Chemist Debunks Pseudoscience About Element 115

[00:00:00]And that's because the claims are barely science to begin with because this isn't what's happening. You absolute buffoon.

[00:00:05]That is not at all what electrons do.

[00:00:08]What the does magnetically self-aware mean? Yes, I am very much wondering that. But I know you're not going to say anything that actually explains how that would work because from what I've already seen, you don't know what it is you're talking about.

[00:00:25]Hello and welcome to the Chemist's Codeex. My name is Peter and I like to tell stories about whatever catches my interest because I believe those stories can teach us more about ourselves.

[00:00:34]Although today we're taking a look at a specific video I came across recently.

[00:00:37]This video is called Bob Lazar. This is the truth about element 115 from the channel Jesse Michael's Clips. After I first watched this video, I knew I had to make some sort of response to it because it is filled with a bunch of meaningless pseudoscientific nonsense that is meant to sound intelligent and profound to people who don't have the scientific background to actually know that what Jesse Michaels here is saying is complete hogwash. And I also decided to see what sort of information I could find on Jesse Michaels. And what I found isn't actually that surprising. So before I get into the scientific mess, that's the actual video I want to talk about, allow me to tell you about what I found regarding Jesse Michaels. So, the channel this video is actually posted to actually appears to be a second channel for Jesse. His main channel is simply Jesse Michaels, where it seems the flagship show is called American Alchemy, which is an interesting name for the show considering most of the episodes seem to be about aliens and UFOs. Now, while Jesse masquerades as someone who understands the science of what he's talking about, he's not a scientist in the slightest. He has a bachelor's in history and is more so an investor than anything else. And what sort of investing does he do, you might ask? Well, it appears that he manages some investment portfolios for Teal Capital. Yes, as in Peter Teal, the right-wing tech guy who seems to represent everything wrong with capitalism and the current state of America. Now, why do I bring this up?

[00:01:52]Because I want to draw attention to the sinister undertones that are present in Jesse Michael's video that I'm going to be debunking. He might frame these talking points as simply asking questions, but what this type of content actually does is fment distrust in actual science and the institutions that exist to forward scientific progress.

[00:02:09]So, now that we have some background on who exactly is making this video, let's actually take a look at said video. But one more thing I want to mention first is that this video appears to be one of a larger series or set of videos. I haven't gone and watched any of those other videos because I don't want to subject myself to more of this content than I need to. But the video kind of starts in the middle of a narrative. I just wanted to make that clear before we dive in. You might be starting to notice a through line starting to emerge in this conversation, and it keeps leading back to the same place. To put it bluntly, Bob's work at S4 looks a whole lot like all of the documented knowledge we have on anti-gravity experiments done in the last 100 years.

[00:02:50]>> So, this video is about Bob Lazar and his claims of the government working on anti-gravity technology. Specifically, this video is about how element 115 might have the right properties to serve as the fuel or the hole or some other purpose for alien spacecraft. I'm not really sure. The video just kind of dances around it and more so talks about bismouth than element 115. But let's talk about Bob Lazar and his claims since those seem to be rather important to this video's evidence. First, who is Bob Lazar? Well, he is a self-proclaimed physicist who says he has gotten degrees from MIT in Caltech and has worked for the US government on reverse engineering the technology of a literal flying saucer at Area 51. But what's crucial is that Lazar has never provided any evidence for these claims. There are no records of him ever attending the schools he says he went to. And from what I was able to find, the only science course he's ever taken was a high school chemistry class. Now, Lazar claims to have worked at a location within Area 51 called S4. This location does not and has never existed in the capacity that Lazar described. And I would also like to point out that Lazar has been disavowed by both skeptics and other ufologists.

[00:03:54]>> Now again, these claims don't lie in the realm of conventional proven science.

[00:03:59]>> I want you to keep this in mind as we make our way through this video. Jesse himself says these claims don't exist within the realm of proven science. And that's because the claims are barely science to begin with. They exist as a complete misunderstanding of chemistry and physics.

[00:04:13]Bismouth. There's a reason why Bob Lazar kept hearing about it at S4. Here's why bismouth matters. We'll break down the science as clearly as we can. It starts with something called a K factor. A K factor or dialectric constant is simply a material's ability to store and discharge electric fields.

[00:04:34]>> So, a couple things to correct here.

[00:04:36]First, pure bismouth is not a dialectric. Many bismouth compounds are good dialectrics, but pure bismouth is not. This is something that's going to crop up later on. Jesse seems to have a misunderstanding of chemical properties, seemingly thinking that a compound with a specific element as part of it will have the same properties as the pure element. Secondly, Jesse doesn't know what a dialectric is. And this is where I want to remind you that he has a degree in history, not any sort of science because the term dialectric constant is kind of outdated due to the ambiguity over what it actually refers to. Nowadays, we use the term relative permitivity. I'm also not really sure where K factor comes from. My best guess is that he misread the Greek letter kappa as K since kappa is used to represent this value. And one more thing I want to harp on is Jesse saying that dialectrics store and discharge electric fields because this isn't what's happening. You can't store an electric field. What dialectrics do is store the energy from an electric field and then are able to release it later on.

[00:05:34]Bismouth and element 115 mccovium share the same number of veence electrons.

[00:05:41]Veence electrons are the electrons in the outermost shell of an atom. The ones that determine how an element bonds, reacts, and behaves chemically. Bismouth has five. Muscovium or element 115 has five.

[00:05:55]>> Now this is all technically correct, but it's not some revelatory insight. This is just how the periodic table is organized. It's the periodic law. the idea that chemical properties of elements repeat. Elements within the same column of the periodic table are going to have the same number of veence electrons and thus similar chemical properties. However, what Jesse is getting at here is that because of this, bismouth and moscovium should have similar chemical properties. What he's failing to understand is that the periodic law breaks down as you get into the superheavy elements like Moscow.

[00:06:25]They sit in the same column of the periodic table, group 15, which means they have essentially the same chemical personality. See, this shows a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of how the periodic table actually functions.

[00:06:37]Because it's true that one of the first things you learn about the periodic table is that elements in the same column will have similar chemical properties. But what is often forgotten is when that stops being true, which is down towards the bottom of the periodic table. And I'm not necessarily faulting Jesse for not knowing this. Those superheavy elements aren't very common in everyday lives or even most chemistry. We tend to work with the lighter elements where the periodic law holds true. What I'm criticizing Jesse for is not taking the time to actually check to see if bismouth and Moscow have the same properties because that would reveal things like Moscow's chemical properties being largely theoretical or the notion that superheavy elements might have different chemical properties than the rest of their group. Lazar described element 115 as the fuel source for the craft's propulsion system. Mind you, this was in 1989 before element 115 had ever been synthesized or named. When it finally was synthesized in 2003, it turned out to be an a group 15 element, the same chemical family as bismouth.

[00:07:37]So, it doesn't really matter that Lazar said element 115 was the fuel source for this flying saucer because it didn't just happen by coincidence that 115 was a group 15 element. It was always going to be below bismouth. In 1989, we had synthesized up to around element 109.

[00:07:51]So, all someone would have to do is find a periodic table and then count until they reached element 115. This wasn't some revolutionary concept that no one else could have done. In fact, the basis for the theory of superheavy elements like Muscovium was done in 1969, well before Lazar ever made his claim.

[00:08:06]>> That's either the most chemically literate lucky guess in history. Or it isn't a guess at all.

[00:08:12]>> It wasn't a goddamn ingenious revelation. It was pattern recognition.

[00:08:16]Mendelv was doing that same in the 1870s, you absolute buffoon. Sorry, it's just frustrating that he's acting like Lazar predicted the existence of element 115 when it's something a fourth grader would likely be able to do. Or how about this? Element 147 would be below Muscovium. So, I must be some sort of genius, right? No. All I did was count along what would be the next row of the periodic table. Expose bismouth to a magnetic field and instead of being attracted the way iron pushes towards a magnet, it pushes away. This property is called diamagnetism. And bismouth has more of it than any other stable element on Earth. Not slightly more, dramatically, anomalously, inexplicably more.

[00:08:57]>> Okay, first off, while things can be more or less diamagnetic, I wouldn't say bismouth has more diamagnetism. Second, diamagnetism isn't really about being repelled by a magnet. That's more of an effect. Diiamagnetism is a property a material can have if it has no unpaired electrons in its outermost orbitals. And that's why bismouth is repelled by a magnet because the veence electrons of bismouth would be unpaired, but they're in an orbital that's so far away from the nucleus that they have to move at a good percentage of the speed of light to maintain their energy. This causes the electrons to increase in mass because of relativistic effects. And because of that increase in mass, the electrons are pulled closer to the nucleus. Thus, the veence electrons are pulled behind the inner orbitals which shield them from the effects of a magnetic field. And as a result, bismouth's outer orbitals contain no unpaired electrons and will repel a magnet. Also, this sort of effect is why the periodic law breaks down when dealing with super heavy elements. The reason lives inside the atom itself. Every electron does two things simultaneously. It orbits the nucleus like a planet around a star and it spins on its own axis like a tiny top. That is not at all what electrons do. While we call the energy shells electrons sit in orbitals, they are not like the orbits of a planet. Electrons exist in a cloud of probability. The typical orbitals we use are just where they are most likely to be found at any given moment in time. And this goes to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

[00:10:19]Essentially, when dealing with particles like electrons, you can know either how fast the particle is moving or you can know where it is. But you can never know both to perfect accuracy. The more you know of one, the less you know of the other. So, we can only really say there is a 99% chance an electron is in this given area, but we can never pinpoint exactly where. Secondly, electrons do not spin like tiny little tops.

[00:10:40]Electrons do have a property we call spin, but it is something inherent to the electron and doesn't necessarily mean it's spinning about an axis. Again, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of chemistry and physics. And this sort of thing is a common mistake that people make, but it's also something that any amount of research into what you're talking about would correct. And in super heavy elements, something extraordinary happens. The electrons in the outer shell move so fast that they enter what physicists call the relativistic regime. They're traveling at a meaningful fraction of the speed of light.

[00:11:12]>> I was talking about this before, and this is more or less true, although I'm not sure why he put a geer counter effect over a fastmoving electron.

[00:11:18]>> And when something moves that fast, the universe starts playing by different rules. At those speeds, Einstein's physics takes over from Newton's. One consequence is that these screaming, hurling outer electrons, generate a powerful magnetic field just from their own motion.

[00:11:36]>> So, it's not so much the speed of the electrons that makes things stop obeying Newton's physics. Any electron, even ones moving at non-relativistic speeds, will follow quantum mechanics rather than Newton's classical mechanics. It's more about the size of what we're looking at. Because classical mechanics is at the scale where gravity is going to have a meaningful effect on how things behave, but at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles, gravity isn't going to mean jack. Electromagnetism and the nuclear forces are going to dominate. Also, it's not really the speeds of electrons that cause a magnetic field. Any charged particle that moves is going to create a magnetic field. That's how electromagnets work after all. What the speed affects is the strength of that magnetic field.

[00:12:14]>> And that magnetic field slams into their own spin. This is a process called spin orbit coupling. And in bismouth, it's ferociously strong. So strong that bismouth's electrons become in a sense magnetically self-aware.

[00:12:29]>> Okay, before I get into spin orbit coupling, what the does magnetically self-aware mean? Don't worry, I can actually answer that because it doesn't mean anything. Electrons are tiny pieces of matter. They do not have brains. They have no capacity to understand what they are. They cannot be self-aware. This is yet again nonsensical jargon that is meant to sound smart to people who don't have the background to actually know that what you're saying is But anyway, spin orbit coupling is an actual phenomenon, but it's not like it's unique to bismouth or anything. Every atom will experience spin orbit coupling. And while bismouth does exhibit pretty strong spin orbit coupling, that is again not really special. The strength of spin orbit coupling will depend on the effective nuclear charge of an atom. Arger atoms have a stronger charge. So lead or pelonium elements right next to bismouth will also exhibit strong spin orbit coupling. What spin orbit coupling is is an interaction between an electron's orbital angular momentum and its spin angular momentum. It is an interaction between the two magnetic fields. But all it really does is cause a splitting of energy levels. This is what gives rise to the subshells of an electron orbital generating an opposing field in response to anything applied to them from the outside. So that's why Bismouth has anomalous diamagnetism. The electrons aren't just passive, they're pushing back.

[00:13:43]>> Again, this isn't what's happening.

[00:13:45]Bismouth's anomalous diamagnetism, as you put it, is a result of the unpaired veence electrons being pulled closer to the nucleus due to relativistic effects and thus are shielded by the inner orbitals that now surround them. Element 115 with the same five outer electrons as bismouth would have dramatically stronger relativistic effects and it would theoretically be an even more powerful topological dopin best hosted physicists predict and calcccogenide crystal structures which happen to be the exact crystal family that bismouth-based topological insulators already prefer. So again, because you seem to have done no actual research for any of this, Moscow does not necessarily have the same properties as bismouth because of those relativistic effects.

[00:14:29]Those effects will change the way the element bonds and in what geometries.

[00:14:32]The periodic law breaks down when dealing with elements that big.

[00:14:36]>> Okay, I know what you're thinking. How do you get from this exotic chemistry jargon to UFO propulsion? Yes, I am very much wondering that. But I know you're not going to say anything that actually explains how that would work because from what I've already seen, you don't know what it is you're talking about.

[00:14:52]You're a guy with a history degree just throwing around terms that you think make you sound smart, but all you're actually doing is making yourself sound like an idiot to anyone who has even a single iota of an understanding regarding any of these topics you've brought up. You're either misunderstanding the concept, which is okay. you can learn why what you're saying is incorrect. Or you're deliberately misrepresenting how any of these things actually work because it further serves yourself, which is absolutely not okay and disgusting.

[00:15:18]>> Well, here's where the chemistry ends in something bigger begins. In Einstein's general relativity, energy and momentum in all forms, including the energy stored in fast spinning relativistic electrons, technically curves spaceime.

[00:15:35]Every electron is in the most literal physical sense warping the fabric of the universe around it.

[00:15:41]>> So you stated this as if it's some special thing, but all matter, which does include every electron, so good job there, will warp spaceime. That's just what matter does. This isn't some amazing property of any one element or compound. It's just how the universe works. Once again, Jesse, you're using terms you don't really understand in order to make it seem like you're smarter than you are. But a small group of serious physicists began asking dangerous questions in the 1990s.

[00:16:07]>> So this is where Jesse's rhetoric becomes somewhat dangerous. Did you catch how he said serious physicists were asking dangerous questions? What this type of language is doing is signaling to his audience that there's some sort of conspiracy to hide real science from the public. What this does is slowly convince people that actual scientists are hiding the truth from them and thus shouldn't be trusted and the institutions that are meant to forward the research of the scientists are part of the problem. And that's why this kind of language and really this type of video is more sinister than it might first appear. It's subtle, but it's meant to get you to question what you believe to be true. It's meant to get you to stop trusting the government and start trusting the conspiracy.

[00:16:43]>> And then there's the hull of the craft.

[00:16:46]Lazar said that he believed the craft's whole material was an electric.

[00:16:50]Basically, a material that permanently stores an electric field, the electrical equivalent of a permanent magnet.

[00:16:56]>> Now, I'm not going to claim I'm an expert on electrics here, but from what I've been able to find, an electric does not store an electric field. This is the second time in this video that Jesse has mentioned storing an electric field.

[00:17:07]It's starting to make me think that Jesse doesn't actually know what an electric field is, and I'm willing to bet I'm right on that. What an electric does is produce an external electric field like how a magnet produces a magnetic field. So Jesse was kind of right. An electric is the electric equivalent to a permanent magnet. It's just that the way he described what an electric is is incorrect.

[00:17:28]>> Again, bismouth titanate is one of the finest electric materials known in high temperature sensor applications precisely because of its stability.

[00:17:38]>> What do you mean again? This is the first time you've mentioned bismouth titanate in this entire video. All this talk about bismouth being this amazing and remarkable material has been implied to be about pure bismouth metal. But bismouth titanate is going to have completely different chemical and physical properties than pure bismouth.

[00:17:53]So it seems to me that everything you've been talking about before is entirely irrelevant. But I want to call back to what I said way back at the beginning of this video about Jesse not understanding that a pure element and chemical compounds made with that element are going to have different properties because this is where that's really relevant. He seems to be implying that bismouth titanate will behave in all the same ways as pure bismouth just because bismouth is in the compound. And that's going to become even more apparent in just a second. Now, if you were designing a hole material for a craft that needed to interact with gravity wave emitters, maintain a permanent electric field and respond to both electric and magnetic stimuli simultaneously. The material that checks every single box is bismouth fite.

[00:18:36]That's right. Again, with the bismouth.

[00:18:38]See, he completely changed compounds again. Why bring up bismouth titanate if bismouth fite is this perfect material?

[00:18:44]And also, did you catch how he said again with the bismouth? It's implying that simply by putting bismouth in something, it will be a perfect material for anti-gravity purposes. So, I guess that makes Pepto-Bismol some sort of levitation potion. I think this does actually show that Jesse doesn't know that an element will have different properties than compounds made with that element, which is like the most basic chemistry fact ever. How many times have you heard about sodium and chlorine being deadly in their elemental forms, but then combining them gives us table salt?

[00:19:12]>> And a theoretical stable version of element 115 might do all of those things on steroids.

[00:19:18]>> Now, this is the last bit of the video that I really want to respond to directly because I find it highly unlikely that a stable isotope of Moscow is even possible. Of the isotopes we have discovered, the longest lived is Moscow 290 with a half-life of 650 milliseconds. Now, while it is possible we could increase the stability by adding more neutrons, it would likely only be a small increase to the half-life because at a certain point adding too many neutrons in an attempt to chase the island of stability will cause the nucleus to become more unstable and it will tear itself apart.

[00:19:48]So, that's more or less the video.

[00:19:50]Although, there is a plug for some supplements right at the end. That's how I know Jesse here is a pseudoscientific grifter because I've only ever seen grifters and conspiracy theorists shill supplements. What the hell is a neurohacker collective? And that's really all this video comes down to. I don't know if Jesse Michaels believes any of what he's saying, but that doesn't really matter because the type of rhetoric he's spreading with his videos and the researchers he talks to.

[00:20:13]And I want to emphasize that I'm putting researchers in heavy quotation marks is dangerous. Jesse Michaels is a tech bro with a history degree masquerading as someone who understands science with other people who pretend they know what they're talking about. And his association with Peter Teal really makes me question the motives behind the content he creates. And the thing is, the level of science that Jesse is trying to talk about makes it easy for people to be duped by his rhetoric.

[00:20:36]There are plenty of pseudocientists trying to make claims about evolution and archaeology, but they're really easy to see through. Evolution and archaeology are disciplines that are easier for the lay person to understand.

[00:20:46]But when dealing with chemistry and physics, it's harder for an average person to identify the falsehood someone like Jesse Michaels might be spreading.

[00:20:54]And that's because he employs terms that he himself doesn't fully understand. So, his audience sure as hell won't understand them. in an attempt to look and sound smarter than he is. Because when a non-scientist hears someone talking about quantum mechanics, they are probably picturing something like this in their minds. But that's not quantum mechanics. This is it's a lot of math and really complicated math at that. It's not flashy and cool. You can't just stick quantum in front of other terms to make them sound more scientific. And that's why people are so easily tricked when grifters and conspiracy theorists talk about quantum mechanics. It's not something that is commonly taught outside of the upper level physical sciences. So, at the end of all this, I believe Jesse Michaels to be a pseudoscientific grifter who almost certainly has questionable motives behind his content. He doesn't understand any of what he's talking about in the slightest because even a single Google search would be able to debunk his talking points. But because he uses the terms like spin orbit coupling or general relativity, he's able to come across like he knows what he's saying. And that's why I decided to make this response to his video. I'm not saying I'm an expert in the topics he tries to cover, but I'm also readily willing to admit that. And as for those of you watching this video, the lesson I want you to take from this video is thus. If you see someone online talking about quantum mechanics or frequencies or anything that seems like it's highle physics, don't trust them just because they spout their talking points with confidence. Take the time, search some of the terminology they're using, and do your best to make sense of what those terms might actually mean. because it's very easy to trick people into thinking you're smarter than you are by misusing those terms. Thanks for watching. I've been on the lookout for some sort of video I can debunk for a while, but most of the pseudocience videos out there tend to be about evolution or archaeology, and there's much better people suited to debunk those points than I am. So, when I came across this video, I was thrilled because I immediately knew it was some But, let me know what you think about all this. Did you enjoy my video? If I get a positive enough response, I might venture forth and make some more responses to some of Jesse's videos. Let me know in the comments if that's something you want or if there's a specific video you would want me to respond to. And if you want more videos about actual science and the ways it influences our lives, make sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss my future