An alternative to quarks?

[newts]

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?

[lemur]

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.

If that were the case, why wouldn't free positive charges with the mass of an electron be observed in any situations?

[newts]

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

[ajb]

An alternative to the Higgs is technicolour.

[swansont]

Why is 2001 constituent parts for a proton more simple than 3?

[rigney]

An alternative to the Higgs is technicolour.

 

While I personally don't believe the Higgs theory, "could it have been" what bought the universe into sync; or just another piece of pie in the sky? Perhaps the LHC at Cern will tell us more??

PS: Maybe if we spelled Quark, QUAUQ; we might see a before and after "snap" of the universe?

 

A bit of the Higgs theory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFGpNMe5eEQ

Edited April 27, 2011 by rigney

[newts]

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.

[ajb]

The advantage of my theory is that just about everything in the universe is composed of two basic ingredients, positive and negative charges.

 

You mean just positive and negative charges in the sense of electric charges?

 

Does your "theory" come close to explaining Gell-Mann's eightfold way?

[newts]

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.

[ajb]

I mean positive and negative charges in the sense of what a positron and an electron are made of.

 

Ok, so electric charge. Is this the only charge you have?

 

My model is different to quarks, so it does not go close to having 18 types of quarks and gluons.

 

Ok.

 

 

If you can outline what aspect of nature Gell-Mann's eightfold way seeks to explain, then I may be able to answer.

 

You can get an introduction to the eightfold way on wikipedia.

 

Does your "theory" say anything about the baryon spectrum, the resonances and decays?

[md65536]

Why is 2001 constituent parts for a proton more simple than 3?

Doesn't the standard model currently predict that all mass is in the form of Higgs bosons?

I don't know much about it, but wouldn't the Higgs boson have a particular mass?

Then if (say) the proton is 2001 times the mass of an electron, it would need to have 2001 times the constituent Higgs bosons?

 

 

 

[ajb]

Doesn't the standard model currently predict that all mass is in the form of Higgs bosons?

 

You can use the Higgs mechanism to give a mass to gauge bosons and fundamental fermions. So in that sense, all mass comes from the Higgs. (If that is what you are asking)

[md65536]

You can use the Higgs mechanism to give a mass to gauge bosons and fundamental fermions. So in that sense, all mass comes from the Higgs. (If that is what you are asking)

Off topic: Another topic I was speculating on seems to imply that mass is related to particle size, and that particles that make up mass would have to behave in curved spacetime differently from other particles (including particles that are made up of any such "mass particles"). This might work if all mass could be divided up into particles with some identical properties (mass and size). I suppose my question is, does the Higgs mechanism/boson mean that it makes sense to think of all mass existing in identical "mass particles" that are somehow contained in all other particles that have mass?

 

Relating to this topic, isn't the Higgs boson (division of mass into identical constituent parts) equally simple as OP's suggestion, as far as mass is concerned?

Edited April 28, 2011 by md65536

[newts]

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.

[swansont]

Another topic I was speculating on

 

!

Moderator Note

This is a thread to discuss the speculation of newts; your speculation should be in its own thread

[newts]

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.

Edited April 28, 2011 by newts

[swansont]

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.

 

You also need to explain the neutron and its structure, and why there are no particles made up of fewer constituents. What holds the particles together besides the electrostatic force?

[newts]

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?

[ajb]

Relating to this topic, isn't the Higgs boson (division of mass into identical constituent parts) equally simple as OP's suggestion, as far as mass is concerned?

 

In classical field theory you can add a mass term by hand. The trouble is that classical gauge invariance requires the gauge fields to be massless. That is, if we add a mass term for say the electromagnetic field or Yang-Mills fields then the resulting classical theory will not be gauge invariant. Now, the classical gauge invariance is required in passing to the quantum theory.

 

So, the great challenge was to find some way of making some of the gauge bosons massive without spoiling the passage to a quantum theory. t'Hooft and Veltman were the first to show that using the Higgs mechanism the theory could still be quantised. This allows a mass to be given to the gauge bosons "in a nice way" as to allow a quantum theory.

 

...which is partly why my original question was about whether physicists would be interested in considering an alternative to quark theory.

 

Ok, so can your model account for the results from deep inelastic scatterings? What about hard scatterings and jets?

 

I get the impression that you are not really up to speed with theoretical physics and have no motivation for your "theory". QCD, although very hard to work with (outside perturbation theory for sure) it does seem to be supported by the experimental evidence.

 

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.

 

Well you can add an explicit mass term in the equations for the electron (and similar) without messing up the gauge symmetry of the full theory. You can also get a mass for the electrons using the Higgs field via a Yukawa coupling. So, it is possible to construct a theory in which the Higgs is responsible for all the mass. I forget the details.

[newts]

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.

Edited April 28, 2011 by newts

[newts]

I get the impression that you are not really up to speed with theoretical physics and have no motivation for your "theory". QCD, although very hard to work with (outside perturbation theory for sure) it does seem to be supported by the experimental evidence.

 

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?

[uncool]

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.

Actually, there are only 6 quarks (and the corresponding 6 antiquarks, but in nearly every system you will have to include corresponding antiparticles). The other members of the "particle zoo" are additional leptons and force carriers.

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.

Neither gluons nor Higgs bosons are quarks. They are other parts of the Standard model, but they are not quarks.

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.

That is most certainly not the definition of elementary. When colliding electrons, many other particles are found.

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?

Quarks do not "fall apart on their own". They decay into other kinds of quarks, just as electrons can. The fact that electrons generally don't is simply due to the fact that electrons are the lowest energy state. Do you know what the definition of an elementary particle is?

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.

Err. Why not?

 

The quarks can rather easily react with each other. The total charge will be 2 the entire time.

 

Additionally, the theory is not that protons collide and form 6 separate quarks. The theory is that two protons are 6 separate quarks.

 

The theory of quarks is equivalent to the idea that the down quark has charge -1, the up quark charge +2, and the proton +3. Fractional charges are equivalent to non-fractional charges, simply by multiplication.

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?

Actually, what quarks have going for them is a solid, decently-understood theory. Not including gravity, the theory is well-understood, and has provided many predictions borne out by experiment. Additionally, there is physical evidence that quarks exist from experiments that showed that nucleons were composed of three pointlike particles.

 

If you want to criticize quark theory, you should learn more about it. Do you know quantum field theory at all?

=Uncool-

Edited May 1, 2011 by uncool

[Bignose]

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?

 

Actually, what quarks have going for them is a solid, decently-understood theory. Not including gravity, the theory is well-understood, and has provided many predictions borne out by experiment. Additionally, there is physical evidence that quarks exist from experiments that showed that nucleons were composed of three pointlike particles.

 

Indeed: to build on uncool's comment here, please take a look at M. Breidenbach (1969). "Observed Behavior of Highly Inelastic Electron-Proton Scattering". Physical Review Letters 23 (16): 935–939, as a start. In Breidenbach's results, he reported observing three point-like bodies inside a proton. And then take a look at some of the many papers that cite this one. Since 1969, I suspect that the experimental evidence for quarks has gotten significantly stronger. Nonetheless, there was experimental evidence 42 years ago. That is hardly "only having lots of people believe in them." Or, lots of people believe in them since there is a ton of evidence for their existence.

[csmyth3025]

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...

As a non-scientist I don't understand what force you're proposing that will confine 1000 electrons and 10001 positrons in a volume that is about 1.7 femtometers in diameter. I ask this because, as I understand it, the strong nulear force is barely able to confine no more than about 92 protons (with a single positive net charge each) in a stable configuration in the nucleus of an atom.

 

Aside from this seemingly impossible task, it's my understanding that electrons and positrons attract each other (because of their opposite charge). It's also my understanding that when an electron and a positron collide they annihilate each other producing gamma ray photons (or other particles in the case of certain high energy collisions). I take it that this phenomenon has not only been experimentally verified but that it's utilized in practical applications:

 

This process is the physical phenomenon relied on as the basis of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Positron annihilation spectroscopy (PAS). It is also used as a method of measuring the Fermi surface and band structure in metals.

(ref. http://en.wikipedia....on_annihilation )

 

Chris

[ajb]

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.

 

 

If fact quite a lot of the development of QCD was based on theoretical or mathematical arguments. But anyway, all you are saying is that the theory has been developed starting from the initial idea of three quarks.

 

I assume the gluons were not part of the original theory, but were added later to try to explain the strong nuclear force.

 

You mean in the old quark model before color was understood? Sure, but with the development of Yang-Mills theory and QCD we know about gluons.

 

Certainly the Higgs boson seems to be a later addition.

 

This is not really part of QCD as such, but rather the electoweak sector of the standard model.

 

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.

 

Can you give a reference here. To my knowledge, there is no experimental evidence that quarks have a substructure.

 

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.

 

Care to explain electron-position scattering experiments and similar?

 

Anyway, you are misinterpreting the results of scattering experiments.

 

 

Protons clearly are not elementary because if two are crashed together they can be made to disintegrate...

 

Again, you are misinterpreting scattering experiments. You can get massive jets of particles ejected in the collision of heavy particles. It is wrong to think of the particle that form the jet as being inside the "mother" particles.

 

...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?

 

I do not understand what you are trying to say here.

 

The idea of fractional charges is also disproved by experiment, unless the quarkologers have abandoned the theory of conservation of charge.

 

Can you provide a reference? I am not aware of any experimental evidence that suggests that quarks do not have fractional charges.

 

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.

 

Again, you are misinterpreting scatterings. Again, how would jets fit into this?

 

It seems that the only thing quarks really have going for them is that lots of people believe in them.

 

And the fact that the experimental evidence seems to fit the theory of QCD. Of course, full non perturbative QCD is hard to work with, but to date I am not aware of any serious failings in the theory that suggest that QCD is not a good model. Things like the running coupling and the jet cross-sections all support QCD.

 

The first experimental evidence of quarks comes from deep inelastic scattering experiments. Evidence of gluons comes from the jets.

 

This is not my area of expertise, I am sure other people here could guide you better with the QCD literature and the historical development of quarks and gluons.

 

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?

 

If you can demonstrate a real failing in a theory or provide a better model then people will pick it up and work on it. However, if you are talking about yourself, then you have not demonstrated that you have enough knowledge of QCD and related topics to really contribute. Sorry to be blunt.