I’m thinking of bubbles

In his first book, “Taltala” (“Shaking” in Hebrew), Prof. Eitan Kimmel, from the Technion in Haifa, challenges conventional scientific paradigms while weaving in his personal life insights.

Thirteen years ago, when Kimmel was 58 years old, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. According to Kimmel, the word “shaking” is the best way to describe the mental, physical, and emotional turmoil he experienced and which he has written about in his book. This upheaval caused significant changes in his scientific perspective and outlook on life.

“The word “shaking” summarizes the meaning of the processes I went through in my body, mind, and soul,” explains Kimmel, “an emotional upheaval that brought about changes in my scientific perception as well as in my perception of life itself.”

His research has contributed significant insights into physical phenomena in biological and universal contexts despite his Parkinson’s disease.

Some of his notable scientific contributions include his theories on Intramembrane Cavitation and the sound mechanism in mammals. He also developed the structural model of the dodecahedron that explains lung tissue elasticity and its application to the concept of ether in the universe. His bubble theory is a foundational concept in understanding the energy of life.

Chapter 10 of “Taltala” provides a fascinating glimpse into the mind of author Kimmel, showcasing his scientific understanding and resilience in the face of life’s challenges. The chapter explores the intersections of science, personal experience, and the evolution of academic thought. It is a must-read for anyone interested in these topics.

Chapter 10

Think Bubbles

Córdoba, Maimonides’ city. Morning. Hotel Carpe Diem.[I]

I’m thinking of bubbles. They are created and dissolved as a direct result of biomechanical motion. Any movement in the living organism, of whatever size, is possible only in the presence of gases, whether it be motion in the membrane or in the organelle, cell, tissue, organ, or even the entire body. Any motion, whether random, thermal, Brownian.

The rapid transition of gases from a soluble to gaseous state characterizes the unbearable lightness of life, even if this life is hanging by a thread. When the ribosome creates a protein whose volume is larger than the sum of its parts, it requires empty space. It would not be able to create protein if such a space would not free up somewhere. For that purpose, the pressure in the cell needs to rise a bit. As a result, a suitable amount of substance in a gaseous state “has to” transform to a soluble state.

Thus, the volume changes, and the creation of protein is facilitated. This is the chi, the power of motion, the power of life. If the equilibrium of gases is violated – we are through. This equilibrium enables the life of the entire system. Thus, with less than 100 watts, perpetual motion is made possible on all levels of life. Motion with a direction.

A year has passed since I wrote the former paragraph. It was prophetic. Now I understand that when I wrote it, I was not fully aware of its significance. For years, microbubbles have occupied my thoughts. A year ago, in Córdoba, I took a big step forward. And I still have not found the chi, only took a step closer toward it. I actually found it at home, in Ramat Hasharon. Here I found the “Chion”.

The chion respects two ancient languages – Hebrew and Chinese, but also Greek, as is custom in the sciences. It stemmed from the word “חי” (chai, life) in Hebrew. In Chinese, the name is based on the word chi, which means the energy of life. The chion was born from the ocean, from the waves, like Elik, the hero from the book by Moshe Shamir. Homeopathy also conceived him.

And so it happened: at a certain stage I reached an impasse in the research. It was clear to me that the motion of live cells in live tissue cannot happen without the presence of gases. I understood they must be gases that change their volume relatively easily when they transform from one state of matter to another. Like boiling water transforming from liquid to gas, to steam. It never occurred to me that it is an unknown state of matter. A new state of matter, allowing an easy transition to the gaseous state. The thought that gases would not only change their volume easily, but also add energy to the cell and the tissue, seemed completely outlandish.

In the past few decades, several research groups in the world performed experiments implementing ultrasound transcranial stimulation. The results were exceptionally similar to the Intramembrane Cavitation model, which I developed alongside Shy Shoham and Michael (Misha) Plaksin. The collaboration with both gave me a sense of true elation. Professor Shoham turned out to be a brilliant brain scientist, knowledgeable, a perfectionist and quite curious. Doctor Plaksin, still writing his doctoral dissertation at the time, was a wonderful researcher, independent, and not one to shy away from a challenge. Our model gained some credit in the international community. We published another article, proposing an explanation for the effect heating has on the membrane’s properties. I presented the model to a group of old friends, as well. They are not scientists, but listened enthusiastically to every detail of the research and believed me without hesitation.

And still I was not at peace. There was still a theoretical difficulty. I recognized a blatant violation of the second law of thermodynamics. The spherical gas microbubble, spreading and shrinking with the pressure changes around it, was raising difficulty. The membranal microbubble growing rounder and flatter raised a similar difficulty. The second law of thermodynamics defines the direction of a process in nature. It is a condition of sorts, that prophesies the possibility of a process. Preservation of energy in a system does not coincide with increasing the order, or in other words, decreasing the entropy. Entropy is a system’s property, representing its level of disorder.

Let us assume that we wish to make a cup of tepid tea. We will take half a cup of water at 80 degrees Celsius and half a cup of water at 20 degrees. This way we will get a full cup at 50 degrees. This is, of course, the average temperature. It is a natural process in which the order decreases. We went from a separate state to a state where there is no separation between the two types of water, hot and cold. The entropy increased. This process happens in nature. But it would never happen in the opposite direction. A cup of water at 50 degrees will never separate on its own accord into two half cups, one with water at 20 degrees and one with water at 80 degrees. This is a process of increasing the order, or decreasing the entropy. There is no chance of this process occurring without using external energy in the process of separation. Identity politics and preserving individuality against identity-blurring globalization. Which requires energy? Isolation, of course! Hatred of the other, distance from the other, these waste energy! Even thermodynamics indicates this.

When the microbubble shrinks and spreads, an orderly flow is created, with spherical symmetry surrounding the microbubble. Inward and outward motion. The order increases. When the flow is random, with no microbubble, the order decreases. An external energy source is therefore necessary for the gas microbubble to begin shrinking and spreading with the pressure changes. What is this obscure energy source? There is much evidence that gas microbubbles spread and shrink due to ultrasound. Ultrasound wave energy is inconsequential compared to the concentration required here. How can this occur without such a supply of external concentrated energy?

I started looking into homeopathy. I started following a conversation with a friend who studied this treatment method. Homeopathy is controversial. Its challengers deride the method and abuse its underbelly – the dilutions. Homeopathy has a strange approach: they dilute one drop of the active ingredient with 100 drops of distilled water; shake well; take one drop of the solution and dilute it with 100 drops of distilled water again; shake once more, and so forth. As the dilutions repeat, it becomes harder to find even a single molecule of the active ingredient which was present at the beginning of the process. The homeopaths claim, surprisingly, that the drop’s strength increases the more dilutions are performed!

The method’s enthusiasts claim they are not interested in the dilutions. The important thing is that the method works and its solutions provide a cure. They claim that during the process of dilution the water structure is “put in order”, or crosses Earth’s magnetic field. I personally had a successful experience with a kind homeopath healer years ago. He managed to make a rash disappear within a single week. Under his instructions, I put several small, sugary pills under my tongue. He prohibited taking any other medicine. I underwent a deep investigation in his clinic, while he rummaged through thick books. I did all that he told me to do, and in that case homeopathy cured me, after a long line of dermatologists failed to do so.

The rash came back a year later. I went to him once more. The magic had dissipated. The inquiry was superficial, I did not stop taking the other medicines, he suddenly seemed too young, too ordinary. The homeopathic solution did not work. However, someone I know easily handles her herpes with homeopathic solutions. The same herpes becomes ugly and irritating with any other medicine. There is also some research which shows that homeopathy has the identical effect as a placebo.

The conclusion from all this is that the cautious researcher would do well to keep far away from this field.

I did not keep away. Like a child, I let my curiosity lead me. The homeopathic method was developed by a German pastor 250 years ago. He based his theory on nature observations, and only what he saw with his own eyes. And yet, I decided not to reject the method out of hand. I declared a “shaking rebellion”. If the absurd dilutions do not lead anywhere, perhaps shaking will help. And there is an advantage – one can shake at home. I filled a clear jar with water and some surface-active material. A substance similar to dish soap, to make it easier to form microbubbles. I started shaking according to the instructions. To my amazement, hundreds of microbubbles were formed, each the size of several hundred micrometers. Most were of similar, if not the same, size. They floated in uniform dispersion, barely moving.

These microbubbles should have disappeared within a nanosecond. If they did not disappear, it meant the pressure in the microbubble was much higher than the water pressure in the jar containing it. If the pressure was indeed high, the gases compressed in it should have escaped through diffusion into the enveloping water. And if this had happened, the microbubble should have disappeared quickly. But surprisingly, the microbubble and its friends did not disappear. And anyway, why do the microbubbles not float? Why do they not cluster together or move away from each other?

No doubt that this 18th century pastor was onto something. What did he create through shaking? He was simply mimicking the ocean waves. A bit of salt and other minerals, a tad of wind from God sweeping over the water.

What happened here? I was reminded of a journal called Sonochemistry. It is focused on chemical reactions made possible by ultrasound. That is, by exploding microbubbles. Several researchers claimed that ultrasound can cause nuclear reactions in microbubbles. There is evidence of new elements forming in microbubbles, indeed indicating nuclear reaction. With my own eyes, I saw how ultrasound, not at highly intense levels, creates a pale blue light in a projected bath in a darkened room. This light is called sonoluminescence, the sonic gleam. This also hints at nuclear reaction. A mystery.

My excitement continued to grow. I doodled a few calculations. I seemed to have stumbled onto something big. I wanted to tell everyone immediately, but wait. I must pause and take a breath. This cannot be! I might be hallucinating. But no, it all comes together. The puzzle is solved, and what a solution! The researcher has a problem with moments like these. How can one correctly estimate the moment’s significance? There is no trumpet blast, no applause, no television crew. The world follows its course.

What did I discover?

In shaking the soap water in the jar, I mimicked the waves’ activity. Ocean waves, in the presence of salt and air, create micrometric gas bubbles. The water’s salinity is an important component in creating the microbubbles. This is because salt is a surfactant, like soap, and it causes a decrease in surface tension. One can see the foam in ocean waves. There is no such foam in freshwater lakes.

The gas content in microbubbles is similar to that of air (80% nitrogen, 20% oxygen and some carbon dioxide). These microbubbles are not stable, because there is a rushed diffusion of gas from the microbubble outward. This occurs since the pressure in the microbubble, due to the surface tension, though decreased, is hundreds and even thousands of pascals higher than the pressure surrounding it. The high pressure in the microbubble voids it from gas until it completely disappears. In a microbubble of one nanometer radius, the surface tension will be hundreds of millions of pascals higher than the surrounding pressure. That is why microbubbles are expected to be especially unstable.

It is possible that the micrometric bubbles only seem stable to the naked eye. They might be oscillating at a high frequency of millions of hertz and more. In each cycle, the microbubble collapses inward. The gases are compressed with extreme energy to the center of the microbubble. This is how nuclear fusion conditions are created. Temperatures of millions of degrees, and pressures of millions of atmospheres. The gases are compressed to a rather stable nanometric cluster. The density in such a cluster is a million times more than the density of water, and a billion times denser than the initial gas density.

These conditions are approximately similar to the creation of a dense star. In cosmology, this star is called a “White Dwarf”. Less dramatic conditions are created around the gas cluster. Not millions, rather only several thousand degrees Celsius and thousands of atmospheres of pressure. These conditions are suitable for creating a chemical reactor. The compressed cluster will remain stable for a while until it explodes into a micrometric bubble due to a momentary depressurization around it. And then once again – surface tension reduction, diffusion, collapse, fusion, compressed cluster, and the cycle repeats.

What is the result of this cyclic process? Gases compressed in a cluster, volume change induced by external pressure, a concentration of energy through nuclear processes in a nanometric cluster of molecules, available energy, mechanical and thermal. And no less important than all of the above – it results in conditions for creating additional elements. It results in a chemical reactor. If one can control it, one can be the elemental driving force for creating various compounds, given the source materials of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen atoms, in addition to phosphate, sulfur, iron, and more.

This process looks like the beginning of creating life. That is the reason I proposed calling the condensed gas cluster a “Chion”, from life in Hebrew. The chions, much heavier than water, sink quickly to the bottom of the jar. To create this process, it is enough to prepare air with radioactive nitrogen. One must shake it with some surfactants, and measure the sinking times for very heavy clusters, containing radioactive nitrogen.

The identical speed of sinking for the heavy chions is the single explanation I can think of why gases can penetrate depths of a kilometer and more in the oceans. It can explain the life which developed in unthinkable depths. Near Japan, at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, there is a submersion with a maximal depth of over ten kilometers. The gases have not reached this depth by diffusion from the ocean’s surface. That would have taken giga years. Far too long.

One can see the limits of diffusion in lakes and freshwater pools, lacking salinity and adequately powerful waves. The chance of chions being created there is relatively low. And indeed, in these areas of fresh water, oxygen-free spaces are easily created on the floors. It happens in water bodies used to grow biomass such as fish farms. However, one device for oxygen penetration at the surface level is enough to create chions, mix them in the water, and have them reach the fish in a rather large pond area of hundreds of square meters.

The presence of carbon-14 can also testify to the existence of chions in ocean water, and the nuclear reaction occurring at their surface. The atomic mass of standard carbon is 12. Its nucleus is comprised of six protons and six neutrons. Carbon-14 is a (less stable) isotope of carbon, created in a nuclear reaction. The accepted hypothesis is that carbon-14 was created by cosmic radiation hitting gas molecules in the atmosphere. An alternative theory is that it was created by microbubbles and chions. Organic matter can be dated by determining the concentration of carbon-14 in it. This is because carbon-14 radioactively decays at a stable rate from the moment the plant or animal ceased living. Therefore the current concentration of carbon-14 remaining in the plant or animal is used as a measure for the number of years since it started decaying. The hypothesis at the root of this dating method is that carbon-14 is at approximately a fixed concentration in earth’s atmosphere. Or in other words, the rate of its decaying is equal to the rate of its creation.

It is plausible to presume that over several million years, perhaps hundreds of millions, a chemical reaction occurred in the chions, coincidentally creating hydrocarbons and lipids. In this molecule soup, usually attributed to electrical discharges in the atmosphere, the first bilayer membranal envelopes were created. Of all the shapes with the same volume, the sphere has minimal surface area. Therefore, the sphere’s surface tension energy, or area energy, are minimal. Of all the opportunities it faces, nature “chooses” the one requiring the least amount of energy: equilibrium. It is reasonable that the envelopes created would have a surface area of a sphere, like in a liposome. The chions, consisting of hydrophobic (water hating) gases, searched for refuge from water in the surfactant envelope. The interior of the membrane also constituted a good hiding place. An even better one. The water, delineated by the enveloping spherical membrane, accumulated the recurring resulting chemical reactions. Catalyst enzymes ensured the order of the reactions. This determined the directionality required for creating results that became continually more advanced, more sophisticated. Nucleic acids were created, more complex hydrocarbons and proteins. The living cell developed more and more. The chion is essentially an energy converter. It enables using the nuclear energy in the primordial body. An energy source is necessary for this, like the sun causing thermal oscillations in the membrane. The energy source can thus act in any gaseous composition.

To create life as we know it, a chion is needed. It provides the physical conditions of heat and pressure, necessary for its action as a chemical reactor. Life is created in the presence of the proper enzymes. The mechanisms of molecule composition act in the presence of specific source materials: nitrogen, oxygen and CO₂ from the atmosphere; hydrogen from the water; calcium, iron, phosphate, chlorine and sodium from salts and minerals. The waters wear the stones. So all the dissolvents, worn away by water from the bedrocks in earth’s ancient times, were created by the action of chions. The chions wear the stones. In their micrometric, cavitational action they touched the surface of the rock, exploded and created miniscule craters.

A combination of a chion/ microbubble/ membrane can be found, for example, also in plants. This happens in the chloroplast, in which the photosynthesis is performed by water, CO₂ and sunshine, and in which the oxygen and glucose are created. The temperature sets the amplitude of the membrane’s thermal oscillation. This type of combination is also present in bacteria. This is how wine is synthesized. This is how all biotechnology works. This is how food is processed, helped by the living body’s intestinal bacteria. This combination of chion/ microbubble/ membrane works, of course, also in the mitochondrion and obviously in the ribosome, as well.

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[i] Carpe diem, seize the present in Latin. The aphorism originates from a poem by Horace: “Seize the present; trust tomorrow e’en as little as you may”. The significance is similar to that of Hillel the Elder: “And if not now, when?”.

[ii] Moshe Shamir’s With his own hands – stories of Elik, written about and in memory of his late brother Eliyahu (Elik) Shamir, begins with the words “Elik was born from the sea.”