LAUGHLIN

Thanks for answering me. I will look at the essay from Mother Teresa sometime.........I am interested in knowing more about her and I am glad you pointed this out to me. Laughlin's book is exciting to read........but his statements are true only if you happen to be successful in life..........he speaks to the top 10% or the top 1% effectively.............but for the bottom 10% or the bottom 1% he has no relevant wisdom...........Perhaps knowing the little I do about Mother Teresa........perhaps she has wisdom for the lower 50% and the lower 10% that have very great and sometimes undeserved challenges in life.........She brings a message to the meek and the poor in spirit etc. that there is more to this Universe than the certainty of death.........where rationalism breaks down.........except in the sense of the circularity of the Universe and the cyclicity of things.......there is an album by Van Morrison called Astral Weeks that speaks to this circular situation..........I hope it is all true and I hope I get recycled according to a law of detailed balancing of what I have done good and what I have done bad.....

CRYSTALLIZATION

Crystallization occurs by thermodynamic means and alternatively by kinetic means. Crystallization can occur rationally by nucleation and growth according to a template model, as in the GE process for the growth of single crystal diamond from graphite powder, or crystals can grow seemingly irrationally.........for example the growth of a single crystal of silicon nitride or germanium nitride, from the elements, in the seemingly impossible template of a phenacite pattern. Crystalline thin films of semiconductors and diamond can be grown by chemical vapor deposition or by epitaxial means. The microscopic details of crystal growth are well understood only with respect to molecular crystals and crystals grown on a strict template model. As powdered graphite assembles in to macroscopic single crystal diamond...........so one would suspect that nanotube cylinders might assemble in to single crystal hexagonites by an analogous process. Though such a scenario is speculative at the moment and would depend upon a cooperative nucleation and templating process of the nanotubes. Twinning of crystals occurs at times whereupon 2 separate but related polymorphs are joined into a single twinned crystal along a complementary crystallographic cell face. And it may be true that cubic diamond is joined to tetragonal glitter across the basal plane of each component unit cell........Although such a scenario is speculative at best and would depend upon a thorough microscopical examination for the model to ultimately be proved right or wrong.