also share the same energy state of that electron? The reason I'm asking is when I was in school they only talked about electrons in the outer shell as being responsible for forming the molecular bond. I know large atoms with lots of electrons will have there most energetic electrons in the outer shell, where as a hydrogen atom only has one electron at the lowest energy level. So while electron shells present a nice picture, I get the feeling it's not the most accurate way of picturing what really happens in a molecular bond?

 

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I doubt that the phenomenon is "teleporting", as defined above. IMPO, there is sufficient 'quantum' (zero-point) energy pervading all space to compensate for emissive energy losses due to electron energy-level changes. When an electron 'drops' to a lower energy level (with concomitant photon emission), that energy is 'made-up' by drawing from that energy 'well' readily available from the quantum milieu. An equilibrium compensation?

 

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There's no need for any "make up" energy - it received exactly that much energy from the photon it absorbed in the first place.

 

Consider the simplest molecule: H[sub]2[/sub][sup]+[/sup].
The single electron only forms a bond if two wavefunctions, each describing the electron state of "orbiting" either proton, have the same sign.
If say, both wavefunctions are positive, their sum describes a large probability density for the electron being between the protons, forming a region of negative charge and reducing the Coulomb repulsion of the protons: a bonding state.
Conversely, if one wavefunction is negative, you get a difference and a low probability the electron is between the two protons, no Coulomb 'screening': an antibonding state.

 

It was Dirac giving a possible reason why all electrons have the same mass - I.e. There is only one in the entire universe. I have never seen direct from him such a text, so don´t know how serious he was, but bet he was very sober. Perhaps the Higgs boson people / theory have a better answer to that "all electrons have same mass" problem now.

How that could be goes something like this: If you reverse time and charge in the quantum theory equations you get nothing different in the results predicted. I.e. same reality. A positron going from the future into the past, I.e. "aging younger" at location X, is like an electron at location X now "aging older". That positron might have been created (in the future) and be from the universe´s only electron after its charge and time reversal. Repeat this zillion to the zillionth power times, both in past and in the future and volia! it now looks like we have a universe with many different electrons in it at many different places but really there is only one.

BTW, this also helps a little on the question: where did it all come from? Or in silly terms: God is a lazy clever bastard and could not be bothered to do much work in creating a universe. Perhaps he/she bought a cheap "universe kit" at the other universe´s Wal-Mart?

I´m not sure, but think Dirac also in some sense invented positrons too - in some of his equations there is an unobservable "sea of electrons" that can not be observed when all state possible in it are occupied, but if one is not we see that "missing electron" as a positron. This is sort of the other extreme - and infinite number of electrons exist!

After writing above, I went to post18´s link - interesting to see that if an idea, which doesn´t violate known physics, is crazy enough, most famous physicist alive, will claim it as their own. They have no right to it. I conceived of that idea when only 12, before Dirac did!

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How so? Did you publish it? Or in any way present it in a way others could have copied it or even knew you thought of it?

It's been my experience that when it's time for an idea, it can have more than one original source. However, I have wondered many times, if all the people that took credit for a discovery were the real original thinkers on the subject, or just the ones in the best position to make the idea theirs.

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It was actually Wheeler, but who cares.

 

I just checked wiki there:

''Feynman's thesis advisor, John Wheeler, proposed the hypothesis in a telephone call to Feynman in the spring of 1940. He excitedly claimed to have developed a neat explanation of the quantum mechanical indistinguishability of electrons:
As a by-product of this same view, I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, "Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass" "Why?" "Because, they are all the same electron!" And, then he explained on the telephone, "suppose that the world lines which we were ordinarily considering before in time and space—instead of only going up in time were a tremendous knot, and then, when we cut through the knot, by the plane corresponding to a fixed time, we would see many, many world lines and that would represent many electrons, except for one thing. If in one section this is an ordinary electron world line, in the section in which it reversed itself and is coming back from the future we have the wrong sign to the proper time—to the proper four velocities—and that's equivalent to changing the sign of the charge, and, therefore, that part of a path would act like a positron." "But, Professor", I said, "there aren't as many positrons as electrons." "Well, maybe they are hidden in the protons or something", he said.
—Feynman, Richard, Nobel Lecture December 11, 1965''

 

Just thought the following article might be of interest to this topic. I know I always thought electrons were primary particles.

http://www.popsci.com/science/artic...re-observed-splitting-smaller-quasi-particles