Monday, October 23, 2006

Anthraquinone, Copper and the Shape of Space

This article is only a stub (to borrow the parlance from Wikipedia).

Recently, researchers at the UC Riverside have made the discovery that anthraquinone molecules when coated onto a clean copper substrate, self-organize.

We wanted to comment on this sooner, but technical problems with Blogger and developing a suitable graphic, prevented this.

The reason for our concern is this; how does the shape of this self-organizing structure reflect the shape of space at the molecular level? Molecular forces of attraction and repulsion at this scale seem considerable. Do these forces have anything to say about the spatial structure - are molecular structure and spatial structure somehow connected at the molecular level? If so, is this connection due to the quantum forces present in the copper and anthraquinone atoms? Do these forces influence the shape of space - at this level - as in General Relativity?

Notum Bonum: This idea is hardly original. See Physorg.com comments section for August 17, 2006 under this topic.