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To: Right Wing Professor
Thank you for your post!

Bose condensation of most matter requires microkelvin temperatures. Cooper pair formation by electrons (which is the basis of supercondctivity) is about as strong as an interaction between elementary particles in condensed matter can get, and it disappears around 120K. You can observe other coherent quantum pheomena in solids, and rarely liquids, but they're scattered by random thermal motion of the atoms, and their lifetimes become short (i.e. sub microsecond) by about 100K. At room temperature (300K), atoms are vibrating incoherently at high amplitude, and the coherences that link quantum states are destroyed on a nanosecond timescale.

I’m wondering if you read the Alex Kaivarainen article because he does address your objection in the section titled “Mesoscopic molecular Bose condensation at physiological temperature: possible or not?” He starts by saying,

The existence of mesoscopic (intermediate between microscopic and macroscopic) Bose condensation in form of coherent clusters in condensed matter (liquid and solid) at the ambient temperature was rejected for a long time. The reason of such shortcoming was a wrong primary assumption, that the thermal oscillations of atoms and molecules in condensed matter are harmonic ones (see for example: Beck and Eccles, 1992). The condition of harmonic oscillations means that the average kinetic (Tk) and potential (V) energy of molecules are equal to each other and linearly dependent on temperature (T)….

He goes on to explain the Virial theorem and shows how one can arrive at the wrong conclusion, “that water and ice are classical systems.” He continues saying that the “right way is to evaluate correctly the ratio between internal kinetic and potential energy of condensed matter or selected excitations and only after this apply to Virial theorems.” He continues,

Such weak dependence of potential energy on the distance can be considered as indication of long-range interaction due to the expressed cooperative properties of water as associative liquid. The difference between water and ice points, that the role of distant Van der Waals interactions, stabilizing primary effectons (mesoscopic molecular Bose condensate), is increasing with dimensions of these coherent clusters as a result of temperature decreasing and liquid > solid phase transition. It is a strong evidence that oscillations of molecules in water and ice are strongly anharmonic and the condensed matter can not be considered as a classical system, following condition (1.1) and (1.6).

908 posted on 02/24/2003 7:47:27 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl
The existence of mesoscopic (intermediate between microscopic and macroscopic) Bose condensation in form of coherent clusters in condensed matter (liquid and solid) at the ambient temperature was rejected for a long time. The reason of such shortcoming was a wrong primary assumption, that the thermal oscillations of atoms and molecules in condensed matter are harmonic ones (see for example: Beck and Eccles, 1992).

I don't know anyone who assumes that. And it's completely irrelevant. You scatter off phonons (lattice vibrations) whether they're calculated anharmonically or harmonically. Straw man.

Such weak dependence of potential energy on the distance can be considered as indication of long-range interaction due to the expressed cooperative properties of water as associative liquid. The difference between water and ice points, that the role of distant Van der Waals interactions, stabilizing primary effectons (mesoscopic molecular Bose condensate), is increasing with dimensions of these coherent clusters as a result of temperature decreasing and liquid > solid phase transition. It is a strong evidence that oscillations of molecules in water and ice are strongly anharmonic and the condensed matter can not be considered as a classical system, following condition (1.1) and (1.6).

This is a piece of jargon-laced gobbledegook. van der Waals interactions have an inverse sixth power dependence on distance. 'Distant van der Waals interactions' is a contradiction in terms. My colleague, Xiaocheng Zeng has done explicit quantum calculations on water clusters of 120 molecules, and is fitting them with an empirical force field to allow stat. mechanical modeling. Long range cooperative interactions of the sort Kaivarainen's discussing (more like waffling on about) there don't enter the picture. The is a degree of cooperativity in hydrogen bonding, but it's still only a three-body problem. Water has a dielectric constant of around 80, so it screens long-range electrostatic interactions more effectively than almost anything.

There's a long way from discussing whether water can be treated as a classical system (for most purposes it probably can), and whether an ensemble of quantum of classical or quantum particles, moving thermally at 300 K, can sustain Bose condensation. There is no experimental evidence for such condensation. Bose-Einstein condensation between heavy particles has only recently been demonstrated, at 0.000001 K. I suppose you could argue superfluid helium 4 is Bose condensed, but that's the most weakly interacting atom known, at 1/150 of room temperature. So we're supposed to believe it happens at an absolute temperature 300 million times higher, in the absence of experimental evidence or any decent theory? This is like hypothesising that molecules, which are correlated quantum systems that persist up to a couple of thousand kelvin, perhaps, could exist in the center of the sun.

Have you ever watched Brownian moton of a pollen grain? Pollen in water, bombarded by water molecules many trillions of times smaller than itself, is buffeted around randomly like a beachball in a stormy ocean. So put two beachballs in the ocean; will their air spaces delicately resonate with each other?

921 posted on 02/25/2003 8:20:35 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
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