From the back cover:
By 1911, Sir Ernest Rutherford proved that the volumes of the nucleus and the orbital electrons "fill" quadrillionths only of the volume of any atom. Thus atoms are proportionally a hundred times less filled, more "empty", more space-like than the Solar System.

Hence all atomic bodies, including Earth and ourselves, are in their atomic "fine" structure incredibly rare and discrete, space-like empty, and not "smooth, dense and continuous", as perceived by our senses. Dealing with facts of nature, related to this fine structure, we must think of an atomic body and treat it as a rare network of particles, nuclei and electrons, that are very far apart from one another.

People who think of bodies, and of a material carrier of light, as being dense and continuous, are sure that the moving earth would "bulldoze" this carrier, making winds or currents in it. From the clear absence of such results, Michelson and Morley derived in 1887 that there is no material carrier of light at all. However, even for those times, the logically and physically right conclusion is that a material carrier of light, if any, cannot be dense and continuous.

In 19th Century physics, the then known facts were explained by the concept of an ether as the material carrier of light. Since 1865 (J.C. Maxwell), the ether was also a carrier of electromagnetic fields and radiations. The 1887 dismissal of this carrier turned physicists unable to explain physics, which became a "science in distress".

Mathematicians tried to revive the ether by assuming that in fast-moving bodies time runs slower, or that the length of the bodies decreases, that their mass increases, etc. The assumptions did not revive the ether but were used by Einstein in 1905 to restore the 18th century Newtonian Era belief in an absolutely empty space.

These mathematically convenient fictions developed into a "New Physics", which is based on axiomatic postulates, denies the existence of physical explanations and sees all the truth in calculations that fit observables. Nevertheless, new physics found that its empty space has some mysterious features: is deformable (1911), "pinnable down" (Compton, 1923), has magnetism, electric charge, mass, radiates as a body at a 3K temperature (1977), imposes speed limits, has viscosity (1997 Nobelists), etc., real features of a real material body.

Following are several excerpts from the Booklet.  If interested, you may order the Booklet from the author.

The Story of Matter and Space:  Preface  /  Contents  /  Summary
 
 

Who Is This Book For and Why Does One Need It
This booklet is based on my books, Invitation to the Natural Physics of Matter, Space, and Radiation, published by the World Scientific Publishing Co. in 1994, and The Electron Positron Lattice Space, Physics Section 5, Hebrew University, 1990), as well as on my 150 papers in scientific journals and presentations to scientific meetings. It is committed to explaining the physical structures of matter, space, and related phenomena observed in the physical world.

The book aims at everybody able to read an elementary text in any subject. No mathematical or technological background is needed. The math is here to illustrate physical facts, and does not (as it never really does) prove or explain them. If you cannot cope with the math here, you may still understand the text and the physical nature of things. This will free you from manipulations by various pseudo-science fictions.

In contrast, the popular books by R.P. Feynman and by S. Hawking describe mathematical approaches and interpretations but do not explain the physical nature of phenomena. Feynman wrote (QED, pages 9, 10): "you won't be able to understand what I am going to say. ..That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does. ..The theory ..describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is--absurd".

Hawking's book sold ten million copies, but "many of those who bought it have not read it". Hawking said that his theory can be understood by some tens of people, maybe a hundred. But Feynman’s "Nobody Understands" equally relates to Hawking’s work, as well as to the whole "New Physics", that so proudly announces the nonexistence of physical explanations.

Therefore, if you have ever asked questions, like: But Why Is There .. - inertia, gravitation, quantization, etc., and got no answer or, instead, a reproaching "You must not ask such questions!", then take this book. I hope that whoever takes it will read it, and whoever reads it (carefully!) will understand. There is nothing final and ultimate here, no "theory of everything", no "end of physics", as in Hawking's work, and Nature is not declared absurd, as in Feynman's book. Physical facts, definitions, and laws are not twisted to fit ideologies, and not treated as disposable obstacles on the way to mathematical solutions and fictions. Still, it is not a rose garden of "physics made easy".
 
 

Chapter 1.
THE WORLD WE SEE.The Sky as we see it. Ancient Interpretations of the sky. The Ptolemaic Model. The Copernican Heliocentric Model. The Kepler-Galilei-Newton Presentation of Planetary Motion. Are the Moon and the Sun As We See Them? Are the Planets As We See Them? Major Post Newtonian Discoveries in the Solar System. On the discoveries of Neptune and Pluto. Are the Stars As We See Them? How Far is the Sky and what is it.

Chapter 2.
WHY OUR PRESENTATIONS MAY DISAGREE WITH THE NATURE OF THINGS.  Why Our Observations May Disagree with Nature. Why our Interpretations May Disagree With Nature. Scholastic Habits and The Four Horse Rule. Velocity Limits of Extended Atomic Bodies in Space. The WHY Question and its Handling in Life and Science. The THERE IS NO, NYET, YOK statements in life and science. The Scientific Utterance of "It's Not Necessarily So!". Conclusions concerning Mathematical Models.

Chapter 3.
WHAT DO WE THINK OF MATTER AND WHAT DOES PHYSICS TELL US ABOUT IT.  The Atomic Kind of Matter. Sizes and Masses of Atoms, in Powers of Ten Notation. The Distinct Nuclear Kind of Matter. The Planetary Structure of Atoms and their Space-like Emptiness. Sizes of Nuclear Particles and Densities of Matter. Binding Energies in Atomic Matter. Concentration of Constituents in Atomic Bodies. Can Atoms be Shrunk? Why Are Atoms So Impenetrable to One Another. Penetrability of Atoms by Nuclear Particles.

Chapter 4.
PREVALENT IDEAS ON THE STRUCTURE OF SPACE AND THE NATURE OF LIGHT. Our Perceptions of Space and the Absolute Emptiness. Light Rays; Are they Waves or Streams of Corpuscules? The Unfeasible but Useful Light-Carrying Ether. Misinterpretation of the Michelson-Morley Experiment. Twisted concepts of Time, Dimensions, and Mass. Dependence of Apparent Mass on velocity. The improper interpretation of E=mc². Physical interpretation of the Anderson Experiment. Freeing and capture of ions in crystals. Velocity of sound in elastic media and the E=mc_s² formula. Velocity of Electro-magnetic waves and E=mc². Particles, Waves, and their postulated Duality. The Electron Positron Lattice (Epola) Structure of space.

Chapter 5.
THE ELECTRON POSITRON LATTICE (EPOLA) SPACE. The Physical Structure of Space. Structure of Epola and of Sodium Chloride Crystals. Particle Concentration and Energy Density in the Epola. Attraction and Repulsion in Ionic Molecules and Lattices. Epola Deformation Caused by a Resting Guest Particle. Mechanism of the Electrostatic Interaction. Mechanism of the Gravitational Interaction. Epola Vibrations and Waves around a Moving Guest Particle. Why There Is Inertia. Origins of the Short Range Repulsion.

Chapter 6.
WAVES IN ATOMIC MATTER AND IN SPACE; THEIR PHONONS AND PHOTONS. Waves in Atomic Bodies. Half-Wave Deformation Clusters of Bulk Waves. Quantization of Energy Transfer in Waves. The Phonon-Photon Analogy. Velocities of Bulk Waves in Media. Velocity of Epola Bulk Waves and the Speed of Light.

Chapter 7.
ATOMS; THEIR EMISSION AND ABSORPTION OF LIGHT. Balance of Forces and Energies in the Hydrogen Atom. Orbital Velocity and Radius in the Hydrogen Atom. Orbital Epola Waves and Quantization of Orbits. Stability of Atoms Heavier than Hydrogen. Absorption of Waves and Absorptional Redshift. Blueshifts, Redshifts, and the Doppler Effect. The Gravitational Redshift and Bending of Light.

Chapter 8.
ALLIED ASTROPHYSICAL PHENOMENA. The Hubble-Humason Physical Law and its falsification. The Alleged Superlumic Runaway of Galaxies. The 3K Blackbody Radiation and Epola Temperature. Warm or Hot epola regions and Mysterious Matter in space. Dismissal of the Big Bang Creation of Universes. Can Gravitational Collapse create Atoms and Nuclei? Epola Collapse as a Possible Creation Mechanism of Atomic Nuclei.

Figures:  1. Cubic Lattice of the Sodium Chloride Crystal and the Epola.  2. Gate to the Unit Cube of the Sodium Chloride Cubic Lattice.  3. Gate to the Unit Cube of the Epola.
Summary. References and Bibliography. Author, Subject Index.
Table: Sizes (Lengths, Diameters) of Material Bodies.
Diagrams showing the "emptiness" of the Solar System and the hundred times "more empty" atoms:  1. The Sun and Orbits of Inner Planets.  2. Position of Sun and Orbits of Outer Planets.
3. Atomic Sizes. Position of Nucleus and the Electron Orbit in the Hydrogen atom.
 
 

The epola (Electron POsitron LAttice) model of space is based on the Michelson-Morley, Rutherford, and Anderson crucial experiments. Numerous other experiments prove and substantiate this model, and there is no relevant experimental fact of physics "outside nuclear particles," denying the epola model or unexplainable on the basis of this model. Moreover, the existence of the epola provides the only real physical explanation of the results of all these crucial experiments.

Based on the analogy between the epola and the sodium chloride crystal lattice, we use the derived formula for the velocity of bulk deformation waves in the crystal to calculate the velocity of such waves in the epola. It turns out that the velocity of bulk deformation waves in the epola is exactly the vacuum light velocity c. This is another argument in favor of the epola as carrier of electromagnetic radiation.

A slight transform of the velocity formula for bulk deformation waves in the epola yields the E=mc² formula. The formula is therefore a result of the epola structure of the carrier of electromagnetic radiation. It expresses energy relations for the freeing of masses from the epola bonds, and for their capture into these bonds. The formula has nothing to do with a "creation" of mass from energy or with "annihilation" of mass into energy. These fictitious "processes" fit equations but do not occur in nature.

The energy transfer in epola waves is described by propagation of half-wave bulk deformation clusters, and of photons representing the per-particle energy in the cluster. The analogy between acoustic and electromagnetic waves is deepened and widened, as well as the phonon-photon analogy. This enabled the derivation of Planck’s Law, which was postulated in 1900 and not explained since.

The de Broglie "waves of matter" are shown to be real electromagnetic waves, caused in the epola by the motion of nuclear particles. The waves accompany the motion of nuclear particles in the epola, propagate with the velocity of light and pre-form the epola for the motion. Hence the epola becomes vacuum-transparent for particles moving much slower than the accompanying wave.

To establish the epola model, we had to disprove two concepts, based on our most natural but erroneous perceptions: that of dense and continuous atomic matter, and that of the emptiness of space. The "dense and continuous" fiction we replaced with the proven by Rutherford space-like "emptiness" and incredible discreteness of atomic matter. The "empty space" fiction we replaced by the rare, widely meshed electron positron lattice. The penetrability of space to atomic matter results then from the fact that both space and atomic matter consist of nothing but nuclear particles, positioned far apart from one another.

Thanks to this, we could explain the results of the Michelson-Morley experiments without giving-in to the unproven non-physical requests of relativity. Thus, we rehabilitated our natural three-dimensional space and the constant rate of flow of time. We restored Newton's definition of mass as quantity of matter, and the Lavoisier Law of Mass Conservation, "the most elaborately proven law of physics and chemistry".

We present the 3K radiation of our skies as the thermal radiation of the epola, due to the random vibrations of its particles. The Hubble-Humason redshifts in galaxial spectra are proportional to the distance crossed by their light. They are thus mostly due to absorptional and gravitational (Einstein) redshifts in distorted epola regions (near massive stars, etc.), and not much to the Doppler effect. Hence, not everything is running away from us, and the universe is not necessarily exploding.

We dismiss the postulated universal constancy of the vacuum light-velocity. Shown to be the velocity of bulk deformation waves in the epola, the light velocity is determined by epola conditions in the region of propagation. Entering any epola region, light propagates with velocity fixed by the physical conditions in this region. Light does not "remember" its velocity in regions where it was emitted and had to pass. Everywhere in "our" wide region of space, and around all our measuring apparatuses, the conditions in the epola are the same, so that the measured velocity of light is the same, too. However this particular sameness or constancy of light velocity is limited to our space, to our region of the epola.

We also dismiss the postulated universal validity of physical laws and magnitudes that were established in our backyard. Such local findings may possibly be useful and applicable in other regions, but the a priori tyrannic demand of their universal validity is rejected. We thus restore the natural rights of all autonomous regions of the universe to manage their affairs according to their local conditions and legislation.

In the last Sections of the book we fantasized about the creation of different kinds of matter by natural processes in the electron-positron lattice. Still, our natural physics is altogether very prosaic. It introduces, restores, and enforces strict physical rules, language, and thinking. It eliminates the so exciting time machines, star wars, the shrinking and blowing up of kids, travel between stars, galaxies, or back and forth in history. With the disproof of the runaway interpretation of galaxial redshifts, and with the reversal of the 3K "background" radiation into the "foreground" radiation of the epola in front of us, natural physics turns the so photogenic and TV-genic Big Bang theory into just one more exciting type of science fiction.