If matter exists, it should break down into basic bits that smashing it apart will reveal, so for almost a century particle physics has collided matter in accelerators to find what doesn’t break down further, which it calls elementary particles (see Figure).
Yet when pressed on what these particles actually are, experts retreat to equations that don’t describe particles at all. This bait-and-switch, talking about particles but giving wave equations, is now normal. The equations describe quantum waves not particles, but they aren’t real so it doesn’t matter! Feynman explains how this double-speak began:
“In fact, both objects (electrons and photons) behave somewhat like waves and somewhat like particles. In order to save ourselves from inventing new words such as wavicles, we have chosen to call these objects particles.” (Richard Feynman, 1985), p85.
But imagine if an engineer said “This vehicle has two wheels like a bicycle and an engine like a car, so to avoid inventing a new word like motorcycle, we have chosen to call it a car”. Who would accept that? Physicists with accelerators see everything as a particle, just as a boy with a hammer sees everything as a nail, but the evidence suggests otherwise because what was found was:
1. Ephemeral. The tau particle of the standard model is actually a million, million, millionth of a second energy spike. A lightning bolt is long-lived compared to that, and it isn’t a particle, so why is a tau? Shouldn’t particles live longer than that?
2. Transformable. When a neutron decays into a proton and an electron, three elementary particles become four, so how are they basic elements if they transform?
3. Massive. The top quark has the same mass as a gold nucleus of 79 protons and 118 neutrons, but why does the cosmic Lego-set need such a big building block? It is no surprise that this so-called elementary particle plays no part in the function of the universe we see.
4. Unstable. If a top quark is elementary, why does it instantly decay? Calling what decays elementary is a strange use of the term.
Entities that decay and transform into each other aren’t elementary because the basic elements of everything shouldn’t do that, and energy events that last less than a millionth of a second aren’t particles because particles should last longer than that. It follows that the elementary particles of the standard model are neither elementary nor particles.
Calling them building blocks is no better, as imagine building a house from bricks that only exist for an instant, or decay into other bricks, or transform when combined? Of all these building blocks, only the electron is stable alone, and it adds hardly anything to the mass of an atom.
In Figure 4.18, the particles of the standard model divide into fermions and virtual bosons that cause forces. This, we are told, is the end of the story because accelerators can’t break matter down further, but how do particles that exist at a point take up space? Apparently, virtual particles from fields keep them apart, but this theory can’t be tested because virtual particles are unobservable.
The particle model satisfies neither logic nor science, but survives because we don’t look behind the curtain of physical events. Just as the wizard of Oz told Dorothy: “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”, who was the real cause of events, today’s wizards tell us to ignore the waves of quantum theory that actually create all physical events.