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 do 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.
A processing model suggests why mass varies radically but all charge is based on the electron. The charge of an electron is the processing left-over when one axis of a point of space overloads. Each channel can handle one Planck process, and the photons colliding contribute twice that, so the excess left over can’t exceed one Planck process. If all mass arises from similar collisions, all charge must be a multiple of the electron’s charge.
In contrast mass, as the net processing done, isn’t limited like this because processing can interfere. Interference occurs on a network when processes try to access the same resource at the same time. Like two cars arriving at an intersection, they can’t both use the same space and if they try to, they collide. This wastes time, so interference slows down road networks as it does computer networks. Cities use traffic light controls to reduce 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 stop and retry after a random time to avoid a repeat. Most of our networks let processes compete freely for resources because it is ten times faster, 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 when two photons try to access a channel that can only accept one, they interfere. One channel can’t accept two photons from the same side at the same time, so one must try again elsewhere. This is more work, or in this case more processing, which in this model is mass. The mass of a point entity then increases if its structure allows interference.
It follows that the mass increase caused by interference depends on how often photons try to access the same channel from the same direction. For an electron, two photon streams access the channels of a point from opposite directions, so there is no interference, but for a quark, photon streams intersecting in a plane sometimes access the same channel, and so interfere. Thus a quark’s mass, which is its net processing, is more than expected from adding just one quark and indeed it 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 better than gluons that don’t predict anything.
For example, in Table 4.1, down quarks have more than twice the mass of up quarks for no known reason. However, if an up quark is two photon tail sets colliding with a set of photon heads, the tails fill channels first, leaving one set of heads to compete for 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, which increases its mass.
Also in Table 4.1, quark and neutrino masses vary over a range of values when observed, but shouldn’t identical elementary particles have identical masses? The idea that all mass comes from a universal Lego set of particles is again flawed. 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 varies every day, even for the same number of cars. Processing interference could then explain not only the mass problem of physics but also why elementary particles have the the masses they do.