In Table 4.1, electrons, quarks, and neutrinos have family generations, each like the last but heavier. An electron has a muon elder brother of the same charge but two hundred times heavier, and its tau eldest brother is three and a half thousand times heavier. Up and down quarks also have heavier charm and strange quarks, and massive top and bottom quarks, but after three generations, no more. The standard model describes these generations but doesn’t explain:
1. Why do family generations occur?
2. Why are there only three generations, then no more?
3. Why are higher generations so heavy?
Figure 4.26. Electron generations as dimension repeats
In contrast, photon matter structures explain why family generations occur. If an electron fills the channels of one axis, a muon could be the same on two axes, and a taon on three (Figure 4.26). All are still point entities, and no more generations occur because space only has three dimensions.
Why then are muons and taons so heavy? The photons of an electron arrive from opposite directions so they don’t compete for channels, just fill them. However the photons of a muon arrive at right angles so they compete for the channels between them, giving interference that increases mass. A taon with photons colliding on three orthogonal axes has even more interference and hence mass. It is massive because interference can cumulate, just as on roads one delay can cause another to hold up traffic for hours. In this family, higher generations are heavier because they increase interference, and it has three members because our space has only three dimensions.
Yet if a muon is an electron collision doubled, why doesn’t it have a minus two charge? It does, but we can only measure charge one axis at a time, and after each measurement the system resets. On any one axis, a muon’s charge is minus one because the other remainder is in an orthogonal dimension.
This model lets the three generations of electrons reflect the dimensions of space, and neutrinos are the same, but the quark planar structure can’t simply repeat in three dimensions. However, the triangles up two up quarks could form two sides of a pyramid, to give a charm quark of the same charge but more mass by interference. Two down quarks could do the same for a strange quark pyramid. Top and bottom quarks would then fill three sides of a pyramid, to occupy all the channels of a point, with much more interference and hence mass.
In conclusion, the generations of electrons, neutrinos, and quarks are possible by the three dimensions of space, and their increased mass by the increased interference this produces.
Charge neutrality is that charge comes in equal positive and negative amounts. The earth is charge neutral, as is our galaxy, and the universe seems the same, but if matter arose complete and perfect, as Venus did from the sea, why balance its charge accessory? Why make a universe with equal electrons and protons but twice as many down as up quarks?
The alternative is that it wasn’t made but evolved. Quantum events repeat at a fantastic rate so whatever can change will do do sooner or later. The evolution of matter tried every option to discover what is stable. After the initial chaos, electrons, neutrinos, and quarks survived by their stability, and the first atom formed because a proton and an electron survive better together than apart. An electron around a nucleus shields it from neutrino strikes and a nucleus holds electrons in orbit so they don’t fly off. Atoms then evolved with equal protons and electrons because that is stable.
This suggests that our universe is charge neutral because matter is made of atoms that are neutral by evolution, not design. Evolution explains charge neutrality better than the assumption that it was just made so.
Quantum theory describes entities that spread in a variety of ways and choose where they collapse, so they can evolve stability, which equates to the survival of biological evolution. In contrast, the standard model calls the choice implied by quantum theory randomness, and focuses on transient particles like the Higgs that aren’t stable at all. Physics needs a better model than one that denies both quantum theory and evolution.
A proton’s charge is one, the simple sum of its constituent quark charges, but it has a hundred times their mass. Charge adds when quarks combine but mass multiplies a hundredfold, so why? The standard model attributes the extra mass to the gluons it says bind them, but how can massless gluons make mass? And if they do, why don’t they increase charge as well? The mass problem is that the standard model can’t explain why its particles have the masses that they do:
“… though the actual value of the basic electric charge … remains a theoretical mystery … all other charges found in the universe are … multiples of this value. Nothing like this appears to be the case for rest-mass, and the underlying reason for the particular values of the rest-masses of … particle types is completely unknown.” (Penrose, 2010), p153.
However a processing model can explain why mass varies but charge doesn’t. An electron’s charge is the processing left-over when the channels of a point of space overload. Each channel can handle one Planck process and the colliding photons contribute twice that, so the left over can’t exceed one Planck process. If all mass arises from similar collisions, all charge is then a multiple of the electron charge.
In contrast mass, as the net processing done, isn’t limited like this because processing can interfere. Interference occurs when network processes try to access the same resource at the same time. Road networks also have interference, as if two cars at an intersection try to use the same space they collide. This wastes time, so interference slows down road networks as it does computer networks. Roads use traffic lights to avoid collisions but on computer networks, this was found to be inefficient. Instead, protocols like Ethernet let processes access network resources freely, and if a collision is detected, they just try again after a random time, to avoid a repeat. This protocol is ten times faster than using controls, so the quantum network is expected to be the same.
The quantum network is then a first-come-first-served system where photons compete for channels as we compete for roads, but with no traffic lights, so if two photons try to access a channel that can only handle one, they interfere. One channel can’t handle two photons from the same direction at once, so one must try again elsewhere. Interference then increases processing, which in this model is mass.
The mass increase caused by interference then depends on how many photons compete for channels, which in turn depends on the photon structure. For an electron, two photon streams access the same channels from opposite directions with no interference, so all its mass comes from its photons. But quark photon streams intersect at an angle, so they will compete for channels and hence interfere. If an electron is two photon streams colliding and a quark is three, one might expect quarks to have 50% more mass, but thanks to interference, a quark has about ten times the mass of an electron.
For a proton, the channel interference is even greater. Every time two photons compete for the same channel they interfere, which increases the processing that is mass. Interference then explains why a proton has more mass than its quark constituents without the need for gluons.
Processing interference can now explain the masses observed. For example, in Table 4.1, down quarks have over twice the mass of up quarks for no known reason. Now if an up quark is two photon tails colliding with one set of photon heads, and the tails fill channels first, leaving one set of heads to fill the remaining channels. In contrast, for a down quark, one tail set gets first access, leaving two sets of photon heads to fight over the rest, giving more interference and thus mass.
Also, the quark masses of Table 4.1 vary over a range of values when observed, but shouldn’t identical elementary particles have the same mass? In contrast, this model lets quark masses vary because each observation is a new event that can unfold differently, just as the rush-hour traffic delay can vary every day despite the same number of cars. Processing interference then explains not only the mass problem of physics, but also why its particles have the masses they do.
If the laws of physics varied with position, each new point would need new rules but, in our universe, gravity works on Mars as it does on earth. This spatial symmetry is basic to physics but neutrinos violate it because they always spin left-handed. This asymmetry isn’t reflected in the laws of physics, so as Pauli said:
“I cannot believe God is a weak left hander” (Lederma & Teresi, 2012), p256.
What is spin-handedness? If you point your left thumb forward, the fingers of your hand curl in a left-handed spin, but for your right thumb forward, the fingers curl in a right-handed spin. Figure 4.25 shows how left and right-handed screws differ, and particles also spin differently as they move.
Particles also change their spin when they reverse direction, so if both your hands move forward, they spin differently, but if one hand moves backwards, they spin the same. Reversing direction reverses spin, so reversing an electron’s direction should make it spin the other way, and electrons do indeed spin both ways.
By spatial symmetry, this rule should also apply to neutrinos but they always spin left, and anti-neutrinos always spin right. Electrons spin both ways but their brother neutrinos don’t, and the standard model has no idea why, so it calls the left-handedness of neutrinos a deep mystery that contradicts spatial symmetry.
Pauli couldn’t believe that God is a left-hander but what if the first event was left-handed? The first photon had to spin left or right, and apparently it went left, and made a universe of matter not anti-matter. Yet reversing an electron’s direction reverses its spin, so why aren’t neutrinos the same?
The mass of an electron is based on photons colliding from opposite directions, so in a physical event, it can spin either way, randomly. Changing its direction reverses both spins, so it still spins either way.
However, the mass of a neutrino comes from only one photon set, so it always spins left. Reversing its direction changes its phase, so its mass now comes from the other set of photons that also spin left. When an electron reverses direction, its mass origin doesn’t change, but when a neutrino reverses direction, another set of left-spin photons create its mass. Neutrinos then always spin left because when they reverse direction, the source of their tiny mass changes. The only way to change the spin of a neutrino is to make it an anti-neutrino.
If anti-neutrinos are neutrino-processing in reverse, then they always spin right. Spatial symmetry requires the mirror image of a particle to be the same particle but for a wave on a surface, this doesn’t apply. It follows that the asymmetry that made our universe matter not anti-matter is why neutrinos always spin left and anti-neutrinos always spin right.
All the elementary entities of quantum mechanics spin but matter only half spins. Spinning an object once in our space returns its original state but doing the same to an electron only half-turns it. It is said to half spin because it takes two turns to return it to its original state, and quarks are the same.
Yet an electron is a dimensionless point that shouldn’t spin at all, so particle physics gave up trying to understand quantum spin in physical terms:
“We simply have to give up the idea that we can model an electron’s structure at all. How can something with no size have mass? How can something with no structure have spin?” (Oerter, 2006), p95.
In contrast, we model an electron as a point particle with a photon structure that can spin. Physically, a photon is a one-dimensional ray but quantum theory says it vibrates into a complex dimension outside our space. This gives it a two-dimensional structure, like a piece of paper, so it can spin on its movement axis (Note 1). However the photons in an electron extend in two dimensions not one, so it can spin in two ways at right angles to each other. That quantum space lets photons vibrate in orthogonal directions (Note 2) is why a filter that blocks horizontally polarized light doesn’t block vertically polarized light (3.7.2).
Why then do electrons half spin? If an electron’s photons vibrate in two directions at right angles, only half of them will be visible for any line of view as the rest, like thin paper sheets, can’t be seen edge-on. If one photon is 100% visible, another at right angles will be 0%, for one that projects 99%, another will project only 1%, and so on, hence two spins are needed to turn all the photons of an electron.
In our space, one spin returns any object to its original state because spin needs one axis and two dimensions to rotate, which is three dimensions. But for electrons in four-dimensional quantum space, one rotation only turns half its photons, and another is needed to turn the other half. It takes two of our spins to return an electron to its original state, so they only half spin in our terms, and all matter entities are the same.
Note 1. For a photon moving in direction X, its quantum amplitude Q vibrates in plane QX, so the structure QX can spin.
Note 2. The orthogonal directions X, Y, Z of space give three orthogonal planes XY, YZ and XZ. A fourth dimension Q adds three more orthogonal planes Q1X, Q2Y, Q2Z, where Q1, Q2 and Q3 are at right angles.
Aristotle saw an earth made mainly of matter but astronomers today see a cosmos of space and light where matter is rare. Our universe is first space, then light, and matter is a distant third in the scheme of things. In matter terms, space is nothing at all, but for a network it is a big investment, as is filling it with light, while the cost of the few specks of matter we call stars is tiny by comparison. For us, matter is primary, but in our universe, it is tertiary, after space and light. Matter is the exception not the rule, so let us revisit what still puzzles us about it today.
The periodic table organizes the elements of matter based on electron shells. Each row of elements represents an electron shell that ends when it is full, with an inert atom like Neon. Neon doesn’t exchange electrons with other atoms because its outer shell is full, but other atoms do. In chemical reactions, from acidity to oxidation, atoms exchange electrons to complete their outer shells. Stable molecules form when atoms with extra electrons donate them to those with a deficit, to complete their electron shells.
The current description of electron shells is based on two quantum numbers:
1.Shell n (1, 2, 3 …). Initially the orbit radius.
2.Sub-shelll(s, p, d …). Has no agreed meaning.
The shells and sub-shells, deduced from spectroscopic analysis, are shown in Table 4.7, where sub-shells s, p, d, f, g, and h contain 2, 6, 10, 14, 18, and 22 electrons respectively. Bigger shell orbits fit more electrons, so doubling the first orbit quadruples its area to allow eight electrons, tripling it allows eighteen, quadrupling it thirty-two, and so on. Electrons then add to atoms based first on shells, then on available sub-shells, in order. Hence, the first row of the periodic table has two elements, and the second has eight elements, Lithium to Neon, but then there is a problem.
The third row of the periodic table is still just eight elements, including the carbon and oxygen of life, and the expected eighteen elements only occur in the next row. Quantum numbers predicted periodic table rows of 2, 8, 18, 32, 50, and 72, but instead the rows were 2, 8, 8, 18, 18, 32, and 32. So in the by now well-established practice, theory was fitted to fact by tweaking the model so the sub-shells fill in this odd order:
Note that the third sub-shell 3d is pushed down to row 4, so generations of chemistry students had to learn that Argon completes the third shell without one of its sub-shells, which denies what a sub-shell is. If they asked why, the answer was because it is, as it must be for a model fitted to the facts.
In contrast, instead of rules based on abstract numbers, let electrons be waves with the properties:
1. Shell. The circumference around the atom nucleus that allows the electron’s wavelength.
2. Sub-shell. The harmonicsthat the shell circumference allows.
3. Direction. The wave direction, where waves at right angles don’t interfere.
In music, a wave harmonic arises when a wave fundamental lets other waves occur as well, so the fundamental and its harmonics overlap. A given electron shell can then also host harmonics, or sub-shells. Figure 4.23 shows a fundamental that has harmonics, where the number at the right is how many waves the harmonic allows.
Figure 4.23. Wave harmonics for a length
Sub-shells as wave harmonics then explains the rows of the periodic table as follows:
1. The first shell is the circumference that lets a wave vibrate up and down on alternate cycles (Figure 4.23a). In this model, light has a minimum wavelength that can’t be reduced, so there is only one fundamental, called the 1s sub-shell. But a spherical orbit allows two directions at right angles, so it allows two waves at right angles that don’t interfere. The first shell then has one or two electron waves, so the first periodic table row is Hydrogen and the inert gas Helium.
2. The second shell circumference is double that of the first, and allows harmonics. The first is a fundamental that alternates up and down, giving a 2s sub-shell that can hold two electrons. The second harmonic (Figure 4.23b) allows two more waves at once, which for two directions is four electrons, and the complex harmonics of two-dimensional waves seen on a drum surface allow two more electrons, giving six in total for the 2p sub-shell. The second shell then allows eight electron waves, giving the second row of the periodic table, Lithium to Neon.
3. The third shell circumference is triple that of the first, so it hasa one and a half times the first wave-length. This again allows 3s and 3p sub-shells but a third harmonic can’t occur. A bipolar (up-down) wave can vibrate once on a string half its wavelength, and twice on a string of its wavelength, but a string one and a half times that gives nothing more, so there is no 3d sub-shell. Adding a half-wavelength adds no new harmonics, so the third shell, like the second, only accommodates eight electrons, giving eight elements in the periodic table third row, it has.
4. The fourth shell is a two-wavelength circumference that quadruples the first. This allows a new harmonic that accommodates four waves, which for two directions is eight electrons (Figure 4.23c), plus two complex harmonics is ten. The 4s,4p, and 4d sub-shells then give 18 elements in the periodic table fourth row, as observed.
5. The fifth shell, like the third, allows no new harmonic, so its 5s, 5p, and 5d sub-shells repeat the previous total of eighteen, giving the periodic table fifth row, again as observed.
6. The sixth shell allows a fourth f harmonic with six electrons (Figure 4.23d) which doubled is twelve, plus two complex harmonics is fourteen. This plus eighteen from the s, p, and d harmonics gives the thirty-two elements of the sixth periodic table row that include the Lanthanide series.
7. The seventh shell again has no new harmonic so it also has 32 elements, including the periodic table Actinide series.
An electron wave model based on sub-shell harmonics then fills the periodic table as follows:
Now the third shell has no 3d sub-shell and the fourth shell has no 4f sub-shell, so electrons fill shells and sub-shells in a logical order. Compare this to the strange order implied by quantum numbers (Figure 4.24), where by Klechkowski’s rule, the 3d sub-shell fills after the 4s sub-shell.
Electrons now fill shells based not on invented numbers but on how waves behave, where:
1. Shell. The first shell circumference is the minimum electron wavelength and larger shells multiply this.
2. Sub-shell. Sub-shells are wave harmonics, where s is the first, p is the second, and so on.
3. Direction. The great circle axis orientation, where orthogonal waves don’t interfere.
Electrons then fill in the order shown in the periodic table, based on:
1. Shell. Each shell is a bigger orbit, which for an electron with mass requires more processing and so more energy. Shells then fill in the order 1, 2, 3 … with smaller orbits first.
2. Harmonic. Each new sub-shell harmonic is a shorter wavelength, so it again needs more energy. Sub-shells then fill in the order s, p, d … with lower harmonics first.
Electron shells and sub-shells based on wave harmonics predict the periodic table better than quantum numbers, as a causal model is better than one that must be tweaked to work.
In 1909, Rutherford described the atom as a nucleus around which electrons orbit as planets do the sun, but while planets occasionally collide, electrons never do. A lead atom has 82 electrons whizzing around in close proximity but is stable for billions of years, so why don’t they collide?
A particle in orbit is also accelerating, so it should lose energy and spiral inwards, but again electrons never do, so why don’t the laws of physics apply in atoms? The standard model says virtual photons shield electrons from the nuclear attraction but what then keeps them in orbit? It also invented the miracle of wave-particle duality, that lets electrons be particles in space but waves in atoms. Physicists know that a particle isn’t a wave, and wave isn’t a particle, but this lets them choose the right equation. But how does the electron know to be a particle in space but a wave in the atom?
Apparently, electrons know Pauli’s exclusion principle, that they can overlap like waves if they have different quantum numbers. Quantum numbers were invented after the fact, to let electrons co-exist in atomic orbits, but they aren’t based on or compatible with any physical property.
However, electrons as one-dimensional matter can be like matter on one dimension but like light on the other two. Their matter dimension is why electrons in space move slower than light and collide like particles, but on the two-dimensional surface of an atomic orbit, they can be entirely wavelike. The miracle of wave-particle duality isn’t a miracle at all but based on the matter-light duality of electrons. A particle orbiting a center needs an agent to stop it falling in but a wave on a circumference that fits its wavelength can pulse forever. Electrons then never collide in an atom because they are waves vibrating at different wavelengths (see next).
Electrons are then particles in space but waves in atoms because they are one-dimensional matter.
The first atom, Hydrogen, is one proton and one electron, and the next, Helium, has two protons and two electrons but its nucleus also has two neutrons, and no-one knows why. Each higher element adds not just another proton and electron, but also one or more neutrons, so:
“… all the stable nuclei have more neutrons than protons (or equal numbers), and the heavier nuclei are increasingly neutron-rich.” (Marburger, 2011), p254.
Current theories don’t explain why heavy nuclei need more neutrons to be stable (Figure 4.22). The shell model of electrons doesn’t work, because some nuclei aren’t spherical. The standard model doesn’t help because if gluons hold the protons together, why are neutrons needed? The idea that the nucleus is protons and neutrons sitting side-by-side, like fruits in a bowl, also predicts nothing.
However if a proton is a closed quark triangle bound by photon sharing, that triangle can open up and recombine in bigger closed string that satisfies the same rules, namely a closed string with the internal angles of an equilateral triangle.
The Helium nucleus, of two protons and two neutrons, is then one quark string held together by photon sharing, so it has a unity that particles in a bowl don’t have. In the fruit-bowl model, a Helium nucleus is four proton and neutron particles glued together by gluons but in this model, it is single quark string where each link bends the string 60º until it connects back to its base. Higher nuclei can then form in the same way.
This then explains why higher nuclei have neutrons. Positive protons that repel can’t come side-by-side to share photons, so neutrons are needed as buffers. When the nuclear string forms, neutrons have to buffer the same-charge protons, which needs at least as many neutrons as protons, as observed (Figure 4.22). For example, a Helium nucleus of two protons needs two neutron buffers between the protons in the closed string.
Closed quark strings will be compact and nearly spheres, as observed, but large nuclei may need more neutrons to avoid fold-back loci that happen to make protons adjacent. This also explains why some nuclei are more stable:
“Nuclei with either protons or neutron equal to certain “magic” numbers (2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, 126) are particularly stable.” (Marburger, 2011), p253.
Atomic nuclei as closed quark strings will fold in space to form shapes as proteins do, so the nuclei with magic numbers are just those that produce symmetric shapes that are more stable.
The quark string model explains what a fruit bowl model doesn’t, namely why nuclei need neutrons as well as protons, why some need more, and why some nuclei are more stable.
We once thought that we were always as we are now, but now know that animals had to evolve for millions of years to become human. Likewise, the universe we see wasn’t always as it is now. We might think that matter always was but even now, stars are producing complex atoms from simpler ones by the process of nucleosynthesis. The elements of the periodic table (Figure 4.21) had to evolve, and so did we, so the evolution of life is just continuing the evolution of matter.
