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.
Mass varies radically for no known reason but all charge is based on the electron, and this model suggests why. The charge of an electron is the processing left-over when the channels of a point overload one axis. Each channel can handle one Planck process, and the photons colliding contribute twice that, so the result can’t exceed the value of one Planck process. If all mass arises from similar collisions, all charge must be a multiple of the electron’s charge.
However mass, as the total processing done, isn’t limited like this because processing can interfere. On networks, interference occurs when processes try to access the same resource at the same time. It is like two cars arriving at an intersection, they can’t both use the same space and if they do, they collide unless they stop to negotiate. Either way, time is wasted, so interference slows down road networks as it does computer networks. Cities use traffic lights to reduce collisions but on computer networks, such controls were 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. Almost all 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 road use, but with no traffic lights, so they can interfere. This occurs when two photons try to access a channel that can only accept one. One channel can’t accept two photons from the same direction at the same time, so they have to try again elsewhere, which is more work, or in this case more processing that in this model is mass. The mass of a point entity then increases if its structure results in more channel 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 photon stream, and indeed it has about ten times the mass of an electron.
For a proton, the channel interference is more, so it has more mass than its quark constituents. Every time two photons try to access the same channel they have to try again, which increases the processing needed, and that is its mass. That mass is the processing needed to fill the channels of an entity explains the mass of protons without recourse to magical gluons. The mass problem of physics is then explained by channel interference.
For example, in Table 4.1, down quarks are more than twice as heavy as up quarks for an unknown reason. But if an up quark is two photon tail sets colliding with one set of photon heads, the tails fill channels first, leaving one set of heads to compete for the remaining channels. However in a down quark, one tail set gets first access, leaving two sets of photon heads to fight over the rest, giving more interference, which doubles their mass.
Also in Table 4.1, the masses of quarks and neutrinos vary over a range of values when observed, but shouldn’t identical elementary particles have identical masses? The standard model assumption that all mass comes from basic particles, like a universal Lego set, is again flawed. In contrast, this model lets quark masses vary by interference. Each quark observation is a new event, so its mass varies because it interferes differently, just as the rush-hour traffic delay varies every day, even for the same number of cars. Processing interference then explains not only the mass problem of physics, but also the masses of elementary particles in general.