What is an atom ? What is a particle ? What is an electron ?

What is an atom ? What is a particle ? What is an electron ?

"The electron is unthinkable without its procession of potential photons."

Gilles Cohen-Tannoudji in "Matter-Space-Time"
We have long sought the "atom," that is, the indivisible, fundamental object, the elementary brick of an entire edifice of the construction of the universe. Quantum physics has shown that there is no elementary object in the absolute and not even any fixed objects, because the atom (or the particle like the electron or the proton) is not conceivable without the exchanges of photons that allow electrons to change atomic layer, for example. Or that allow the various particles to interact. Matter has no direct relationship with matter without passing through so-called interaction particles. It absorbs them and emits them. And it does so because, potentially, they are part of its environment called a cloud. The proton, the neutron, or the quarks are no more individual particles that exist without a cloud that is a procession of gluons, for example. This property is fundamental in the quantum interpretation of the atom and its jumps from one state to another. It is the basis for the study of the atom through that of light emissions, or emission spectrum. It is also the basis of a new understanding of the stability of matter, which is not based on fixity as individual objects but on dynamic phenomena that allow the conservation of certain properties thanks to high-speed changes called virtual because the world on our scale does not see them directly. They appear and disappear in a time shorter than the times characteristic of the interactions of matter and light.

Even if the virtual is not directly "visible" or "sensible" to us and our observation devices, experiments of all kinds on particles impose its existence which alone can allow them to be explained.

The particle is "dressed" by its virtual cloud formed by the transformation of the quantum vacuum surrounding it near the particle. This means that all the characteristics of the particle, such as mass or charge, and all the experiments of interaction of the particle cannot be interpreted if we consider the "naked" corpuscle without a virtual cloud around it.

Virtual means fleeting but also means potential because the particle can jump from one point in its cloud to another.

When the particle interferes with itself as in Young’s slit experiment, the only possible interpretation is that it has passed through both slits. It is not the corpuscle but the cloud which passes through both and which interferes with itself, thus modifying the probabilities of presence.

When the particle is both a wave and a corpuscle, that is to say before measurement or observation, it is because it is a dressed corpuscle.

When there is a "reduction of the wave packet", this means that the disappearance of the corpuscle instantly leads to that of the cloud.

When a charge "feels" the charge e of the electron, it is the product of the action of all the virtual charges of the cloud because there are in the cloud electrically charged virtual particles and antiparticles which position themselves in layers around the particle and "screen" it.

When two oppositely charged particles do not fall on each other, this again comes from the dynamics represented by the corpuscle and its cloud.

When a particle passes through a sufficiently small hole, it momentarily loses its cloud and therefore its orientation. This is diffraction.

When the particle passes through a "tunnel", it moves almost instantly because it momentarily loses its cloud.

It is its cloud that slows down the particle, thus defining its mass and speed.

and, etc....
What matter and light are for us today :

Matter and light are two dialectically opposed phenomena, that is to say, inseparable inverses. No communication between matters without the exchange of light (physicists say photons or bosons for "light" or even interaction particles). No matter without an entourage of so-called virtual photons. No perception of these photons without matter. Matter and light also manifest an impressive unity. They are both made of quanta of action. Matter emits and absorbs light. They obey quantum laws identically, notably with this astonishing property of wave/corpuscle duality, this no less astonishing property of plurality of states and finally that of quantum jumps. However, matter and light oppose each other. Some obey an attractive logic (bosons) and others a repulsive logic called the Pauli principle (material particles). This means that light particles tend to group together between photons that are in phase and the particles cannot exist in the same state.

Both are structures and rhythms resulting from the constant, all-round interactions of a large number of coupled dipolar oscillators, which are pairs of particles and their virtual antiparticles of the quantum vacuum.

Neither light nor matter, even in their so-called elementary manifestations (a single corpuscle), are objects. They are phenomena of emergence of structure and rhythm. They are based on a large number of virtual particles and virtual photons.

For a long time, it was believed that reality was described by objects, atoms, or particles. These were "things," that is, fixed elements characterized by constant parameters. We talked about the charge of an electron, the mass of an atom, or the trajectory (speed and position) of a particle. All of this had to be abandoned in the face of the discoveries of quantum physics. What image ultimately emerges from this great upheaval ? None, some will say. For the "Matter and Revolution" website, this is not the case.

It turns out that the parameters and structures that appear owe their durability to an extraordinarily lively dynamic based on shocks. The attributes that seemed attached to each corpuscle are not properties that belong to it in a fixed way. Any corpuscle can change its nature abruptly and does so constantly. If a certain type of corpuscle is preserved in a given area, this is not due to an individual conservation of each corpuscle. The number of a certain type of corpuscle can even change.

The property of mass, far from being attached to a particle, constantly jumps from one particle to another, from a material electron to a virtual electron which will thus be materialized. The property of "matter" therefore jumps from one virtual particle of the void to another. Every virtual electron is destined to eventually become real and vice versa. The reality in question is only an existence at a certain level, the virtual an existence no less real but on a much shorter scale. Every virtual proton can also become real and vice versa. On the other hand, a proton can change into a neutron within the nucleus of the atom, and vice versa. Here again, the oppositions can change into their opposite. Proton into neutron as previously matter into void and void into matter. Similarly, the interaction quanta is not fixed. Every photon can also change into a matter and antimatter pair, for example virtual electrons and positrons. As a result, the photon can "mix" with matter to produce new matter and new photons by exchanging virtual particles. Particles can also exchange photons. All these interactions change matter and light and occur through collisions, interactions on a scale much faster than the characteristic times of the phenomena on which they act. Similarly, one quark can change into another. Color is not a parameter attached to the quark but a property that can jump from one quark to another. A neutrino can also spontaneously change into another. An atomic nucleus can change into one or more others, just as spontaneously.

So all the characteristics that were previously attributed to the object jump and all the dynamics are the product of these jumps.

The appearance of structures and "constants" is only the product of these exchanges of properties or averages over a large number of particles.

The electron property can be maintained, but only by jumping from one corpuscle to another. If we try to follow an electron individually, we see that it disappears and reappears further away. And, more surprisingly, a corpuscle can reappear before disappearing. There has been a distortion of time. In these jumps, time no longer resembles its old, tranquil image, moving as if on a continuous line traveled regularly. In dynamics, time does not travel a linear succession of successive instants resembling points aligned like instants.

Here again, time, but also space, do not resemble the world in which we believe we live on our scale : that of macroscopic objects which do not seem to undergo sudden appearances and disappearances.

Maurice Jacob in "At the Heart of Matter" :

"At the heart of matter and on the scale of the cosmos

Nature is richer than our imagination. We can dismantle molecules into atoms. We can tear the electrons from an atom and separate the protons and neutrons that make up its nucleus. We discover the different levels of matter that bring into play increasingly elementary constituents. (...) Mass, this property that we thought was intrinsically associated with an object and which resulted from the addition of the masses of its constituents, a mass that we associated with each particle before considering the forces to which they could be subjected, this mass becomes a dynamic effect of the actions to which the fundamental constituents are subjected. (...) The elementary particles are quarks (which notably form protons and neutrons) and leptons (like the electron). (...) The forces that allow them to interact with each other are all of the same type : they take the particular form of an exchange of bosons. (...) One of these bosons is the "grain of light", the photon. (...) Two charged particles attract or repel each other by exchanging photons. During a collision, or simply when accelerated, a charged particle can emit a photon (...) whose frequency is proportional to its energy. (...) The atom is formed of a very small nucleus surrounded by a "cloud" of electrons. The radius of the nucleus is a hundred thousand times smaller than that of the atom, but it contains practically all the mass. The atom is therefore practically empty, but its volume, extremely vast compared to that of the nucleus, is filled by the incessant movement of electrons which are concentrated on successive layers. The nucleus has a positive charge and the electrons have a negative charge. They are all attracted by the nucleus but rotate at a respectable distance. The atom is globally neutral, the total charge of the electrons being compensated by that of the protons which are found in its nucleus. (....) In quantum physics, we must give up considering a particle as perfectly localizable. (...) This quantum blur can clash with natural intuition (...) can we not consider the observation of an electron for a very short time during which it could only travel a small part of the distance associated with this quantum blur ? It is possible but in this case we can no longer distinguish the electron from the multiple other particles (pairs of electrons and fugitive positrons from the vacuum) which can be freely emitted and reabsorbed during this very short time. (...) The vacuum is animated by the continual creation and rapid disappearance of electron-positron pairs (the positron is the antiparticle of the electron). These are virtual pairs (...) The negatively charged electron will attract the positrons of these virtual pairs by repelling their electrons. As it approaches the electron, the photon will find itself surrounded by a "cloud" of positive charge due to the attracted virtual positrons.He will have the impression that the charge of the electron is weaker than that announced. (...) the mass of the particles comes from the structure of the vacuum which froze at the beginning of the evolution of the Universe (...) The diversity of matter comes out of the structure of the vacuum. (...) the vacuum is bubbling with activity, it can even exist in several forms and manifest a structure. (...) This bubbling of activity is of a quantum nature."

The atom is not an object that can be apprehended like a marble or another "thing" that is to say a matter to catch or follow in a regular movement in space. This was a disappointment for many physicists but it must be admitted that nature cannot be reduced to this type of notion like the one that was called "the elementary particle". This reductionism is no longer current in physics. We will try to show that it has been replaced by a much more fascinating and dynamic notion that combines the existence of matter but as the emergence of a lasting structure, of an order, within an extraordinarily agitated universe. And this order is fractal, coexists at several hierarchical levels having between them astonishing feedbacks.

Here we have the last "classical image" of the quantum world of the atom : a nucleus around which electrons revolve. But this image has long since shown its limitations. And first, if such a set existed, it would not last long enough to tell ! It would have no stability. How can we replace this image ? This requires several conceptual revolutions. The problems stem from a macroscopic vision of the world, but this is not the only problem. There are also false images of stability, of space-time, reductionist, continuist, linear images of the world. Because the conception of the world has not advanced as quickly as our knowledge and our techniques.

Louis de Broglie writes in "La physique nouvelle et les quanta" :
"If the electromagnetic theory in the form of Lorentz were really applicable to the elementary particles of electricity, it would allow the calculation without any ambiguity of the radiation emitted by an atom of the Rutherford-Bohr planetary model. (...) the atom constantly losing energy in the form of radiation, its electrons would all very quickly fall on the nucleus and the frequency of the emitted radiation would constantly vary in a continuous way. The atom would be unstable and there could not exist spectral lines with well-defined frequencies, absurd conclusions. To avoid this essential difficulty, Mr. Bohr admitted that the atom in its stationary states does not radiate, which amounts to denying the possibility of applying the electromagnetic theory of radiation to the orbital motion of electrons on their stable trajectories. (...) Bohr resolved the question of the frequencies of the spectral lines thanks to the hypothesis that each transition between quantized states is accompanied by the emission of a quantum of radiant energy. (...) In other words, according to quantum theory, the emission of spectral lines from a simple body is discontinuous and proceeds by isolated individual acts."

Elementarity is a concept that must be overturned. The "objectification" of the world must also be questioned. There are no longer any fixed objects in microscopic physics. Finally, the place of the void must be reviewed.

Continuous trajectories of the electron around the nucleus do not exist.

The "objects" electron, neutron or proton do not exist as things independent of the space in which they move.

Shakespeare in "Hamlet" Act I :

"It only takes one atom to disturb the mind’s eye."

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger :

"Particles are not identifiable objects. (...) they could be considered as events of an explosive nature (...) We cannot arrive - neither in the case of light nor in that of cathode rays - at understanding these phenomena by means of the concept of an isolated, individual corpuscle endowed with a permanent existence."

Physicist Léon Léderman :

"If the electron is a point, where is the mass, where is the charge ? How do we know the electron is a point ? Can I get my money back ?"

Physicist Manfred Mac Gregor in "The Enigmatic Electron" :

"There is a world in the electron"

Michel Paty in “New Journeys to the Land of Quanta” :

"The electron interacts with the "virtual pairs" of its own electromagnetic field. (…) The quantum vacuum contains such virtual pairs and this effect has been observed under the name of "vacuum polarization". The electron is found to interact with the charge of one of the elements of the virtual pair, so that a quantum electron is never "naked" but "dressed" in a swarm or cloud of virtual pairs which polarize its immediate environment and consequently modify its energy levels. (…) The so-called renormalization procedure considers that the mass and physical charge of the electron are those of the "dressed" electron and not those of the "naked" electron. The latter does not really exist, since it is always unthinkable without its field."

The electron does not have a fixed position : its charge quivers, its mass jumps from one point to another, its polarization cloud interacts with its neighbors... This defines various "dimensions" of the electron. If it is captured, it is point-like. Its mass is point-like. Its charge is point-like. If it interacts, it is considered by the other object as a non-zero-dimensional zone. The various dimensions have a ratio between them equal to the fine structure constant alpha. These are the results of quantum physics on the "elementary particle".

What is the atom, the elementary, the "unbreakable" ? A cloud of points at many scales ! These points are the electrified particles, called virtual, which make up the void. The mass property of the electron jumps from one virtual particle in the cloud to another.

Light is made up of two (or an even number) opposing virtual particles of electricity.

The void, with its various hierarchical levels, is therefore the basic constituent of the matter/light universe.

The probabilistic nature of the electron comes from the fact that it is not a single object but a set of nested levels based on the agitation of the vacuum.

The duality property of the elementary particle (behaving as both a corpuscle and a wave) has been one of the most difficult questions in quantum physics. Wave and corpuscle are two very opposite descriptions of reality, and yet matter, like light, have been shown to be both corpuscular and wave-like. Both does not mean that one can perform an experiment that gives both results at the same time. On the other hand, as soon as one performs an experiment that gives a wave-like result, one obtains a wave. And, each time one performs an experiment of the corpuscle type, one obtains a corpuscle. From this arose an interpretation according to which it was human observation that decided the nature of reality…

In fact, duality stems from the fractal nature of the particle. It exists at multiple scales. If you measure at one scale, you get a result at that scale. As a result, you lose the result found at another scale.

If the experiment performs a measurement on the polarization cloud, we obtain a wave-like result. If we interact with the material point, we obtain a corpuscular result which proves that the electron is indeed a point and is indeed a single being. But this being exists simultaneously at different levels. On the other hand, as soon as the corpuscle is captured, in an extremely short time, the cloud disappears. Indeed, at the level where the virtual particles are located, the speed limit of light no longer applies. It is the "reduction of the wave packet" which has so complicated the lives of quantum physicists.

This is how we can interpret all the properties, often seemingly strange, of the so-called elementary particle, the electron.
Physicists had long noticed that there was a problem in understanding its nature. As Abraham Pais points out in "Subtle is the Lord," probably the best biography of Einstein, "All that remains of this (the work of Abraham, Lorentz, Poincaré, Einstein, ... on the self-energy of the electron) is that we still do not understand this problem." Some physicists even theorize the impossibility of representing it Margenau (1961) : "Electrons are neither particles nor waves (...) An electron is an abstraction, which can no longer be described by an intuitive image corresponding to our everyday hope but determined through mathematical formulas." But, as Einstein said to Wheeler : "If I cannot imagine it, I cannot understand it." » And Einstein said : "You know, it would be enough to really understand the electron." In 1991, the International Electron Conference in Antigonish still wrote : "We are gathered here to discuss our current knowledge of the electron. (…) It is strange to see what an enormous mass of technology is based on the electron without us being able to understand this particle." This pessimism of physicists in the face of the contradictions of the electron has a real basis : it is impossible to give a single coherent picture of its functioning if we consider the electron to be a single object on a single scale.

These remarks actually stemmed from numerous theoretical difficulties in interpreting the observed phenomena. The interpretation given here is that of the fractal character of the electron. It explains in particular the quantum jumps of the particle and the atom. There is a jump at each interaction between levels of reality of the particle. The jump in scale explains the jump of the phenomenon. For example, the electron does not follow a trajectory, but jumps from one position to another. This discontinuity comes from the fact that the electron does not move in a continuous space, but interacts with the virtual particles of the vacuum. The "simple" displacement is already the product of this fractal character. The same is true for the interactions between particles of matter, between matter and light, and, more generally, between matter and vacuum.
As for the probabilistic character of the particle, so strange that its discoverer Einstein could not accept it, it would not exist if we were able to study reality simultaneously at all scales.
Much has been said about the "uncertainty" inherent in quantum physics, the supposed limit of human capacity to understand the world or even, some say, proof that materialist realism should be abandoned. In fact, it is the fractal nature of reality that causes this indeterminacy when measuring at a scale.
What physicists have noticed is that when measuring or reasoning at a scale, we must not seek to exceed a certain precision. Otherwise, we do not improve our image, we deteriorate it, but they wondered why. It has often been said that this is contrary to our daily experience and common sense. I do not believe so. When we read a text, we get a little closer to read correctly, but if we get too close, we see less well. There is a favorable scale for reading and we cannot read at all scales at the same time. Similarly, you can’t have a map at a scale that can simultaneously show several distant cities and the streets within those cities. You have to choose. Does this mean the map chooses what reality will be ? No, it just means that reality exists at several scales that are different enough that they can’t be examined simultaneously.
The polarization cloud surrounding the electron is made up of elements from a lower world, the world of virtual particles characterized by two interrelated properties : no mass and no space-time as we know it at our macroscopic scale nor as it exists (locally) in the environment of a mass. These particles are electrified positively or negatively and dynamically arrange themselves around the electron in alternating positive and negative layers, thus screening the field of the electric charge near the electron. This explains why no electric charge can approach to the point of touching the electron. There are always layers of virtual particles between two "real" particles. Let us recall once again that the so-called virtual particles are just as real as those called real but are located at another level of reality. They are not the only ones since they exist at an even lower level, the "virtual of virtual". Thus, two virtual particles are themselves surrounded, at a lower hierarchical level, by electrified particles. These worlds are not only nested. The levels are interactive. And even more so, since each level emerges from the lower level. The "real" particles are structures carried by virtual particles that receive a Higgs boson. When the virtual particle becomes a mass carrier, it builds a space-time field around itself ; it structures the disordered space-time of the virtual level.
The polarization cloud rotates due to magnetism through the action of the electron’s movement. This is called the electron’s spin. But the positive and negative layers do not rotate in the same way because the electron is negatively charged. This explains why it takes a turn to return to the initial situation, which is called spin ½.
The electron’s charge is point-like. Its mass is point-like. Yet experiments also show that they are never exactly in the same place, hence the internal rotational properties of the electron structure. This difference arises from the fact that the electron’s jump does not produce the same reaction at the various space-time scales. Mass moves more slowly than bosons. It takes longer to move. It therefore travels less far. This produces several different motions. The cloud of charge positions is much larger than that of mass : the ratio called the "fine structure constant" is the scaling ratio of the different nested hierarchical worlds and is therefore also the ratio between times or distances. It is therefore also the ratio between the different "electron radii". While mass wobbles around its position (a property called "zitterbezegung"), charge spreads over an entire area.

One of the oddities of electron physics is quantum : it is the superposition of states. Two interacting particles share their states. This would make no sense if we kept the image of the particle, an independent object. The "superposition of states" cannot be interpreted as a physical wave, which is why the first quantum physicists spoke only of a "presence probability wave." But what is the physical reality of the phenomenon leading to this presence probability ? How does the electron "know" that it must take this or that position within its presence probability cloud ? Quantum physics has long answered that there was no answer, and some even ventured to say that there never would be. This was logical for quantum physics : within its formalism, the question could not be asked. However, the study of the vacuum has changed the data of the problem. It taught us the existence of an entire vacuum medium, a restless medium full of energy : positive and negative quanta that appear and disappear in a very short time. "Virtual particles" were first used as a basis for calculations before their reality was recognized. Today, the existence of several levels of the vacuum is accepted. There is thus a virtual of the virtual. Particles do not interact at a distance but through the vacuum. However, the quantum vacuum is a medium with very different properties from those we know at the level of matter we know. First of all, there are as many antiparticles as particles. Then, space and time are agitated in all directions, constantly jumping, preventing any notion of trajectory or force. Virtual particles have no mass. Energy and momentum are concepts that are current, but they are used differently. There is no conservation of energy at all times. In matter on our scale, energy cannot suddenly appear where it did not exist. Within the quantum vacuum, energy is only globally conserved. Any energy that appears within the vacuum must disappear within a short time, the shorter the time the energy is significant. This is what establishes the notion of quanta : the product of time and energy.
There is a link between the vacuum and matter/light. The vacuum is not only the media of matter-matter or matter-light interactions, it is the foundation of matter and light. It is the vacuum that constantly produces the phenomena of "matter" and "light." The vacuum is not only the space in which photons and particles move. This movement is nothing other than an interaction with the vacuum. Moreover, the vacuum is the constituent of matter and light.
The result is a new understanding of matter and light. Particles and photons have in common... the vacuum that composes them ! Particles do not interact through mechanical collisions but through interactions between elements at a lower level : that of the vacuum. As a result, particles can exchange their virtual components : interact. They can thus constitute superpositions of states, correlated states.

Henri Poincaré writes in "Lectures on Thermal Radiation" :
"The hypothesis of quanta of action consists of assuming that these domains, all equal to each other, are no longer infinitely small, but finite and equal to h, h being a constant."

Joseph Liouville’s theorem, reported by Jean-Paul Auffray in "L’atom" :

"The density of points in the neighborhood of a given point in the phase extension is constant over time."

Poincaré’s statement in "The Quantum Hypothesis" :

“Energy is equal to the product of frequency and the element of action. (...) The quantum of action is a universal constant, a true atom. (...) A physical system is capable of only a finite number of distinct states ; and it jumps from one of these states to another without passing through a continuous series of intermediate states. (...) the set of points representative of the state of the system is a region (...) in which the points are so tightly packed that they give us the illusion of continuity. (...) these isolated representative points must not be distributed in space in any way (...) but in such a way that the volume of any portion of matter remains constant. (...) The state of ponderable matter could vary in a discontinuous manner, with only a finite number of possible states. (...) The universe would therefore jump abruptly from one state to another ; but in the meantime it would remain motionless, the various instants during which it remained in the same state could no longer be distinguished from one another : we would thus arrive at the discontinuous variation of time, at the atom of time. (...) If several representative points constitute an indivisible elementary domain in the phase extension, then the states of the system that these points represent necessarily also constitute one and the same state.

Jean-Paul Auffray in “The Atom” :

"Richard Feynman asked his son : ’When an atom makes a transition from one state to another, it emits a photon. Where does the photon come from ?’ (...) In Feynman’s terminology, the quantum is a virtual photon."

Excerpts from "Between Time and Eternity" by Prigogine and Stengers :

"The reason for quantum chaos is the appearance of resonances. (...) These resonances, which characterize all the fundamental situations of quantum mechanics, correspond to interactions between fields (that is to say also to matter-light interactions). We can affirm that our access to the quantum world is conditional on the existence of quantum chaotic systems. (...)
We have above all emphasized the negative dimensions of dynamic chaos, the necessity it implies of abandoning the notions of trajectory and determinism. But the study of chaotic systems is also an opening ; it creates the need to construct new concepts, new theoretical languages. The classical language of dynamics implies the notions of points and trajectories, and, until now, we ourselves have had recourse to them even while we were showing the idealization – in this case illegitimate – from which they proceed. The problem now is to transform this language, so that it integrates in a rigorous and coherent manner the constraints we have just recognized.
It is not enough, in fact, to express the finite nature of the definition of a dynamical system by describing the initial state of this system by a region of phase space, and not by a point. Because such a region, subject to the evolution defined by classical dynamics, may well fragment over time, it will retain its volume in phase space. This is expressed by a general theorem of dynamics, Liouville’s theorem. All attempts to construct an entropy function, describing the evolution of a set of trajectories in phase space, have come up against Liouville’s theorem, the fact that the evolution of such a set cannot be described by a function that would increase over time.
Now, a simple argument makes it possible to show the incompatibility, in the case of a chaotic system, between Liouville’s theorem and the constraint according to which any description defines the "resolving power" of our descriptions ; there will always be a distance r such that we will not be able to differentiate between points closer to each other on the other (…) The new description of chaotic dynamical systems substitutes for the point a set corresponding to a fragment of contracting fiber. This is a non-local description, which takes into account the indistinguishability constraint that we have defined. But this description is not relative to our ignorance. It gives an intrinsic meaning to the finite character of our descriptions : in the case where the system is not chaotic, where the Lyapunov exponent is of zero value, we find the classical, point-like representation, and the limits placed on the precision of our measurements no longer affect the representation of the dynamical system.
This new representation also breaks the temporal symmetry. (…) Where a single evolution equation allowed us to calculate the evolution towards the past or towards the future of points themselves indifferent to this distinction, we now have two different evolution equations. One would describe the evolution of a system towards an equilibrium located in the future, the other would describe the evolution of a system towards an equilibrium located in the past.
One of the major problems with the probabilistic interpretation of the evolution towards equilibrium was that the probabilistic representation does not give meaning to the distinction between past and future. (…) The new dynamic description that we have constructed, on the other hand, incorporates the arrow of time (…) Chaotic dynamic behaviors make it possible to build this bridge, which Boltzmann had not been able to create, between dynamics and the world of irreversible processes. The new representation of the dynamic object, non-local and with broken temporal symmetry, is not an approximate description, poorer than the classical representation. On the contrary, it defines this classical representation as relative to a particular case. (…) We know today that the latter (non-chaotic systems), which dominated the imagination of physicists for so long, in fact form a very particular class. (…) It was in 1892, with the discovery of a fundamental theorem by Poincaré (the three-body law), that the homogeneous image of dynamic behavior was shattered : most dynamic systems, starting with the simple "three-body" system, are not integrable.
How can we understand this statement ? Since Hamilton’s work, we know that the same dynamic system can be represented in different equivalent ways by a so-called canonical (or unitary) transformation (…) The Hamiltonian of the system is the quantity that determines its temporal evolution.
Among all the unitary transformations, there is one that allows us to arrive at a privileged representation of the system. This is the one that makes energy, that is to say the Hamiltonian, a function of only the moments, and no longer of the positions. In such a representation, the movements of the different particles of the system are described as if they no longer depended on the relative positions of the particles, that is to say as if they were no longer interacting. (…)
The possible movements of such systems therefore have the simplicity of free movements. (…) Now, in 1892, Poincaré showed that in general it is impossible to define the unitary transformation that would make “actions” invariants of the system. Most dynamical systems do not admit invariants outside of energy and momentum, and therefore are not integrable.
The reason for the impossibility of defining the invariants of motion that correspond to the representation of an integrable dynamic system is due to a resonance mechanism. (…) The resonance mechanism can be characterized as a transfer of energy between two coupled periodic motions whose frequencies are in a simple relationship to each other.
It is these resonance phenomena – but, this time, between the different degrees of freedom that characterize the same dynamic system – that prevent this system from being put into an integrable form. The simplest resonance between frequencies occurs when these frequencies are equal, but it also occurs whenever the frequencies are commensurable, that is, whenever they have a rational relationship to each other. The problem is complicated by the fact that, in general, the frequencies are not constant. (…) This means that, in the phase space of a dynamic system, there will be points characterized by a resonance, while others will not. The existence of resonance points generally prohibits representation in terms of cyclic variables, that is, a decomposition of the motion into independent periodic motions.
Resonance points, that is, points at which frequencies have a rational relationship to each other, are rare, just as rational numbers are rare compared to irrational numbers. Therefore, almost everywhere in phase space, we will have periodic behavior of the usual type. Nevertheless, resonance points exist throughout the finite volume of phase space. Hence the frighteningly complicated nature of the image of dynamical systems as revealed to us by modern dynamics initiated by Poincaré and continued by the work of Kolmogoroff, Arnold, and Moser.
If dynamical systems were integrable, dynamics could only provide us with a static image of the world, an image of which the motion of the pendulum or the planet on its Keplerian trajectory would constitute the prototype. However, the existence of resonances in dynamic systems with more than two bodies is not enough to transform this image and make it consistent with the evolutionary processes studied previously. When the volume remains small, periodic behaviors always dominate. (…)
However, for large systems, the situation is reversed. Resonances accumulate in the phase space ; they now occur not at every rational point, but at every real point. (…) From then on, non-periodic behaviors dominate, as is the case in chaotic systems. (…)
In the case of a system of hard spheres in collision, Sinai was able to demonstrate the identity between kinetic and chaotic behavior, and define the relationship between a kinetic quantity such as the relaxation time (mean time between two collisions) and the Lyapunov time which characterizes the time horizon of chaotic systems. (…)
Now, the atom in interaction with its field constitutes a “large quantum system” to which, as we have demonstrated, Poincaré’s theorem can be extended. (…) Poincaré’s “catastrophe” is repeated in this case : contrary to what the usual quantum representation presupposed, systems characterized by the existence of such resonances cannot be described in terms of superposition of eigenfunctions of the Hamiltonian operator, that is to say, invariants of the motion. Quantum systems characterized by average lifetimes, or by behaviors corresponding to "collisions," therefore constitute the quantum form of dynamic systems with chaotic behavior (…)
The abandonment of the model of integrable systems has consequences as radical in quantum mechanics as in classical mechanics. In the latter case, it implied the abandonment of the notion of point and of the law of reversible evolution that corresponds to it. In the latter, it implies the abandonment of the wave function and its reversible evolution in Hilbert space. In both cases, this abandonment has the same meaning : it allows us to decipher the message of entropy. (…)
The collision, transfer of momentum and kinetic energy between two particles, constitutes, from the dynamic point of view, an example of resonance. However, it is the existence of resonance points which, as we have known since Poincaré, prevents us from defining most dynamic systems as integrable. Kinetic theory, which corresponds to the case of a large dynamic system having resonance points "almost everywhere" in phase space, therefore marks the transformation of the notion of resonance : it ceases to be an obstacle to description in terms of deterministic and predictable trajectories, to become a new principle of description, intrinsically irreversible and probabilistic.
It is this notion of resonance that we have found at the heart of quantum mechanics, since it is this that Dirac used to explain the events that open experimental access to the atom, the emission and absorption of photons of specific energy, whose spectrum constitutes the true signature of each type of atom. (…) The lifetime, which intrinsically characterizes an excited level, depends, in the current formalism of quantum mechanics, on an approximation and loses its meaning if the calculation is pushed further. From then on, quantum mechanics had to recognize the event without being able to give it an objective meaning. This is why it could appear to call into question the very reality of the observable world that it was supposed to make intelligible. (…)
To explain the spontaneous electronic transitions that give any excited state a finite lifetime, Dirac had to make the hypothesis of a field induced by the atom and entering into resonance with it. The finite system represented by the isolated atom is therefore only an abstraction. The atom interacting with its field is itself a "large quantum system," and it is at this level that the "Poincaré catastrophe" occurs.
The atom interacting with the field it induces does not, in fact, constitute an integrable system and can therefore no more be represented by the evolution of the wave function than a classical system characterized by resonance points can be characterized by a trajectory. This is the flaw that concealed the impressive edifice of quantum mechanics. (…) It is significant that, everywhere, we encountered the notion of "symmetry breaking." This notion implies a seemingly insurmountable reference to the symmetry affirmed by the fundamental laws that constitute the heritage of physics. And, indeed, initially, it was these laws that guided our research. (…) The description with broken time symmetry allows us to understand the symmetry itself as relative to the particularity of objects formerly favored by physics, that is to say to situate their particularity within a more general theory.

Michel Bitbol in "The material body and the object of quantum physics" :

"E. Schrödinger was undoubtedly the creator of quantum theory who most insisted on this lack of identity criteria in ordinary space, and who drew the most radical conclusions from it. According to him, in the absence of criteria of identity or strict genidentity, we must go so far as to refuse to refer to the slightest particle. "In my opinion," he wrote, "abandoning the trajectory is equivalent to abandoning the particle." The principled unavailability of any trajectory (principled because it has legal value in quantum theory through the relations of indeterminacy) even leads to the admission that "(...) particles, in the naive sense of the past, do not exist." The physicist’s discourse is completely reversed. Instead of admitting that at short distances, individual particles have a non-zero "probability of exchange," we then risk taking one for the other and lose the statistical consequences of their individuality, Schrödinger does not hesitate to affirm that "(...) there are no individuals who could be confused or taken for one another. Such statements are meaningless." Rather than using a formalism involving symmetry and antisymmetry operators, with its states labeled by particle names and its permutations of labels, he therefore advocates implementing the formalism of quantum field theory, in which it is no longer a question of n particles in a state at all, but of a state in its n-th quantum level. Moreover, instead of considering that particles have an approximate trajectory, Schrödinger points out that all that is available, and all that quantum mechanics governs, are "(...) long strings of successively occupied states (...)". The only thing that leads many physicists to speak of particle trajectories in this case is that "(...) such strings give the impression of an identifiable individual (...)". This is only an impression, or worse, an illusion, Schrödinger adds : "Sometimes these events form chains that give the illusion of permanent entities."

The atom was considered the indivisible element, that is, it cannot be divided. Atomism, like Zeno, considers that reality cannot be divided infinitely and that we come up against a limit.

It was assumed that the atom must be a small ball. Then it was realized that most of the space it occupied was empty space. The rest was other, smaller particles, occupying a very small part of the atom’s space. We thought we had found the indivisible. But the design of a ball for the electron or the proton posed a problem. They would have lost energy and ended up falling on top of each other within the atom since they were rotating around each other. It was realized that they also had internal rotational properties that could not be described in mechanical terms.

Quantum physics had to abandon this type of description. The rotation in question was quantum, that is, discontinuous : in multiples of an integer.

These were no longer balls of matter but particles considered as material points. However, there was a contradiction raised in particular by Manfred Mac Gregor : the electron, however, occupied a space that was highlighted in certain experiments.

So the particle is not a simple point.

On the other hand, this particle does not follow trajectories. It jumps from one position to another. This explains why it is only probabilistic. We cannot know where it will be present, but only know a probability of presence in an area around the particle.

Finally, we realized that the problems of quantum physics : the infinities in physics (like the interaction of the electron with itself) or Young’s slits posed the problem of the interaction between the electron and the vacuum around the electron : the polarization cloud.

Ultimately, the electron is not naked. It is surrounded by its cloud. It jumps from one point to another in this cloud.

Quantum physics also emphasized that the fundamental elements are not mass or energy, but rather the quanta h and the electric charge e. These are constants. There are quanta that are made up of matter or so-called "real" quanta, and the others are called "virtual," such as those that constitute light or the vacuum.

Everyone knows that physics has discovered that matter, like light, is made up of "grains" called particles. Matter would be called fermions, that is, particles obeying Fermi’s rule, which prevents particles of the same state from agglomerating due to the "Pauli principle." Fermions are of two types : leptons (like the electron) or quarks (constituting neutrons and protons). Light—an expression used here to group together all so-called interacting particles—would be made up of bosons, that is, particles that obey Bose’s rule, which concerns particles that tend to agglomerate in a common state.

The whole thing initially seemed to work like a construction set : particles are added together to form larger groups like atoms, molecules, and macromolecules. Neutrons and protons are added together to form the nuclei of atoms, and electrons are added together to form the atomic environment that allows the atom to be electrically neutral overall.

This additive logic is not entirely false, but it has reached its explanatory limits and has long been abandoned by physicists to explain the functioning of matter/light. The first reason stems from the fact that this additive image assumed that particles were static, individual objects, existing permanently or at least for long periods of time. Each individual particle was assigned a mass that was considered attached to the material thing. Current physics is very different. The individuality of the particle is no longer accepted. Mass is a property that moves and jumps from one point to another, without being fixed to an object. The object itself is no longer a recognized image. In fact, matter is no longer explained by fixity but, on the contrary, by an extraordinarily agitated dynamic : that of the void, which is no longer synonymous with absence. The basis of the apparently conservative character of the globally conserved structure that is matter is the permanent agitation of the void !

The void is full of virtual quanta. These quanta appear and disappear as pairs of virtual matter and virtual antimatter. The virtual characteristic comes from the rapid appearance and disappearance. This makes the virtual a fundamental universe that founds the material universe. Similarly, the virtual of the virtual founds the virtual, etc.

Light is made up of a virtual pair of matter and antimatter.

Matter is a structure formed by a large number of quanta and the emergent interactions they create. The main interaction is the one that exchanges the property of matter, currently called the Higgs boson. This is how the particle "jumps" from one point to another. In fact, it is only the boson that jumps from one virtual particle to another and makes it "real."

Nature has long been considered a collection of fixed objects that can be set in motion, modified, or broken by an external force. This static, stable image, without internal dynamics, is dead. In all fields, it is giving way to a dynamic image. Instead of fixed "things," we call upon structures arising from the underlying agitation. Structure is only a mode in which the whole is globally stable although in continual change. The molecules of the cloud change, move, exchange energy, even when the external appearance of the cloud remains unchanged. Temperature stability is not based on the absence of agitation but on average agitation. The component elements themselves change constantly, as is the case with the cells of a living being, or even with its molecules forming its biochemical components. Not so long ago, we still saw matter as a construction based on fixed objects. With atoms, we made molecules. With electrons and nuclei, atoms were made. With neutrons and protons, atomic nuclei were made. Elementary particles seemed to be fixed objects, capable only of moving, attracting, repelling, approaching or colliding with each other. The electron was an individual to whom encounters happened like any other individual, encounters through which it remained itself. The only question was whether the electron was elementary or composite. The characteristics of the electron (mass, charge, speed, energy, etc.) seemed to be proof of the conservation of the same object over time.

Today, things are quite different. The electron is no longer seen as an individual object, existing stably at a single scale, but as a phenomenon, a property that moves, that jumps from one particle to another within a cloud of points. It is the agitation of the vacuum that allows the existence of the electron as of other particles, an agitation that is manifested by the appearances and disappearances of particle/antiparticle pairs. The nucleus of the atom itself exists only because of an incredible agitation formed not only by the vacuum but by myriads of ephemeral particles and by multiple exchanges between protons and neutrons and not by a fixity of neutrons and protons.

It therefore appears today that nature, at all scales, is formed of structures and not of objects, dissipative structures therefore based on agitation and drawing their energy from the underlying disorder, these structures, a kind of membrane surrounding domains, being the thresholds between disorders at several levels. The disorders are themselves the product of the permanent combat of contradictory forces, of opposing tendencies which prevail or inhibit each other alternately. The constants are nothing other than the thresholds between two disorders.

The cloud, the city, man, the atomic nucleus, the electron, the plant, the bacterium are such dissipative structures that can in no way be described as independent, individual, and fixed objects but, on the contrary, as products of a permanent external agitation. Without the agitation of the void, there is no matter. Without the agitation of molecules, there are no crystal structures. Without the agitation of trade and production, there are no cities.

Here is what James Trefil of George Mason University in Virginia writes : "Although we usually think of the nucleus as a static collection of protons and neutrons, it is in reality an essentially dynamic place. Particles of all kinds move in all directions and at high speeds, colliding with each other, undergoing creation and destruction as their energies are converted into mass or their masses into energy. (...) Since the 1950s, more than 200 of these particles have been discovered inside the nucleus."

In this dynamic, the notion of an isolated individual or static equilibrium has no meaning. There is no fixed nucleus or fixed proton, any more than there is a fixed electron, conceivable as an individual equal to itself. The individual particle does not exist any more than the isolated star, without galaxies and galaxy clusters. No more than man isolated from his human, social, cultural and material universe.