An alternative to quarks?

[newts]

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.

 

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.

 

 

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:

 

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.

[newts]

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

[Bignose]

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;

 

How else should one objectively judge a model EXCEPT by agreement with model? Without agreement, what good is a model? It looks pretty? A model that doesn't agree with experiment is about as useless as a 3 dollar bill. It can be funny to look at, it can be interesting, but ultimately isn't worth much of anything. It is just a fantasy.

 

Have you even looked as some of the historical sources? Like the Breidenbach (1969) paper? If you think that quarks are so wrong, then you need to explain how your model will have the same experimental results Briedenback reported. Because those are well-known and well-verified results. They cannot be dismissed. So, please show very clearly how your model explains the known results. Unless you want to continue down the road above of fantasy, because it darn sure isn't science to ignore experiment.

[ajb]

What is revealing about this thread, is that it shows how adverse people are to any idea that contradicts an established scientific theory.

 

Of course people do not like to go against established theory, unless there is good reason to do so. You will have to make it very clear why you want to propose a different model and how it solves the initial problems.

 

 

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.

 

Like strings or branes maybe?

 

 

By contrast the standard model with its 60 different types of particle can never be considered to be simplest explanation of reality.

 

The standard model works so well as it stands. There has been no deviation from what is expected. That of course is not necessarily a good thing...

 

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.

 

When the model was proposed the W and Z bosons were not known to science. The standard model predicted the mass of these bosons which was later confirmed to a good degree of accuracy.

 

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.

 

You have not really told us what you theory is. Anyway, is is true that the standard model does not quite predict that the electroweak and strong sectors unify. You examine the running of the couplings with energy and see that they "miss". Including supersymmetry into the mix and they meet up exactly. This is one of the exiting aspects of supersymmetry.

 

Also, no one thinks that the standard model is the be all and end all of particle physics. The model has too many free parameters and is rather "hashed together". We can discuss the short comings of the standard model another time.

[newts]

 

You have not really told us what you theory is.

 

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.

 

How else should one objectively judge a model EXCEPT by agreement with model? Without agreement, what good is a model? It looks pretty? A model that doesn't agree with experiment is about as useless as a 3 dollar bill. It can be funny to look at, it can be interesting, but ultimately isn't worth much of anything. It is just a fantasy.

 

 

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.

[Bignose]

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.

 

Ah sweet, the Galileo gambit. Only took 30 posts.

 

I'm just going to say one thing, not that I think it will really help, but you have more in common with "Galileo's colleagues" than us doubters in the thread. Because you seem be doing your best to remain ignorant of the vast amount of evidence that supports the model as it stands today. Take your own advice and "look through the telescope" yourself, and understand why the current model is what it is before trying to tear it down. I know I keep harping on it, but what about Breidenbach (1969)? He reported three point-like bodies inside a proton. How can this be ignored or explained by your model? Look through Breidenbach's telescope and see what he sees, and then get back to us about "occult and childishness".

[ajb]

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.

 

You will need to write down your theory and then preform calculations to show that you have a sensible mechanism.

 

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.

 

Comparing yourself to Galileo is bad form. It suggests you cannot back up your claims and are now appealing to history for validation. We don't care what happened to Galileo as it has no relevance to your work.

 

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.

 

We would all like to find a better model than the standard model. To my mind something like the MSSM is a good candidate here. Even then it is unlikely to be the final thing on particle physics.

 

The theories that agree well with nature are those that have been tested. Those that don't agree so well are thrown out. This is in reality not so simple as we have to consider the domain of validity.

 

 

 

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.

 

If a theory predicts something that is in contradiction to experimental evidence, then why should it be accepted as a new better model than an existing one? Of course, one may have a domain of validity clause here.

 

New ideas to come to light and they are then subject to scientific scrutiny. Some are more controversial than others.

 

The proper function of physics is surely to explain nature in terms of the fewest possible types of constituent.

 

The function of theoretical physics is to build models of nature that can (in principle) be tested against nature. One could hope that this involves very few "constituents" but only nature can really decide that. One would also hope that the theory has many nice mathematical properties which relate to nice physics. But again, this is not really in our control as we need to match nature and not our own preconceived ideals.

 

Gluons are not really a scientific theory, because they do not link the strong nuclear force to the rest of physics.

 

You will need to explain this much further.

 

Gluons are part of QCD and one can preform calculations and make predictions that can be tested. It is true that as of yet, not all the expected phenomena have been seen. For example glueballs have not been found.

 

However, electron-position scatterings do provide evidence for gluons. Also quark gluon plasmas have been observed.

 

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.

 

Care to mathematically model tideons and tell us some of their expected properties? I will then pass this on to Brian Cox so he can alert CERN so they can look.

 

Ah sweet, the Galileo gambit. Only took 30 posts.

 

This almost always seem inevitable.

 

Einstein will also come up soon. Remember he was working in the patent office and not in a university when he did his best work! Just like insert name here does not work at a university.

Edited May 20, 2011 by ajb

[newts]

Comparing yourself to Galileo is bad form. It suggests you cannot back up your claims and are now appealing to history for validation. We don't care what happened to Galileo as it has no relevance to your work.

 

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.

 

 

 

Einstein will also come up soon. Remember he was working in the patent office and not in a university when he did his best work! Just like insert name here does not work at a university.

 

 

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.

[ajb]

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.

 

Most people I know who work on CTCs tend not to be trying to create a time machine, but rather are trying to reason why they are not allowed in semi-classical theories and are trying to use CTCs to point to new physics.

 

In the context of classical general relativity it is not obvious that CTCs are not allowed. Including quantum fields on a curved background does provide some evidence that they may not be realised in nature.

 

Anyway, comparing physics with religion will not help your arguments here.

Edited May 20, 2011 by ajb

[newts]

 

Care to mathematically model tideons and tell us some of their expected properties? I will then pass this on to Brian Cox so he can alert CERN so they can look.

 

 

At last something on which we can agree. I too think Professor Cox might be interested in tideons, he has after all spent many years hunting for magnetic monopoles and Higgs particles.

 

Tideons are like gluons, they only have one property which is that they cause the tides. Because they have rest mass, their numbers are thought to depend on the cube of the distance from a massive body, however that can always be altered to fit any new experimental evidence. Also they can only be detected at very high energies, so even if they are never detected, that does not mean they don't exist.

 

Anyway, comparing physics with religion will not help your arguments here.

 

Nothing will help my arguments on here, because nobody is interested in a theory which contradicts the standard model.

[swansont]

Epicycles, phlogiston and Franklin’s electric fluid, all agreed with experiment; but fortunately in those eras most people were prepared to accept better explanations.

 

The theory that replaced them still explained everything those theories explained. You have not come close to doing that. Your model makes it your burden of proof.

[Bignose]

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.

 

By citing THE paper that initially discovered quarks. Yeah, I'm the dismissing one....

 

Nothing will help my arguments on here, because nobody is interested in a theory which contradicts the standard model.

 

Let me fix this for you: "Nothing will help my arguments on here, because nobody is interested in a theory which contradicts the standard model without evidence."

 

I've written this many, many times, but it is still true: Most every single scientist goes into science wanting to discover something new. Wanting to make that next great leap. Wanting to be the name remembered next to all the other famous names.

 

Discovering something new is the whole frickin' point of science!

 

But, no person who actually practices (good) science goes against the evidence, or believes something without the evidence. Agreement between a model's predictions and the experimental evidence is THE one and only objective measure of how good a model is to science. You can have the greatest story ever told, the most intuitive, the most creative, the most interesting, etc. etc. -- but if that story doesn't make testable predictions with what actually happens in reality, then it is just a story, not science.

 

Preaching a new theory as the solution to it all without evidence is little more than story telling. It darn sure isn't science. And, since this is a science board, we tend to stick to the rules of science.

 

So, what would it take for you to provide some evidence? Not more story telling, not more videos claiming this the greatest theory since sliced bread, but either some actual evidence of your idea, or a prediction and calculation showing how much better your idea fits the known evidence than the model you want to dismiss. If you need time, that's fine. I don't expect you to have all the answers immediately.

 

But, I do ask that you quit with the off-handed disrespectful comments toward me. I've been respectful toward you the entire time. Thank you.

[ajb]

Tideons are like gluons, they only have one property which is that they cause the tides. Because they have rest mass, their numbers are thought to depend on the cube of the distance from a massive body, however that can always be altered to fit any new experimental evidence. Also they can only be detected at very high energies, so even if they are never detected, that does not mean they don't exist.

 

Ok, I was quite flippant with my words, so a flippant reply was expected.

 

 

 

Nothing will help my arguments on here, because nobody is interested in a theory which contradicts the standard model.

 

No one is interested in a theory that contradicts the standard model as it has been successfully tested to some very high order. Any new theory would have to include the standard model in some limit or approximation. Any theory that makes predictions that are just not consistent with nature will naturally not be considered a good model.

 

I get the impression you need to read up on quantum field theory and the standard model. There are a few well known texts we can suggest.

[newts]

But, I do ask that you quit with the off-handed disrespectful comments toward me. I've been respectful toward you the entire time. Thank you.

 

Having my theory described as fantasy did not feel respectful, however your last post was respectful, so I will follow suit.

 

I found out that scattering is inelastic because it creates new particles from the energy of the fast-moving electrons. However I could not find a picture of the pattern produced, so there is no way I can judge whether it proves that three points is one of many, or the only possible explanation.

[Bignose]

Having my theory described as fantasy did not feel respectful, however your last post was respectful, so I will follow suit.

 

I found out that scattering is inelastic because it creates new particles from the energy of the fast-moving electrons. However I could not find a picture of the pattern produced, so there is no way I can judge whether it proves that three points is one of many, or the only possible explanation.

 

It IS fantasy until some evidence is brought forth that it isn't. Science doesn't just take things at anyone's word. Science judges objectively by how well prediction matches observation. If there is no prediction, or the prediction fails to match observation, then it IS fantasy. It doesn't matter if it is you or I or Hawking who says it. No evidence = fantasy.

 

Now, to shake off that fantasy moniker, you need to start making testable predictions and compare those predictions to known observations. Do that, and it won't be fantasy anymore. Do it not, and you'll still be doing story telling, not science. This is the same rule for everybody, so please try not to take it so personally.

Edited May 21, 2011 by Bignose

[newts]

The theory that replaced them still explained everything those theories explained. You have not come close to doing that. Your model makes it your burden of proof.

How much proof? Kepler overthrew epicycles almost single-handedly, by conceiving elliptical orbits and variable speeds, before doing all the maths. But with a theory of everything, and today’s far greater scientific knowledge, its not really possible for one person to do it all.

 

I am not sure if people actually want to see my theory developed, or just want to retain the status quo.

 

Ok, I was quite flippant with my words, so a flippant reply was expected.

First you agree that the standard model is not the final answer, then you volunteer the fact that glue balls have not been observed, now you accept a flippant reply. I am deeply honoured to have had the privilege of conversing with one of the world’s most open-minded physicists, I just hope you don’t get into trouble with your colleagues.

 

Any theory that makes predictions that are just not consistent with nature will naturally not be considered a good model.

I don’t think there is any evidence that contradicts my model, it is more that I cannot account for all phenomena.

 

Generally my model accounts for things effortlessly. The fact that particles are mixtures of charges, predicts that there are hundreds of permutations of roughly the mass of protons. The different arrangements means all particles should have different life spans, except in the case of antiparticles which are the same pattern as their particles.

 

My model ought to be easy to disprove because it has no real flexibility. Having once accepted that protons and neutrons are just a mixture of charges, it would clearly be unfair to expect these charges to produce gluons in addition to their normal duties. So if the strong nuclear force could not be explained by electric forces between surface charges, the model would have failed.

 

The standard model was designed to address the experimental evidence of particle physics. On the other hand mine started as a cosmological model of a cyclical universe composed only of compressible spherical bubbles. My particle theory evolved from a model trying to explain the big bang, so it is merely one aspect of a theory of everything.

 

Since it is clearly unethical to contemplate that my model could be correct until I have produced 50,000 Feynman diagrams, how about debating whether it could be considered for the accolade of the best wrong theory in the history of physics? Maybe then people could acknowledge the positive aspects with a clear conscience?

[ajb]

First you agree that the standard model is not the final answer, then you volunteer the fact that glue balls have not been observed, now you accept a flippant reply. I am deeply honoured to have had the privilege of conversing with one of the world’s most open-minded physicists, I just hope you don’t get into trouble with your colleagues.

 

I don't see that I have said anything controversial here. I don't think any physicist thinks that the standard model is going to the the final theory of particle physics. And to date glue balls have not been observed, but that does not mean they will not be some day.

 

 

 

I don’t think there is any evidence that contradicts my model, it is more that I cannot account for all phenomena.

 

Ok, so the question is what does it account for? How does this compare to the standard model, or maybe just the QCD sector?

 

 

Generally my model accounts for things effortlessly. The fact that particles are mixtures of charges, predicts that there are hundreds of permutations of roughly the mass of protons. The different arrangements means all particles should have different life spans, except in the case of antiparticles which are the same pattern as their particles.

 

What can you calculate within your model? How do we explain the massive number of particles with mass near that of the proton? These should be identifiable with the hardon resonances I presume? How does this fit the spectra we see?

 

My model ought to be easy to disprove because it has no real flexibility. Having once accepted that protons and neutrons are just a mixture of charges, it would clearly be unfair to expect these charges to produce gluons in addition to their normal duties. So if the strong nuclear force could not be explained by electric forces between surface charges, the model would have failed.

 

A big question you will have to address (or really start to understand) is confinement. I do not think there is a proper proof of confinement within QCD, so explaining this would be a great thing. However, I am not sure if the abelian nature of the electromagnetic fields means that confinement is just not possible. Or at least not without only considering low dimensions or something else rather exotic.

 

Anyway, intuitively confinement in QCD is due to the nonabelian nature of gluons.

 

The standard model was designed to address the experimental evidence of particle physics. On the other hand mine started as a cosmological model of a cyclical universe composed only of compressible spherical bubbles. My particle theory evolved from a model trying to explain the big bang, so it is merely one aspect of a theory of everything.

 

Particle physics in the early universe is a now well established subject.

 

Since it is clearly unethical to contemplate that my model could be correct until I have produced 50,000 Feynman diagrams, how about debating whether it could be considered for the accolade of the best wrong theory in the history of physics? Maybe then people could acknowledge the positive aspects with a clear conscience?

 

So now you need to present the mathematical details of your theory. As you only have electromagnetic fields your theory is QED applied in a novel setting. We know how to deal with QED using perturbation theory viz Feynman diagrams. You should be able to make some calculations. The possible issues here is that the methods of QED are generally suited to scattering experiments rather than dealing with bound states. You will have to get "tooled up" on bound states via QED or maybe resort to effective non-relativistic models. This is all well out of my area of expertise.

[swansont]

How much proof? Kepler overthrew epicycles almost single-handedly, by conceiving elliptical orbits and variable speeds, before doing all the maths. But with a theory of everything, and today’s far greater scientific knowledge, its not really possible for one person to do it all.

 

Kepler didn't do maths? Seriously?

[newts]

What can you calculate within your model? How do we explain the massive number of particles with mass near that of the proton? These should be identifiable with the hardon resonances I presume? How does this fit the spectra we see?

I don't understand the last two questions.

 

Since the proton is the only stable arrangement of charges, we might expect arrangements of similar numbers of charges to survive long enough to be detected. As a proton contains about 2001 charges, we could perhaps have particles containing one more charge-pair or one less, leading to around 200 particles with a mass within 10% of the proton mass.

A list of the masses of detected particles might help, Wikipedias list is tailored to quark theory.

 

What do you think about my theory of electron capture, where an electron travelling at .92c crashes into a proton and creates a new charge-pair inside the resulting neutron. That is consistent with my theory of other high energy collisions, where the energy of motion is converted into the charge pairs that comprise the resulting particles.

 

This neutron model explains the energy of the weak nuclear force as coming from the charge-pair unravelling. Some of the energy then gets stuck to the ejected electron with the rest carried away by the neutrino. I dont see any point trying to model that mathematically.

 

The useful maths I can see in the neutron structure, is the fact that the 3 additional charges weigh about the same as 2.5 electrons; which suggests nucleons ought to contain around 2100 or 2200 charges.

 

This lends some support to my model, in the sense that if the mass difference between a proton and a neutron was more than 3 electrons, I would have been forced to assume that at least 2 charge pairs were created. If the mass difference was just less than 3 electrons there would be insufficient binding energy; whilst if the mass difference was much less than 2.5 electrons, it would make the binding energy and thus the number of charges unacceptably high.

Edited May 24, 2011 by newts

[ajb]

I don't understand the last two questions.

 

There are particles have lifetimes of the order [math]10^{-23}[/math] seconds, but have similar properties to stable particles.

 

In the quark model these are understood as excited hardrons.

 

I would like to know if your model has a similar interpretation of these hadron resonances? Can you build the particles we observe within your model?

[newts]

Can you build the particles we observe within your model?

Probably, since you suggest many of the particles observed would contain around 2000 charges in my model, there is plenty of scope. The main problem I have is that I don't actually know what particles you do observe. Can you tell me where I could find a list of all the masses and half-lives of observed particles? Also I would like to see a diagram of inelastic scattering, if you know where I could find one?

[ajb]

If you are trying to rewrite physics then I think you should know here to look for data like that. Anyway, what you are looking for is the Particle Data Group. They publish lots of data about particle physics.

[newts]

If you are trying to rewrite physics then I think you should know here to look for data like that.

I have done some calculations using particle masses, and they fit my theory very well; but I am not sure whether anybody else would find them convincing.

 

I used the Wikipedia pages on mesons and baryons, and most of the time I got good results using the stated masses; but then I came across two vector kaons with masses around 891 and 895 Mev, which only fitted my theory by pushing their tolerances to their limits. However when I checked the values on the link you provided, I found Wikipedia had quoted the tolerance wrong for the positive particle by a factor of ten, so the result is not significant.

 

When I have put the calculations on my computer, I will send them if you are interested.

[newts]

I seem to have had little success persuading anybody to take my theory seriously, but this thread has been really useful in helping me to develop ideas.

 

I have now added to my book, calculations which show that the mass difference between those particles created in colliders whose mass is known fairly accurately, can be neatly explained in terms of whole numbers of charges. I have also used the value obtained, to calculate the approximate bonding energy of an alpha particle.

 

What I was saying earlier about the neutron is wrong, in fact protons and neutrons must be made of around 2500 charges. Because I wrongly thought the neutron had virtually no electric dipole, I assumed that the neutron must be a spherical particle with the charges even distributed. In fact the added charges in electron capture, must form a little lump on the surface. With a negatively charged lump on its surface, the neutron is perfectly designed to mediate the repulsion between protons, and to help them stick together.

 

An introduction to the cosmological implications of my theory, can be downloaded as a free sample on the Amazon Kindle product page for ‘Squish Theory1’.

[pantheory]

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.

I also am an infidel

.

My theory is based around electric charges and electric forces, whose existence is hard to deny.

Realize that the existence of positive and negative charges as something separate from something mechanical, can certainly be questioned (by me for instance).

 

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.

I agree.

 

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.

I agree.

 

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.

When quarks go, so will gluons -- theoretically

 

If a theory is sufficiently flexible it can always be adjusted such that its followers can claim it supported by the evidence.

I agree. Unfortunately this is the sad state of affairs concerning theories today whereby there are many versions of the same model, and regardless of the observations made, the theory can often claim that a particular observation was predicted beforehand. Maybe there are 2,000 separate theorists and three collectively made such a prediction within a factor of 20 -- then they claim a successful prediction. The prime example of this was the microwave background and the Big Bang model -- regardless of whether the microwave background had anything to do with an original bang or the supposed hot dense field as a result.

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Edited July 21, 2011 by pantheory