The atomic nucleus, once thought indivisible, is now known to consist of protons and neutrons, that in turn are made of quarks. A proton is two up quarks and a down quark, and a neutron is two down quarks and an up, so the odd quark charges add nicely to make one positive and the other neutral (Table 4.4). But how do unstable quarks combine to give stable protons and neutrons?
Table 4.5 shows how one quark can share photons with another to stablize it. In 4.5A, some free photons of Quark1 fill channels in the neutral axis of Quark2 to connect them. Note that the result produces no remainder in either quark. In 4.5B, this frees some photons in the second quark’s neutral axis to return the favor, to further connect the quarks. Being now connected, photons in Quark2 now start occupying the free channels of Quark1 until its free axis is full. Again, this sharing doesn’t alter the charge of either quark, but the result is that both axes are now complete and so stable (Table 4.5C). Photon sharing then stabilizes Quark1 by filling the channels of its free axis.
This completes the first quark, then the second quark can fill its free axis by linking to a third quark, that can fill its free axis by linking to the neutral axis of the first. In Figure 4.13, quarks in a triangle structure share photons to all become stable, giving a proton or neutron depending on the up/down quark mix. Now what binds the quarks isn’t magical gluons from space but photon sharing that pulls rather than pushes them together.
What then are the standard model’s red, blue, and green colors? Each quark has to orientate differently to connect in a triangle, so these charges are just orientations. In a world of inert particles, every change needs an agent cause, but in a world of quantum events, change occurs naturally every cycle. A photon tries to occupy any channel it can, and if it fails because another got there first, it just tries again. No predefined plan or guiding forces are needed because the free-for-all tries every option, including different quark orientations.
To illustrate this, imagine pouring wine on a stack of empty glasses. When the water fills one glass, it just flows on to the next, until every glass is full. Nothing directs this activity or decides which water goes in which glass, yet they always fill. Now suppose that when every glass is full, the weight restarts the system, so all the glasses empty and a new pouring cycle begins. Likewise, photons try to fill every channel they can until a network overload restarts the cycle.
In general, the quantum world tries every option until a stable new entity forms, so protons, neutrons, electrons, and neutrinos all formed based on one principle, the law of all action. Conversely, unstable results that exist momentarily then decay, are like species that don’t survive, irrelevant to the ongoing evolution. Seeing matter as inert particles that only change when forced to is like the old tabula rasa theory, that children are blank slates upon which we write. Psychologists no longer believe this (Pinker, 2002), so why do physicists think the whole universe is a blank slate? The quantum flux pushes itself around, with no need for invisible particles from imaginary fields.
To recap, quarks share photons in a triangle structure to form protons and neutrons that are stable, and this evolution occurs naturally, not based on virtual gluons spawned by a strong field. How then does this model explain the weak field that the standard model also proposes?