Part 1 introduces and outlines how to form theory, then considers five failures of theory, including polywater, greenhouse forcing, and a debate between two Nobel Prize winners that failed to reach a conclusion. Part 2 introduces some physics for chemists and some chemistry that a physicist might find interesting, and which provides the raw material for Part 3, in which the reader is invited to test their skill with 73 exercises.

These exercises ask the reader to form alternative theories on… then an answer is offered, to show it is possible. The reader is then offered the opportunity to analyse these answers. When an artificial "gravity" is generated in a spinning satellite, how does the satellite know that it is spinning? Why is the spin of an electron equal to ½? Did Alain Aspect really find violations of Bell's Inequality? Find an analytical "back of the envelope" calculation of the bond properties of the hydrogen molecule.

The final exercises ask the reader to find one principle underpinning quantum mechanics, then, with that offered, derive the Uncertainty Principle, the Exclusion Principle and interpret Complementarity, then develop an alternative causal interpretation of quantum mechanics by which the results of the 2-slit experiment and the quantum eraser experiments should follow.

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The second edition covers everything in the first edition, together with information from over 500 scientific papers and data collected on exoplanets over the intervening ten years. No evidence collected in the intervening period overturns any of the proposed fundamental issues, although some refinements have been made. While the standard model assumes planets formed from the coalescence of planetesimals, even though there was no proposal how the planetesimals formed and even though all evidence of asteroid collisions led to fragmentation, the proposal here is that initial accretion was chemically based, and growth was monarchic as opposed to oligarchic. This satisfies the question, why is the composition of the planets and their moon systems different from others?

More evidence is presented as to why life started with the RNA world. It shows how RNA strands form from nucleotides, how catalytic behaviour can readily evolve and on the question of how ribose forms, it shows that life almost certainly formed around fumaroles in granitic rock. That, in turn, means that life has to commence on an Earth-like planet, which in turn makes life most probable around a G or heavy K star that had an early stellar cleanout, signified by no planet significantly larger than Jupiter.

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It is well-known that the quantal wave function is complex. What is less well-appreciated is, from Euler, that it becomes real at the extremes of crest and trough. This alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics is based on two assumptions: the wave function only imparts physical effects when it is real as opposed to complex, and its phase velocity is the same as the expectation velocity of the particle, so that it can be present to impart physical effects. With these two premises, the results of the two-slit experiment follow, as does a further experiment. The reason the electron in an atom does not spiral into the nucleus follows, the Uncertainty Principle and the Exclusion Principle are derived, Complementarity arises as do the conditions when it will fail, a simplified procedure for calculating the basic properties of the chemical bond follows and together with the concept that atomic orbitals do not correspond to the excited states of hydrogen, a hitherto unrecognized quantum effect is proposed for the chemical bond.

If this is correct, most computational procedures in chemistry are wrongly based. As an example, it argues with evidence against the widely held belief that the chemical properties of heavy elements are affected significantly by relativistic effects. The interpretation is causal and mainly local; it is shown that rotating polarizers do not demonstrate violations of Bell's inequalities, and it is suggested that further experiments are required for the delayed quantum eraser. Finally, and more speculatively, it is shown that the binding of deuterium is consistent with the binding being of electromagnetic origin.

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During the 1970s oil crisis, I was a Section Head at Chemistry Division, DSIR, New Zealand's national chemistry laboratory, and during this period I surveyed the technology available to make biofuels, and embarked on a program involving hydrothermal liquefaction. Now, with a further resurgence of interest in biofuels, I have repeated the exercise. This ebook summarizes the biomass resources that might be used to make biofuels, it considers the technologies available to convert such resources to fuel, and it outlines some of the physical constraints involved in converting a transport system based on oil to renewables.

There is no prescription of what will solve these problems because there are too few data, but it tries to outline what we know and what we do not know. There is not an indefinite supply of oil and the planet can only take so much burning of fossil fuels without serious adverse consequences. While wasteful use should be avoided we cannot close down a transport system. We must also grow sufficient food, and other resources such as wood. This ebook outlines at least some of the options that remain available.

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This book outlines a methodology by which, ignoring minor effects, the chemical bond length and energy for covalent bonds involving only s and p electrons can be calculated often within less that 1% error solely by means of wave properties, the quantization of action, and the electric field coupling at the wave antinode. The only inputs are quantum numbers, the Exclusion Principle, and the number of electrons, hence simple analytical functions are obtained. The procedure uses atomic orbitals that do not correspond to the excited states of hydrogen, and this leads to a previously unrecognised quantum effect, and then counts the number of interactions, and for bonds between different sized atoms, especially hydrides, a wave reflection procedure is proposed that has the consequence that the less the sharing, the shorter the bond. The effects of lone pair interactions and delocalization are presented. A new hybridisation effect is proposed that, in the absence of lone pair back donation, leads to bond lengthening and weakening when n = 3 and 5. Three atoms, Na, B and Bi, give serious errors but these also give errors for the energy of their atomic wave functions, and it is assumed that there are additional unaccounted for effects.

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