This work demonstrates that shell structure, periodicity, and bonding-like behaviour emerge naturally within the Emergent Condensate Superfluid Medium (ECSM) framework. Starting from a minimal three-component excitation model, we show that: Discrete charge values arise purely from combinatorial structure, yielding fractional charges without prior quantisation assumptions Energetically favoured configurations occur at integer multiples of a fundamental block size, forming stable shell closures Degeneracy peaks at closure points, indicating enhanced structural stability Periodicity emerges from repeating internal energy structure across excitation blocks Bonding arises dynamically through shared excitation completion rather than imposed interaction laws Two-centre interactions show that only complementary open-shell configurations form stable bonds, while closed-shell configurations remain inert. Extending to three centres reveals a fundamentally non-pairwise cooperative bonding mechanism. The fully open-shell configuration (1,1,1) produces the strongest binding, exceeding the sum of independent pairwise contributions. Higher-order systems do not exhibit unbounded growth in binding strength. Instead, they reorganise into modular combinations of three-centre substructures, revealing a saturation of cooperative binding and defining a natural three-centre coherence scale. These results suggest that key qualitative features of atomic structure and chemical bonding may arise from finite-response medium dynamics, without requiring orbitals, wavefunctions, or fundamental quantum postulates.
Adam Sheldrick (2026) studied this question.