newts

I admit I am no expert, and the theory may have changed since I last looked; but I think quarks only have colour and flavour, but no smell. So a quark could perhaps be strawberry in colour, or be strawberry flavoured, but not smell of strawberries? Lambda particle composed of UDS quarks, mass 1116 MeV; Sigma 1193 MeV, same 3 quarks. Charmed lambda UDC quarks, mass 2286 MeV; charmed sigma 2453 MeV, same 3 quarks.

Certainly one must respect the scientists that landed a rocket on the moon, and those that built and operate the LHC; but that does not mean theoretical physicists always get things right. Indeed the evidence suggests that when they create theories by thought, rather than directly from evidence, they mostly get it wrong. Quark theory's predictions are so vague that the same 3 quarks are believed to make up particles of very different masses; whilst the Higgs field makes no predictions about gravity, or of particle masses, other than suggesting the Higgs boson ought to have a mass of around 40-400 GeV. I do not claim to be cleverer than everybody else, rather to have had one idea that makes better sense, and fits the evidence better than quarks.

On Cern's Higgs-finder video, the bloke said that the mass of the top quark turned out to be much greater than predicted. Is that consistent with the fact that many quark-believers claim, that predicting the mass of the top quark, is one of quark theory's finest achievements?

I cannot respond to all your points, particularly when there are others posting. You wanted to argue over whether Polkinghorne was well-known, which is something anybody can decide by googling. I videod the clip on BBC2 over a decade ago, so I cannot share it. You could search Youtube. We can look up at the night sky and see stars that died millions of years ago. That may be amazing, but it clearly has a logical explanation. However that is very different from believing that the fish you ate for dinner is in some sense still alive. Science should be about trying to make sense of the universe, relativity seems to about trying to make it appear as mystical as possible. I was under the impression that pop-sci relativity was much the same as the official version. However all I have really bothered with, is trying to derive the equations of relativity based on aether theory, which I have managed with special but not general. I read that Einstein agreed with his disciples about the possibility of time travel, and certainly Feynman talked about the equivalence of an electron going forward in time and a positron going backwards in time. Hawking and Kaku have made a fortune writing about the subject, so either they believe or they pretend to in order to fleece the gullible. I cannot tell what genuine physicists believe, but I have never heard any of them condemn the fantasists for besmirching the name of physics by using it to flog third-rate sci-fi. So either these genuine physicists do believe, or they think that they have a religious duty not to criticise fellow physics-believers. Brian the Cool Fox goes to great lengths to condemn astrology as nonsense, but turns a blind eye to time travel. How else can you explain that, other than by using the religious instinct? Truly religious people are totally convinced that their own belief system is the one true faith, and that all other belief systems are complete nonsense tantamount to believing in fairies; a classic example being the religious extremist Dawkins. If somebody is trying to justify a traditional religion by comparing it to science, then clearly they actually have more respect for science than for their traditional religion. That suggests an open-minded approach to belief. A truly religious person would be very upset to have their own belief system compared to another. Historically: crystal spheres, epicycles, and phlogiston. Currently: dark matter, quarks, gluons, Higgs, and the constancy of the speed of light relative to the observer.

Instincts are just the interactions between electric charges and heat photons in the brain. That is physical reality. Trying to explain human behaviour on that basis is not possible, but we can account for religious behaviour using the theory of evolution. Science is a way of modelling the universe, and when those models can be properly tested they are normally extremely good. In other cases such as particle physics and cosmology, the models are little more than improbable guesses; but physics-believers being religious will not accept this, and instead put the greatest effort into trying to convince people to believe in their most unfalsifiable rubbish like the Higgs and dark matter. Some Christians might say they believe that Jesus walked on water, whilst some physicists might say they believe in time travel. But hardly any Christians would claim to be able to walk on water, or to have seen anybody walk on water. Likewise few physicists would claim to be a time traveller or to have met one. Your determination to believe that science-believers are completely different to infidels, is the classic religious behaviour of thinking that your own belief system is the one true faith. But at least you appear to have compiled your own phrase rather than repeating what you read elsewhere. The gist of the clip was that the woman found comforting the idea that her dear departed somehow still existed; and Polkinghorne found this agreeable, rather than using it to show how prone people are to believe whatever nonsense makes them happy. The rest of your statement seems to be based on the general doctrine of relativity, that if you make things sufficiently incomprehensible then nobody can argue. Like calculating the quantity of unobservable dark matter, necessary to believe that current models of gravity are valid on a galactic level; and then deciding to believe these quantities exist? I think Polkinghorne has a greater tendency than many to believe in the supernatural, which is apparent in both his Christian and physics views. Perhaps if you were a Christian and not a physics-believer, you might take the opposite view about which of his opinions were more insightful. Perhaps you could say what kind of evidence you would find acceptable?

Doubtless that is what you have been taught to believe, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Years ago the BBC showed a clip in which a well-known physicist Rev. Polkinghorne recounted how Einstein had consoled a bereaved mother by telling her that since all times co-exist in relativity, that somehow he son was still alive somewhere in spacetime. Polkinghorne seemed to think it was a valid argument; which suggests he had given up on the idea of heaven because everybody else had, but had no qualms about the more mystical aspects of relativity, because everybody around him appeared to accept them. It is human instinct to want to conform, but also where possible to believe that the universe is mysterious and mystical; and these religious instincts are evident in physics if you choose to look for them.

It is not just on here that my humour fails, I think it must be the way I tell them. In my own mind I am the greatest comedian since Einstein, but somehow my jokes always seem to fall flat. One thing physics-believers do seem to find amusing, is a crackpot index; so to court popularity I have come up with my own hilarious version: http://squishtheory....crackpot-index/ Thanks to everybody who helped me compile it, and any more suggestions would be very welcome. I have realised that there is some evidence to suggest that not all physics-believers are as highly religious as I had originally thought: the fact that I have repeatedly mocked some of their most prized imaginary beings on this forum, without ever being excommunicated.

That is most true. A physics-believer's definition of pseudo-science has to be crafted such that it allows nonsense like time-travel to slip through the net, yet at the same time catches any theory that a crackpot might come up with. The point about pitching to the media, may have anecdotal support; but is based around the catch 22 situation whereby a physics-believer will reject any alternative theory that is not published in a peer-reviewed journal, knowing full well that peer-reviewed journals do not publish alternative theories. The argument against a lone genius working in isolation, is not just disproved by the evidence, it actually does not make sense. Kepler came up with his elliptical orbits entirely alone, whilst Galileo et al remained faithful to the concept of perfect circles. It is hard to imagine how more than one brain could jointly come up with the basic concept of elliptical orbits. The problem physics-believers would have with a definition such as yours, is that some of their most prized possessions, from dark matter to Higgses, do not make any definitive falsifiable predictions. So they tend to use crackpot-hunting as a diversionary tactic, to try to keep people off the scent of mainstream pseudo-science.

It was never an insult, it was a joke. The comment was directly below your post. Why do science-believers take things so seriously?

I have some doubts about the newer types of neutrino; but in neutron decay, an electron can be emitted with a continuous range of energies, meaning that 0-1.5 electron masses of energy must be somehow dispersed. If it was dispersed by a photon, that would have been detected; so unless like Bohr you think the energy might have magically disappeared, surely the energy must have been converted into some kind of hard-to-detect photon-like wave. In my theory this wave cannot have any rest mass, which is also consistent with the mainstream view. Arguments about quarks would be better on the other thread; but the point I was making is that people should seek to challenge existing ideas, partly because some of them are bound to be wrong, and partly because it is only when I set out to disprove a correct theory, that I fully understand what is right about it. So you are arguing that I have spent hours analysing particle masses merely to wind you up? And have you checked the experimental evidence supporting my theory? http://squishtheory....research-paper/ Please do not be so hard on Bignose, he is doing his best. Not I. It is the atheist's suit that Christians are gullible fools, and that science-believers are intellectually superior beings that think for themselves. My contention is that saying that people who follow a different belief system are inferior, is the very essence of religious behaviour; it is however a natural instinct, which only Christianity has sought to counteract. I see science and Christianity as the most civilising of influences; however, regrettably, the integrity of both have been eroded by atheistic and secular beliefs. I think that is very much how people like Newton saw things. Historically, and even with Einstein, the word 'God' has tended to be seen as almost synonymous with the universe. It is only really the ignorant atheists, who keep asserting that God is some kind of fairy in the sky. Also I prefer not to think of God as separate from the universe, because that seems to make things unnecessarily complicated. Rather I think of the universe as an everlasting organism that collapses in a big squish, then expands back out in a big bang, in a continually repeating cycle for all eternity. That model still contains paradoxes, but it is certainly better than the idea of the universe suddenly exploding out of nothing, or Hawking's idea that it was created by gravity.

I want to retract the bit that upset Greg H, about inciting hatred against unbelievers, as it is not generally true. I was referring to things like the way that some atheists respond to Dawkins' call to ridicule infidel Christians. Obviously you do not consider the things you believe in to just be religions. I do not think that anybody who genuinely believes would consider their faith to be just a religious belief. Surely the whole point is that at some level they should genuinely think it is true. For instance some people are defending time travel as though they really think it might some day be possible. The evidence that I do not believe in physics religiously, is that I accept the existence of electrons, positrons, photons, neutrinos, mesons, baryons, and a form of aether; but reject imaginary beings like quarks, gluons and Higgs bosons. If you do not believe religiously in science, atheism or secularism, you should be able to say what parts you disagree with, in order to show that you have formed your own opinions rather than blindly accepting everything you have been taught. The Archbishop of Canterbury doubts the nativity, which suggests he does not really believe in Christianity religiously; however he does appear to believe in secularism religiously, as he only ever criticises government policy for not being extreme enough.

You are seeking to argue over the definition of the word 'religion'. My assertion is that all human belief systems contain things that are untrue. Obviously most people would disagree, and say that applies to all belief systems apart from their own. I really need to stick to trying to show that the concept of time travel has no basis in fact, and that it is similar in nature to other religious myths. My mistake was to make too many assertions, it was an experiment I will try not to repeat. It was not intended as an ad hominem attack, only to signify that he was deluded about time travel. Those defending time travel, have so far failed to say what they mean by it, or suggest any way in which it would be possible to tell if it had occurred. Some have rejected H G Wells time travel, but have refused to specify what any other type of time travel might entail. That is my definition of religious acceptance. In many ways we have no option other than to trust experts, however unless some people are prepared to consider objections to current theory, it is difficult for physics to progress. A really sound theory, like the theory of atoms, can be a long time in the making, but once accepted will largely escape criticism. The story goes, that Dirac saw that there was another solution to his equation for the electron. However he could just as easily have noted that since positive charges exist, there might be a positive charge with the same mass as an electron. It was less a mathematical deduction, more an example of ingenuity. One argument against Jesus turning water into wine, is that it would necessarily involve nuclear reactions to produce new elements such as carbon. Similarly one might argue that there are not enough atoms in a frog to create a prince. One argument against time travel is that we cannot go back to yesterday, because yesterday no longer exists, since all the atoms in the universe have moved in the last 24 hours. So too we cannot get to tomorrow until the earth has rotated about its axis. Those are all equally logical arguments, but people who have been taught to believe in the Bible, or the literal truth of Einstein's relativity, probably would not agree; and might even find the comparison offensive. You seem to define logical fallacy, and appealing to ridicule, as comparing things you do believe in, to things you do not believe in. I actually find all 3 examples similarly absurd; but humans are religious creatures, so it is unlikely anybody will agree.

I am not sure about the definition of ad hominem, but I did take most christian care to avoid insulting Swansont. That fact that people get upset about a comment directed at somebody not on this forum, merely because he is a physicist, is religious behaviour. I am sure Carroll is a good mathematician, but that is no guard against gullibility which afflicts us all. I certainly did not intend to imply that Carroll's mental faculties are down amidst the likes of Cameron or Obama. You are right that scientific theories need to start with verbal logic, it is just that maths is a tool with which to fully explore the consequences of such logic. The problem arises when people try to reverse this process and use maths to draw unfounded inferences about the nature of the universe. The fact that you are using the maths of relativity to infer the possibility of time travel, seems to contradict your earlier point about the limitations of maths. I cannot respond to everyone, but many people have made excellent points, which have refined my thinking; being irreligious myself, I can change my mind at any point without hurting my brain. It was an error by me to broaden the debate so much, but the fact that any different opinion is met with immediate hostility, is evidence of the religious nature of humans. If you are arguing that the nearest real event to time travel, is the speeding up of GPS clocks, then we can agree on that. If the majority of physicists hold this view, then surely they should condemn the wormhole fantasists, not offer them tacit support. I cannot positively prove that time travel is impossible, any more than Dawkins can positively prove that it is impossible for a frog to turn into a prince. Really the onus is on anybody who thinks there is some validity in the idea, to suggest some kind of experiment which could theoretically show that time travel had taken place. Clearly it would be impossible for me to devise an experiment to directly refute time travel.

Everybody behaves religiously, but it is not too much of a problem if people are honest and acknowledge it; as the expression goes "the fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool". The worst of religions are science, secularism and atheism; because their believers seem so convinced that these things are part of the one true faith, that they are completely unable to accept them as religions at all. Therefore they feel a religious duty to incite hatred against unbelievers; and in the case of the secular religious extremists in western governments, a religious duty to jail for blasphemy, people who criticise those policies which are destroying the world and turning humans back into savages. Scepticism is not overtly a religion; but people who claim to be sceptics certainly behave religiously, because they always choose to be sceptical about nonsense like astrology and homeopathy, which are universally rejected by mainstream science, but totally unsceptical about the nonsense accepted by mainstream science. A sceptic seems to be just a form of militant science-believer, who sets out to expose the nonsense of other belief systems, but blindly accepts any nonsense that is incorporated in mainstream science. This thread is about science being a religion, so if any of my posts are not about this, perhaps they should be flagged as being off topic. Mostly I have concentrated on time travel, since it is the most flagrant religious nonsense included in the physics belief system. However probably the strongest proof that physics is a religion; is that if anybody says so, physics-believers get annoyed and demand proof, despite the fact that they know full well that they will ignore any proof offered and just continue to believe what they always have.

You are still arguing both that time travel is not nonsense; and even if it is, it is not believed by most physicists. That is the stance of somebody defending their religion, not somebody who wants to distinguish between right and wrong theories. The fact that clocks run faster on GPS satellites, is experimentally proven, as well as logically deducible without recourse to Einsteinian spacetime. But that is not time travel. If a satellite returned to earth, we would not find that the clock was missing because it had moved a couple of milliseconds into the past or future. Years ago immortality was the stuff of myths. That is no longer so, because atoms are effectively immortal, and since humans are made of atoms, all we need to do is sort out the chemistry. On the other hand time travel is impossible; even an electron moving one pico-second into the past or future is wholly absurd, as there is no time in which to travel. H G Wells' time travel, is the only type of time travel, unless you include everyday occurrences like clocks running at different rates. When Hawking discusses time travel, he tends to start by talking about there being no time travellers from the future around, and then moves on to time dilation. This is wholly bogus, and just exploits people's urge to believe in the supernatural. There is no link between the two ideas, and no grey area in between. It is not me who is failing to be specific, it is the physics fantasists who try to blur the distinction between fact and fantasy, so that they can fleece the general public. There is no absolute proof that it is impossible for a frog to magically turn into a prince, but to a rational mind it is just a fairy story like time travel. In case any science-believers are in doubt as to whether they should wait for proof before dismissing the idea, here is the great profit Dawkins using his knowledge of biology and evolution to confirm that the frog idea that should not be believed. The only reason people take the time travel idea more seriously than the frog, is that they have been taught to. The fact that Sean Carroll believes in time travel, is not proof that it is right, it is proof that Carroll is a fool. The fact that you cite his article, shows that you prefer to rely on the authority of your religious leaders rather than making up your mind based on the experimental evidence.

I doubt you'll find many priests who think that a practical device could be built to turn water into wine, unless it involves feeding the water to a grape-vine; but they would not go round rubbishing the idea, because it is part of their faith. A similar situation seems to exist with physicists. Time travel is an entirely fictional concept, so any physicist who even tacitly acknowledges that it could in principle be possible, is acting religiously; because they are only doing so because they have been taught to, because others do, and because they like to believe that the universe is mysterious and mystical. Are you saying that time travel is not a valid example, because although it is complete nonsense, most physicists do not believe in it? Or are you arguing that although most physicists accept it, there is no proof that it is rubbish? Swansont seems to genuinely accept the mainstream line; that time travel is theoretically possible, but not yet proven. I suspect you more incline to the view that it is impossible, but prefer to publicly agree 100% with Swansont. When I first saw TV shows where professors said that time travel could be possible, I accepted it because they were supposedly experts. It was only when I stated thinking about the universe, that it became apparent the whole thing was nonsense. Accepting what we are told is quick and easy, thinking things out takes longer. Rejecting the Bible is none too difficult, because there are plenty of religious extremists like Dawkins encouraging people to do so. Denying that science is the one true faith, is much harder, because there is no support available.

I found this page http://profmattstras...of-the-neutron/ where (in a response to a comment) a quarkologist has analysed some of the same pairs of particle masses that I did, and read the tealeaves to discern some significance about which of the pair is heavier. So I drew his attention to the positive and neutral vector B mesons which are both quoted as having a mass of 5325.1 MeV, with an uncertainty of 0.5 MeV; and asked him if he could use quark theory to predict whether they really do have exactly the same mass, or to say which is heavier and by how much? He did allow my comment but did not respond, which was a pity as I wanted to ask him whether perhaps quark theory is excellent at predicting particle masses after they have been measured, but useless beforehand; to see if he gave the standard Uncool answer of omega, omega, omega. My Squish Theory does not predict which particle is heavier, but it does predict that the mass difference should be close to .36 MeV, which is fairly specific, as the possible experimental range appears to be 0 to1 MeV.

He does come across as a bit of a cartoon character, and he might appear to be full of s**t, but he is actually flesh and blood like the rest of us. The example I gave was time travel, which is more ridiculous than Jesus turning water into wine. I have never obtained a proper answer from a physics-believer on this subject; they always evade the question, maybe because nobody has taught them the answer? Perhaps they cannot defend it, because they know in their heart of hearts it is nonsense; but they cannot condemn it, because that would be a betrayal of their faith, and an implied criticism of those community leaders who fleece the general public with 'physics' books about such nonsense. It shows the shameful state of modern physics, that a 99.99% mainstream physics-believer like Smolin, can be portrayed as some kind of dissident. Feynman described string theory as nonsense, but Smolin barely even criticises it; indeed his only really gripe seems to be that string theory gets nearly all the funding, when he would rather that more of it went to himself. Rutherford rubbished special relativity, Dirac wanted to revert to the Lorentzian aether, whilst Einstein mocked quantum mechanics. Nowadays nobody seems to criticise even the most absurdly ridiculous parts of modern physics; instead they criticise the critics, or they criticise the beliefs of other groups, which is classic religious behaviour.

Humans have evolved to accept whatever they are taught, and to believe what those around them believe; so any group of humans is always going to behave religiously, unless they are all autistic, in which case they cannot really form a group at all. It is possible to exploit this religious instinct, by teaching people that they have a duty to challenge existing ideas; and that used to be part of the scientific education. Unfortunately it has rather gone out of fashion, as nowadays people are taught that science is an alternative to religion; and that they have a duty to accept that all of current science must be correct, because it is proved by experiment, without being expected to have any understanding of the experiments on which they base their faith. I am no conspiracy theorist; and I do not even think the people who banned Galileo's book, did so because in their conscious minds they felt he was correct. I am fairly sure that they felt he was misleading people with false arguments, which most certainly was the case with his tidal theory. The problem is more that unless people spend their whole lives thinking about the universe, it is impossible to gain any proper understanding. Brian the Cool Fox goes on TV boldly declaring that astrology is rubbish, yet seems quite happy with the concept of time travel. To a rational mind, time travel is impossible fiction, and incompatible with the universe existing; whilst astrology is more a case of a proper scientific idea, taken to ridiculously absurd lengths. But an ordinary human, like the Cool Fox, cannot work that out; all he can do is repeat that astrology is nonsense and that time travel might be possible, because that is what he has been taught to believe. Religion is not just about conforming, it is also about believing in nonsense; and since physics has become a religion, in order to attract followers it has had to fill up with nonsense like time travel, multiple universes and 13 dimensions. The quarks and gluons I am arguing against, are not nonsense of this calibre, rather they are misguided attempts to explain real phenomena, along the lines of phlogiston. However the people in am arguing with; either believe nonsense like time travel, or are prepared to say they do in order to appease their religious leaders. Arguing physics with somebody who believes in time travel, is like arguing about the Bible with somebody who believes that Jesus turned water into wine; largely futile, because they have unwittingly replaced rational thought with religious faith.

Its inelastic scattering because the collision turns some of the kinetic energy of the electron into new particles. That is why I assume that analysing the results would be difficult. That was the point I was making. My theory that protons are collections of charges does not clash with QED. I said readily falsified. Atomic theory could be readily falsified by the discovery of an atom of say carbon 12.4. I cannot think of another way to falsify it; but the fact that an atom has been found for each of 1-92 protons, and the fact that protons and neutrons can have their masses measured accurately, makes it well proven. Like atomic theory my model could be readily falsified; but finding extra evidence to prove it right, would be much more difficult. I do not know why I said my theory should be assumed right; normally I say it should be considered worth testing, which could be done with more accurate measurement of the masses of exotic particles. You are presumably right that my model will not be considered with my current mindset, but would it make any difference if it changed?

Certainly if humans were taught that, over 99% would believe it, or at least say they did. If you explain how the experiment was done, I can do the maths myself. If you just supply the maths, I will be none the wiser. So you will probably do the latter. QED was figured out prior to quarks. In Feynman's book he boasts about the electron's magnetic moment, but he also points out that there is no way to calculate the proton's moment, and no reason why a neutron should have one. As far as I can see QED simply works on the basis that a proton is heavier than an electron but has an equal opposite charge. It seems you are alluding to the religious argument, that since physicists have achieved remarkable things, we ought to trust them to get it right every time. But physicists said aeroplanes, nuclear power, and superconductivity above 25K, were impossible; only to be proved wrong. The problem is that quarks cannot be reined in by experiment, partly because they are not readily falsifiable, and partly because of the difficulty in observing something as small as a proton; so physicists have a free rein to make up just about anything they choose. Atomic theory can be proved right with simple arithmetic; the experimental evidence for quarks seems to be so obtuse that even a grade A super-swotty graduate student like yourself struggles to fully understand it.

If my model is assumed to right, then it can be tested, improved, or theoretically disproved. If people stick with the standard model, then the only possible conclusion is that the devil created a hideously messy universe to confound mankind. Really? I thought people were more interested in repeating whatever nonsense they have read about time travel, quarks, and relativity. To me physics is about creating a logical model, that is consistent with observation. I have not yet been overawed by your pearls of scientific wisdom on this thread; but you could always remedy that by responding to Uncool's call to arms, and explain the details of the Briederbach experiment which lead you to assume that quark theory represents credible science. I am guessing that the experiment might be equivalent to bouncing a single electron off a proton. If the electron missed then the angle would be 0; but what was observed was that at 4 energies of around the mass of the proton, the angle of scattering was always 6 degrees. At 5 higher energies the angle was always 10. Maybe you could add some details to that. Since the electron is travelling near lightspeed and has a mass greater than the proton, then the proton will be sent flying. Also in an inelastic collision at least 1 new particle must be formed. So momentum could be conserved if the electron was scattered in the same direction as the proton, in an opposite direction, or in a plane at right angles; depending on what happens to the proton, the new particles, and the final energy of the electron. Since inelastic collisions produce new particles; even if the proton was a solid sphere, the scattering pattern is bound to be very different from elastic collisions. I should think even with all the data, reaching a clear conclusion would not be easy; and perhaps your interpretation of the second paper, is that the authors did not reach a definite conclusion? My model of a universe composed only of spacebubbles, leads to definite arithmetical predictions of particle masses, which differ from the standard model. It does not currently make any specific predictions about electrodynamics, so it of little relevance thereto.

I signed up for an APS account but it still would not let me read the articles. I tried searching to find out if it is possible to smash a proton apart so that it does not reform, but in vain. It is extraordinary how difficult it is to actually find out basic facts.

Actually I think electrons do randomly bounce off atomic nuclei in an elastic manner, as that model makes better sense than the Bohr atom; however the Bohr atom does work well with the maths. Then again there is supposed to be experimental evidence that the electron can be found at various distances from the proton, which might agree with the bounce model. Your question was really about electrodynamics, which is conceptually and mathematically much more complex than the model I am presenting here. My model is based on electrostatics, so all that needs to be calculated is the binding energy resulting from the static arrangement of charges. The only conceptually difficult part of my model, is relinquishing imaginary beings like quarks, gluons and Higgs. I keep trying to discuss it, but my attempts get ignored. You seem to be saying that the electrons are scattered off the proton. Last time I looked I got the impression that what actually happens is that the proton gets broken up by a high energy electron, to form new particles which then decay. Can anybody describe the experiment in detail?

At the end of the 19th century, chemists had their theory of elements, and physicists had Maxwell's equations. In the 20th century both were explained on the basis of protons, electrons and photons. Theories can work well in isolation; but the point is that the universe is one continuous organism, and when we understand what is really going on, everything links together. Since positrons and electrons are the mirror image of each other, my model takes us to the very verge of a theory of everything. It should be assumed to be right, because unless this model is adopted, there can be no solution to the universe. Mostly my model has been rejected on the grounds that quark theory agrees with experiment, but when I question the details of these experiments, nobody really seems to know. So it appears that people are defending quarks on the basis of the fact that experts have interpreted the evidence to imply that they exist. This is a religious attitude, in the sense that my critics have no freewill to change their opinion, as they can only do so if the experts do first. The fact that quarks cannot be isolated should be seen as prima facie evidence that they do not exist; and the fact that physicists have issued an edict proclaiming that quarks are non-isolatable, does not change anything. Mankind has a good record of making observations, many primitive civilisations accurately mapped the motions of the planets; but when it comes to interpretations, mankind seldom gets it right first time, even though he usually believes he has. Part of the scientific education used to involve teaching students to challenge existing ideas, but this seems to have gone out of fashion since the Anti-Christians started offering up science as an alternative religion. I have produced a diagram of a proton, that should make sense to anybody with knowledge of physics. Neither string theorists, nor quarkologists, nor any alternative theorists, have ever done that. This means my model is understandable, which is another reason why is worth considering.