Primordial Groove

1. I am looking at my desk and wondering if there are electrons and such spinning around each other even though it seems to be an inanimate object made of dead wood. If they are moving, where is the energy coming from?

2. During the early universe, were temperature fluctuations the catalyst for gases changing(?) to solids? Or was there something else that caused or coincided with the change?

I hope these questions make sense.

Yggdrasill

Yes, your desk is composed of electrons spinning around nuclei. The electrons don't need a constant flow of energy to remain spinning, there is no resistance, so the electrons will never slow down and fall out of orbit.

This is all related to Newton's first law:

"Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it."

In other words, if you accelerate something, it will remain in motion until something (like resistance) stops it. Because the electrons are already accelerated, and the electrons are spinning in a vacuum, they will remain in motion.

Do you mean the processes pertaining to fusion of lighter elements into heavier elements? I think so.

When you fuse lighter elements into heavier elements, you release energy (hence H-bombs), so fusion will naturally occur whenever it can. IIRC, the fusion of hydrogen into helium starts up at around 10 million Kelvin, but heavier elements require higher temperatures. The temperature fluctuations (if there were any) were not important, but the temperature was important.

I hope that answers your questions.

Coragyps

Off the top of my head:

1) Electrons in orbit are probably analogous to planets in orbit: they're "falling" in an electrical field (vs gravitational for the planets) and are neither consuming nor emitting energy. If you cool your desk to -273 degrees C, the vibration of the nuclei will stop, and the desk will stop emitting that pesky millimeter-wave and far infrared radiation, but your coffee will get cold very, very quickly.

2) In the very early universe, there wasn't much of anything to condense to solids. In the one billion year old universe, enough stars had gone supernova to provide some carbon, oxygen, silicon, etc., and as this stuff got blown out into space it did, indeed, expand, radiate energy, and cool so that dust particles could form. So yeah, temperature fluctuations both built up the elements in star interiors, and later let them form dust.

Primordial Groove

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate your time. one question though, if I may:

A vacuum? In the tiny spaces that make up the matter that is my desk? How is that possible? I thought a vacumm was either space itself or created in a lab. Perhaps my definition of a vacumm differs from yours?

Lobstrosity

No, this is a classical picture of the atom and it is not really accurate. Electrons do not orbit atoms in well-defined paths and nuclear vibrations will never completely stop no matter how low you try to make the temperature. If electrons did orbit nuclei like planets orbit our sun they would spiral into the nucleus almost instantly due to their emission of cyclotron radiation. You could always checkout howstuffworks.com for sort of basic "atoms for dummies" type explanation: How Atoms Work. It explains the various models we've had for the atom, culminating with the model we currently hold to be true. Here's an excerpt:

• With de Broglie's hypothesis and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in mind, an Austrian physicist named Erwin Schrodinger derived a set of equations or wave functions in 1926 for electrons. According to Schrodinger, electrons confined in their orbits would set up standing waves and you could describe only the probability of where an electron could be. The distributions of these probabilities formed regions of space about the nucleus were called orbitals. Orbitals could be described as electron density clouds. The densest area of the cloud is where you have the greatest probability of finding the electron and the least dense area is where you have the lowest probability of finding the electron.

It also has been discovered that electrons are fermions and hence adhere to the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which states that no two fermions can simultaneously occupy the same quantum state.

Lobstrosity

Atoms are almost completely "vacuum." The nucleus only has a typical size of 10^-15 m whereas the electron orbitals extend out at around an Angstrom (10^-10 m). That's a difference of five orders of magnitude. Electrons themselves are thought to be point particles that occupy no volume, though this may not be completely accurate. Basically, if the atomic nucleus is around the size of a golf ball, the atom is around the size of a football field. That's a lot of empty space.

Shadowy Man

In fact, the ground state of the hydrogen atom has zero angular momentum. So, if anything, it oscillates back and forth through the nucleus!

Shadowy Man

P.S. any "vacuum" created in a lab is way far denser than most of outer space.

Primordial Groove

I love laymen terms. I understand the concept now.
This raises many other questions, but, this isnt science 101. I'll try and dig on the web for the answers if I can google in the proper term(s).
For example, what is causing the release of radiation from the atoms? Does it have to do with the nuclear forces or is something more fundamental?

This is just goddamn fascinating. The electrons might be there? Who needs mystical experiences when you have electrons playing hide and go seek. IS this part of Quantum Theory (which I know almost nothing about)?

Shadowy Man

Radiation from atoms comes from the transitions of electrons in the atom from one energy state to a state of lower energy. The difference in energy is released in the form of radiation. There are various mechanisms that can cause the electrons in the atoms to get excited in the first place including collisional (thermal) and radiative excitation.

Yes, it is. QM describes the energy states of electrons in atoms in the form of a wave equation, where the wave can be interpreted as a probability distribution. In essence, for a given energy state, the electron has no exact position, only a region where it is more or less probable for it to be found. The probability distribution is determined from the solution(s) of the Schroedinger equation.