newts

Sorry for the misunderstanding, but I was actually comparing Bignose to Galileo. When dealing with incorrect theories Galileo tended to disprove them with carefully reasoned argument, it was only when confronted by Kepler’s correct ideas that he ignored the evidence and dismissed them out of hand. Human nature has not really changed over the centuries. Usually people will argue logically against wrong theories, it tends to be when people sense a theory is true that they refuse to consider the details and instead dismiss it as heresy or fantasy. Similarly correct scientific theories can normally be defended in everyday language, whilst it is only deficient theories that need to be defended using jargon and by saying it must be right because it was invented by a very clever man and lots of other people agree with him. I am no fan of Einstein either, as I hold him partly responsible for the fact that people who call themselves physicists claim to believe in time travel, which is the most absurd invention of any religion. When people are that gullible, it is hardly suprising that they are unable to follow a rational argument.

The theory is explained and illustrated in the video. A particle made of many charges will have a surface made up of a patchwork of charges. When the surfaces of two similar particles are at close range, they will line up such that positive and negative charges are directly opposite each other, leading to an electric attraction between the particles. Physicists have supposedly been trying to find a link between the strong nuclear force and electromagnetic forces, yet when I describe a mechanism which unifies the two forces, you dismiss it as fantasy. What you are doing is what scientists have done throughout history. Galileo’s colleagues refused to look through his telescope because they wanted to stick with Aristotle. Galileo himself disregarded the evidence in favour of Kepler’s theory that the tides were influenced by the moon, and instead dismissed it out of hand as occult and childishness. Defending the current belief system by saying it agrees with experiment, is merely an excuse to avoid change, because all theories agree with experiment because that is what they are designed to do. Epicycles, phlogiston and Franklin’s electric fluid, all agreed with experiment; but fortunately in those eras most people were prepared to accept better explanations. What the situation is today, is hard to judge because it is so long since anybody came up with a correct theory that contradicted established physics. However I suspect that getting a new idea accepted today is harder than ever, because the more people like Dawkins and now Hawking encourage people to treat science as an alternative to traditional religion, the more it is forced to behave like a religion, such that it cannot admit to error for fear of losing face and followers. The proper function of physics is surely to explain nature in terms of the fewest possible types of constituent. Gluons are not really a scientific theory, because they do not link the strong nuclear force to the rest of physics. Accounting for the strong nuclear force with gluons, is comparable to explaining the tides by saying that in addition to gravitons massive bodies also emit tideons whose numbers vary according to the cube of the distance; consistent with experiment but nonetheless pointless.

What is revealing about this thread, is that it shows how adverse people are to any idea that contradicts an established scientific theory. Expert and inexpert alike seem determined to save the quark, and unable to see the problem with a standard model based on the existence of around 60 different types of particle. Mine is a theory of everything, so I can hardly be expected to have an explanation for every experiment. Rather the strength of my theory is that encompasses things like particle physics and the expansion of the universe in one seamless model. My model is based on the assumption that the universe is composed from a huge number of identical units, and everything there is has evolved from this simple origin. By contrast the standard model with its 60 different types of particle can never be considered to be simplest explanation of reality. The argument that the standard model must be correct because it agrees with experiment, is somewhat hollow, because everything it contains was merely put there to make it agree with experiment. For instance quarks were awarded gluons solely for the purpose of accounting for the strong nuclear force; and these gluons were restricted to venturing only a small distance from their quark, solely because the strong nuclear force was known to only act over small distances. On the other hand in my theory, the fact that heavy particles are made from a mixture of charges, leads directly and inevitably to the unification of the strong nuclear force with the electric force. I had expected that I would have been asked to account for the strong force at the beginning of the thread, but since I wasn’t, it is explained in this light-hearted video designed for people with no knowledge of physics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewzog4A8mxg

When a uranium nucleus splits, one part can have a charge of +56 and the other +36, so the two parts repel very strongly. If a proton made of multiple charge were tempted to split, one part would be expected to have a charge of +1 and the other would be neutral, so there would be no repulsion. The way a proton stays together could be better compared to a complex molecule, which stays together because the electrons tend to avoid being close to each other and instead reside closer to the protons. The reason a proton stays together must have something to do with the exact arrangements of the charges. You make the very good point that positive and negative charges ought to want to engage with each other and unravel to produce photons or neutrinos. Earlier I was asked why particles other than protons tend to decay, and you have answered the question better than I did. So if we start by assuming that particles ought to have a natural tendency to fall apart, all that is then needed is find out what is so special about the arrangement of charges inside a proton which enables it to stay together.

Quark theory has been continually modified to try to make it fit the experimental evidence, but it is still found wanting. I think originally there were only supposed to be three quarks, but this has gradually increased to 18 to try to keep it in line with the evidence. I assume the gluons were not part of the original theory, but were added later to try to explain the strong nuclear force. Certainly the Higgs boson seems to be a later addition. Perhaps the oddest thing about quark theory, is the fact that quarks are still believed to be elementary particles when they have clearly been shown not to be. Electrons are elementary particles, because if two electrons are collided they cannot be broken down further, and of course the same is true of positrons. Protons clearly are not elementary because if two are crashed together they can be made to disintegrate, however in a sense they are still more elementary than quarks, because whilst protons have to be broken apart, quarks just fall apart on their own. In what sense is something that spontaneously decomposes into other things elementary? The idea of fractional charges is also disproved by experiment, unless the quarkologers have abandoned the theory of conservation of charge. If two protons collide and disintegrate, then ultimately two positrons must be produced. On the other hand if two protons really did collide and form 6 separate quarks with fractional charges, then it would never be possible to create the positrons. It seems that the only thing quarks really have going for them is that lots of people believe in them. Galileo is supposed to have said: “In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual”, but is that still true today?

To somebody who believes in quarks, gluons and Higgs, the evidence might appear to support them. However a non-believer could argue that all the experimental evidence suggests that these things do not exist. My theory is based around electric charges and electric forces, whose existence is hard to deny. On the other hand all attempts to detect isolated quarks have reportedly failed. Most people probably accept that this is because quarks are undetectable, but it could also be argued that this is because quarks are not a proper description of reality. Similarly billion dollar experiments have failed to detected the Higgs. This could of course be the fault of the experiment, but it would be perhaps more rational to accept that it is because the Higgs does not exist. Again there is no experimental evidence that gluons exist, even though they are supposed to have some kind of rest mass in order to account for the fact that they do not venture far from their host quark. If a theory is sufficiently flexible it can always be adjusted such that its followers can claim it supported by the evidence.

When a neutron is formed by electron capture, I envisage that the electron collides with proton at about 92% of the speed of light, and the energy of motion creates a new pair of charges inside the particle. That means that a neutron contains one more positive charge than a proton and two more negative charges. Since a neutron is heavier than a proton by the mass of about 2.5 electrons, that implies that 3 charges in a neutron weigh the same as 2.5 free electrons, which puts the number of charges in a neutron at approximately 2200. Clearly a coliding electron can only create charges in pairs, and since protons seems to be based on a triangular arrangement of charges, the next available option would involve creating 4 pairs, so probably 2200 is the only realistic estimate. I know muons are about 200 times the mass of an electron, are there any other particles lighter than a proton?

On the question of complexity, in my model all rest mass of all particles is explained by the mass of the charges. As I understand it, the mass of the electron and the positron is not thought to be explained by the Higgs. The mass of a proton is 1836.15 times the mass of an electron. However when charges are packed together their electric fields overlap, so the mass per charge is less if they are arranged such that opposite charges are closer to each other than similar charges , that is why I suggested a figure of roughly 2000. By comparison the mass of a hydrogen atom is a fraction less than the mass of a free proton and a free electron combined.

In my model there are only positive and negative charges, no fractional charges as in quark theory. I had a look at the wikipedia article but it seems to only be relevant to people who believe in quarks. However if the eightfold way does explain an aspect of nature, it would be helpful if you could say how it does. Since quark theory has been worked on for many years by many intelligent people, doubtless it has more explanations for more phenomena than my basic model. I think you might be asking if I can explain why protons and anti-protons are stable, but other particles disintegrate in a fraction of a second. My model does account for the fact that electrons and positrons are stable, as clearly they can only unravel if they interact with each other. The reason why protons are stable can only be explained if it is known exactly how many charges they contain, and exactly how these charges are arranged inside the particle. That is something I have not managed to figure out, which is partly why my original question was about whether physicists would be interested in considering an alternative to quark theory.

I mean positive and negative charges in the sense of what a positron and an electron are made of. My model is different to quarks, so it does not go close to having 18 types of quarks and gluons. If you can outline what aspect of nature Gell-Mann's eightfold way seeks to explain, then I may be able to answer.

The simplicity of the theory lies in the fact that particles are composed of only 2 basic ingredients, rather than the many different constituents of different particles in the standard model. Perhaps I should have mentioned that in my theory there is no real distinction between matter and anti-matter, because everything is made of positive and negative charges. Cosmologists struggle to explain why there was originally more matter than anti-matter. In my theory this is not a problem because the universe always contains exactly the same number of positive and negative charges. Since the composition of particles is random, it is to be expected that there would have originally been an excess of either protons with 1000 negatives and 1001 positives, or an excess of antiprotons with 1000 positives and 1001 negatives.

Free positive charges are anti-electrons, also known as positrons. Is that what you were asking?

Has anybody else ever come up with an alternative to quark theory? According to my theory of everything; all particles with rest mass, must be made from a mixture of positive and negative charges, except electrons which are made from a single negative charge, and positrons which are made of single positive charges. For instance we might assume that a proton is composed of 1000 negative charges and 1001 positive charges, all solidly packed together. The charge of the proton can be attributed to the fact that it has one extra positive charge, whilst the mass can be explained by the large number of charges present. The advantage of my theory is that just about everything in the universe is composed of two basic ingredients, positive and negative charges. If Occam was still around he might have approved. But what about others, would they like to see the universe simplified, or would they rather keep the quarks, the gluons, the Higgs and all the rest?