Part 1 - If physics was not so complicated, what would matter be like?

Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if theoretical physics was not so complicated? I have, and I really think that maybe it isn’t, and maybe we made it seem more complicated than it is.

One of the areas I think physics has gone a bit crazy is the structure of matter. Back in the 1920’s, when scientists first realized that atoms were not the smallest entities, electrons, protons and then neutrons were discovered, and we had a nice simple picture of what constituted our world. Then unfortunately, first in cosmic rays, and later in accelerators, we observed a plethora of what seemed like new particle entities. Most of these new particles existed for only fractions of a microsecond, decaying into electrons, positrons, and electro magnetic radiation, or EMR and neutrino‘s. The simple picture was destroyed.

By the 1970’s, there were so many particles described that one needed an encyclopedia to list them all, so it was not surprising that there was a new attempt at simplification. The standard model, and the word “symmetry” started to appear in everything one read. Since that time, more Nobel prizes have been awarded for contributions to the standard model than any other part of Physics. Still I find that none of this stuff is really satisfactory, and leaves open more questions than it provides answers.

So what could it be like if it really was all much simpler. As we said earlier, all of the known particles that decay yield only five things, protons, electrons, positrons, neutrino‘s and EMR, and even a proton can be destroyed to yield only the other four. There seems to be little doubt that the electron and positron are elementary particles, so let us examine what we know about these entities. We know the electron is very small, about 10-17 m, carries a charge of -e, has a definitive mass, and has a measurable magnetic moment. We also know that it is totally stable, with the only way it can disappear being when it meets its alter ego, the positron, which has all of the same characteristics except that its charge is +e.

The magnetic moment of the electron is vital in understanding what this entity may be like. Magnetism does not exist without a moving electric charge, and yet the electron has a magnetic property even when it is stationary, so the moving charge must be a part of the electron itself. Now it just so happens that if one were to take a point charge of -e and somehow make it spin in a tiny circle one would create an entity which has all the properties that we know an electron has, as spinning a charge of +e would create a positron. So lets take the leap of faith and suggest that these elementary particles are indeed just that, which would make them actually look like tiny donuts. Purists will say that such a structure, a charge spinning in its own magnetic field would have to radiate energy and slow down, but just as we had to do with electrons spinning around the Bohr atom, let us just say that for some reason we do not at this time understand, this is not so, and the charge can continue to spin forever.

Everybody knows that electrons and positrons cannot exist in close proximity because if they collide they disappear in a puff of EMR. Well that’s what everybody knows, but what if it were not so? The interesting thing is that if one puts the two side by side with the charges spinning in the same direction, say clockwise, their magnetic fields would be opposite, one up and one down. What could the situation be if in some circumstance the two entities somehow got to be one on top of the other, with their spins in the same direction? Now the attraction of the charges would be counteracted by the magnetic fields their circular motion creates, and one could imagine a case where this opposition was exact, and the two would just sit there next to each other, neither attracting nor repelling. It just so happens that if the charges are traveling at very close to the speed of light, in a circle around 10-17 meters, it can be calculated that this is exactly what would happen. It sounds incredible, but if it were so, as far as every observer more than a few microns away, the pair would be totally undetectable because their charges cancel each other, as do their magnetic moments. The pair would however still have a mass very close to twice the electron mass.

So what do we know that is totally undetectable most of the time and yet carries some mass. The neutrino of course! Is this perhaps one of the structures this tiny entity can have? (I say one of the structures, because as will be shown later there is another entity which could look and act like a neutrino.)

We can take this picture further. If a single positron and electron can pair up, why not more . Could not these neutrinos or doublets as I call them add a loose electron or positron to form a positive or negative triplet or join up head to tail to form a chain and create a myriad of other particles. A chain of 70 or so would be a muon, . And of course, to take the presumption to its natural final conclusion, perhaps when this chain has approximately 1900 members, it adds one final positron, links up to the beginning of the chain, and by some amazing quirk (should that be quark) of fate continues to exist not for a few micro seconds, but forever. A proton is born, which with its associated electron in a hydrogen atom is the primary constituent of our universe. And of course it is common knowledge that one can add an electron and some more mass probably a neutrino, and one has a neutron which is of course only stable when associated with at least one proton.

So all of matter is made up of positrons and electrons, in equal quantities! Electrons and positrons are simply spinning electrical charges, which means that all of matter is made of spinning electrical charges. The total charge is always zero, but the number of individual charges is proportional to the total mass present. What could be more simple, and does this mean that perhaps, after all, gravity can be an electro-static effect?

Is this scenario all fantasy? Is there evidence that supports the concept? I believe it is not, and there is. From the time of the discovery of the muon in cosmic ray debris, and in accelerator collisions, each of the ever increasing list of particles that have been discovered has either a single -e or +e charge, or no charge at all. Almost any mass between that of an electron and that of a proton has been reported, and when these short lived particles finally decay, only positrons, electrons and gamma rays (EMR) and neutrinos are ever left! Seems reasonable that if that is all that is ever left, it probably is all they were ever made of. It is also possible to show, by simple math that a charge of -e spinning in a circle with a diameter of about 10-16 m will generate a magnetic field just great enough to repel a charge of +e spinning in like manner in the same direction.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence that the structure of matter is something far simpler than the current models describe is the fact that these simplest forms of matter, the electron positron pair, can and are routinely created out of EMR. If, as we will suggest later, EMR may actually be made up of vibrating dipoles, the creation process sounds like it could possibly be a such a vibrating dipole that broke apart either because it became too energetic, or was split by some extraneous force, and the two charges were able to spin off into the real world. Also we can and routinely do create and or change other particles by adding or subtracting electron, positrons and or neutrinos

I’m not trying to say that all of the particles of the standard model are bogus, nor that there aren’t perhaps something like gluons around somewhere, But I am convinced it’s all a lot simpler than those particle physicists would have us believe. But if it were, they wouldn’t get those billion dollar accelerator toys to play with, would they?