What for us (for our devices) “looks” the same, identical, for atoms “appears” to be something very different.

For example: Two streams of white light.

We compared the intensity of the light in the streams – it is identical.

The spectral composition is identical in both in terms of both wavelengths and spectral energy distribution.

Everything is the same in both streams.

But, here’s the oddity:

When we direct both streams alternately to a certain photocell, which is supposed to show us the occurrence of an electric current due to the photoelectric effect, then one stream creates it, and the other does NOT at ALL!

I would like to emphasize once again that the energy carried by both streams is the same!

So, what’s the difference?

It turns out that the difference is in the radiation sources.

The example, of course, is conditional, unrealistic!

One source is the photosphere of the Sun.

The other is the Crab Nebula.

QUANTUM radiation gets to us from the photosphere of the Sun due to the excitation of helium and hydrogen atoms.

From the Crab Nebula – WAVE radiation from relativistic electrons “swirled” in the powerful magnetic fields of the nebula — Bremsen Strahlung, synchrotron radiation, non-quantum! Therefore, it cannot cause the typical quantum phenomenon of the photoelectric effect, that is, the emission of electrons under the action of the light quanta absorbed by them with the energy necessary to overcome the work of the output!

This introduction is written in order to better understand the further content of the note.

Now I will repeat the description of the experiment I gave in the note devoted to the incorrect physical interpretation of the Biot-Savart law. (See the note titled “On the physically incorrect formulation of the Biot-Savard law.”)

There, in the “Provocation” part, a thought experiment is described: A kind of vacuum tube in which, under the influence of a strong electric field, electrons move rapidly from the cathode to the anode. It is clear that their speeds are different in different parts of the trajectory. At the cathode they are minimal, at the anode they are maximum! But the magnitude of the current is, of course, constant, and the magnetic field strength created by this current is the same everywhere.

So, the electron velocities can differ many times as they move away from the cathode and approach the anode, but the current value is the same, and the magnetic field strength is also constant in any part of the tube.

The explanation for this phenomenon is given in the above note – the current is the same!

But there is no need to take a vacuum tube for such a comparison.

Let’s take two conductors connected in series, made of metals of different resistivity, for example, copper and a NICHROME alloy with a resistivity almost a hundred times higher than copper and used for heating elements with a temperature of 1000-1500 degrees.

In copper at the maximum technically permissible current density of 6 amperes/sq.mm.the electrons drift at a speed of 0.4 mm/sec. This means six coulombs per second passes through the cross section of a copper wire.

And in nichrome? The same coulombs must pass through there in the same second. But, what does high resistivity of metal mean? This means that the concentration of electrons in it is much lower than in copper. The difference between a good metal conductor and a bad one is precisely the high concentration of electrons in a good one. But it doesn’t matter what kind of cross-section, whether equal to copper or less than it, the same number of electrons must pass through per second – 9.6 x 10 to the nineteenth power of electrons. (The electric charge of an electron is 1.6 x 10 to the minus nineteenth degree)

But copper is the second most conductive metal, and nichrome is one of the special alloys with high resistivity, that is, very low conductivity. So there, in nichrome, the concentration of electrons is about a hundred times less, which means they must move at a speed a hundred times higher than in copper! Otherwise, it turns out that the current is DIFFERENT in two conductors connected in series! Where does part of it go???

Thus, we come to a strange, though logically understandable conclusion about the DIFFERENT SPEEDS of electron DRIFT in conductors of different conductivity. The magnetic field in terms of intensity will be the same in nichrome as in copper, but it will be created by DIFFERENT mechanisms.: In copper, due to the slow drift of a LARGE number of electrons, and in nichrome, due to the increased speed, a much SMALLER number of them!

What’s the difference? — The reader will think even with a technical education. The current is the same, so the magnetic field is the same…

For US, THE PEOPLE AND OUR DEVICES, created by US to answer OUR questions!

And for metal ATOMS, this is NOT THE SAME THING at ALL!

Therefore, it is the nichrome wire that heats up to high temperatures, and the copper wire almost does not heat up!

“From the point of view of atoms,” there is a lower concentration of electrons, but moving at a higher speed. It is very significant, and it precisely determines the nature of the change in the configuration of the electronic orbits of atoms. They deform, increasing their size, which manifests itself in the form of heating! Faster-moving charged particles also create a stronger local magnetic field, which turns the electrons so that their magnetic moments begin to interact more actively with the magnetic fields of orbiting electrons, deforming their orbits in the direction of their increase.

We are not talking about any “collisions” of electrons with atoms at all, and the speed of electron drift in the conduction zone (along the outer orbits of metal atoms) is negligible compared to their rotational speeds in these orbits (from 600 to 2000 km/sec!).

And here the most interesting and “insidious” question arises: Can drifting electrons, acting on the orbits of atoms, along the outermost of which they crawl, NOT deform them towards, say, “distortion”, but ON the CONTRARY: These orbits are affected in such a way, more precisely, by the fields created by other electrons, that they “self-align” and become similar to the orbits of an “IDEAL ATOM”, that is, an atom at temperatures very close to Absolute zero, without DISTORTED orbits at all.

It turns out. Yes!

Within certain limits, they can!

If electrons moving rapidly in a bad conductor pass into a good one, they SLOW down their speed to the “generally accepted” speed in a given good conductor. It seems to be a paradox: They lose their kinetic energy, which means they have to heat a good conductor with this excess?

I remind you again: the essence of heating or cooling and the causes of electrical resistance in general is NOT in their kinetic energy, but in the interaction of the magnetic spin moments of drifting electrons with the magnetic fields of orbiting electrons. For any changes in their kinetic energy of drift are NEGLIGIBLE compared to the mentioned orbital velocities! The latter are hundreds of millions to a billion times MORE!

So, in the place of deceleration of fast electrons during their transition to a good conductor, local, specifically changing magnetic fields arise, “CORRECTING” the orbits of atoms towards their “idealization”. The decelerating electrons, with their magnetic moments in the transition zone, “create” some kind of “ideal atoms.” And this, macroscopically, is nothing more than the COOLING OF the CONTACT POINT between good and bad conductors.

That’s a gift from nature, so let’s increase the current and get cryotemperature, almost Absolute zero!

ALAS!!! It won’t work.

The fact is that, moving away from this specific point of contact, our already inhibited electrons begin, AS USUAL, to deform the orbits of atoms again, causing heating.

Up to a certain current limit, the effect of local “transient” COOLING PREVAILS OVER HEATING. But these processes, of course, are competing and they change in different ways:

The cooling effect increases in proportion to the FIRST POWER of the current value, and Joule heat (heating) increases in proportion to the SQUARE of the current value, and this leads to the fact that cooling can no longer compete with the rapidly increasing Joule heating!

When the current flows in the opposite direction, the electrons at the contact site ACCELERATE, moving from a good conductor to a bad one, and WITH THEIR changing magnetic fields, on the contrary, they deform the orbits of atoms in the transition zone – the contact heats up plus Joule heat!

This is just another APPROXIMATION to the explanation of the Peltier effect.

And one more modest moral: We don’t know how to think IN a NON-HUMAN way! And often, in order to understand natural phenomena, it is necessary to jump off the stupid and limited plane of mental anthropocentrism, to start thinking not as self-satisfied descendants of cannibals, but as OTHER living and INANIMATE objects of nature.

Atoms, of course, do not think, but they are functioning systems in a certain way, and we must try to understand the “LOGIC OF THEIR SYSTEMS”!

Faciant meliora potentes.

If I’m wrong, let my seniors correct me.

30 VI 2026

P.S. The thought that just arose at the end of the publication:

Perhaps due to the deceleration of the electrons at the junction of the two conductors, the general intraatomic magnetic field weakens and, according to Lenz’s rule, this causes some kind of atomic-orbital rearrangement in order to COMPENSATE for the decreasing magnetic field. Atoms in a decreasing field “rebuild” their orbits in a more energy-efficient way (thereby bringing themselves closer to the state of the “ideal atom”), that is, they lose energy and cool down!

The idea is strange and, perhaps, ridiculous …

Or maybe it’s ridiculous, but not really..