PHYSICS OF CREATION: LECTURE NO. 6
11 KEY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSE
Questions posed by the committee on the physics of the universe set up by the National Academy of Sciences
Copyright, Harold Aspden, 2001
In their search for answers to what they regard as the most fundamental questions concerning the nature of the universe, a panel of US physicists and astronomers plans to report towards the end of this year 2001 on how they “prioritize the questions” and make recommendations as to the funding needed to guide them in their search for answers. It is here submitted that one of those funding recommendations should be to procure for each panel member a copy of this author’s book “Aether Science Papers” for reasons which are explained below.
INTRODUCTION
On January 18, 2001 the U.K. Institute of Physics alerted their members to a news item bearing the title: ’11 key questions about the universe’. Its internet reference is http://physicsweb.org/article/news/5/1/7. It said that the combined skills of particle physicists and astrophysicists would be needed to answer 11 fundamental questions identified in a report “From quarks to the cosmos” by the committee on the physics of the universe set up by the National Academy of Sciences in USA.
The 11 questions were stated in the following order:
* What is dark matter?
* What are the masses of the neutrinos, and how have they shaped the evolution of the universe?
* Are there additional spacetime dimensions?
* What is the nature of the dark energy?
* Are protons unstable?
* How did the universe begin?
* Did Einstein have the last word on gravity?
* How do cosmic accelerators work and what are they accelerating?
* Are there new states of matter at exceedingly high density and temperature?
* Is a new theory of matter and light needed at the highest energies?
* How were the elements from iron to uranium made?
It seems that the committee is keen to bring physicists and astronomers together to tackle these questions, given “the enormous leaps in technology – including the exponential growth of computing speed” that have occurred over the last twenty years.
Now, as someone who has been interested in physics at the fundamental level where it is concerned with the creation of matter and the key regulating features which govern the properties of matter, I find this list of questions rather misleading. Some questions (those concerning ‘dark’ matter and ‘dark’ energy) have no meaning given that other questions in the list remain unanswered. It seems that those compiling this list have chosen to ignore a very important question which they have not even mentioned. This is simply the question as to whether G, the constant of gravitation, is in fact the same on a universal scale, regardless of its range of action or the concentration of mass energy involved in the interaction. Nor do they include that very obvious question which surely warrants attention in their debate: “Is there an aether and, if so, how does it manifest itself?”
I intend, in this Physics Lecture, to show that what I have already of published record provides specific answers to those questions on the list which really matter and I will deal with these first before commenting on the other questions in the above list of eleven. The first question I will address is the fifth in the list: “Are protons unstable?”.
ARE PROTONS UNSTABLE?
Atomic physicists have somehow come to live with the notion that atomic nuclei comprise a composition of protons and neutrons, accepting that all but the heaviest atoms are stable and that neutrons in their free state decay within a mean lifetime of the order of 1,000 seconds. Logically, given that a free proton seems to be stable, it having no measurable decay period, and given that a neutron is only marginally heavier than the proton and that its decay product is essentially a proton partnered by an electron, I interpret this as implying that the free neutron is really a proton having acquired a leptonic entourage. Leptonic forms, whether of the electron-positron variety or whether muons or taons, are part of the hidden underworld of space giving basis for quantum-electrodynamic activity. However, the point here is that the proton is the core constituent of the neutron. Consequently, matter which is wholly composed of atoms is more than 99% proton in form and, generally speaking, matter is stable, as are protons. The neutron does, in my opinion, not exist within the atomic nucleus. It is created only when a proton is forced out of the atomic nucleus along with that leptonic entourage just mentioned. That said, we can now examine the question: ‘Are protons unstable?’.
Well, the simple answer is: “Yes, but the decay product is in fact the creation of a new proton!”. The reason is equally simple. There is an underlying energy field throughout space which sits in equilibrium with itself to form the sub-quantum underworld that we can only sense by its interplay with matter. The universe, meaning the matter of which it is formed, was created when that equilibrium was disturbed in some way. As just stated, that matter comprises, almost wholly, nothing other than protons and so we can be sure that the energy that was deployed in creating the material universe went into creating protons together with a relatively small amount of that energy being deployed into creating leptons of the electron family. There is then nothing more logical than for an event which somehow destroys the proton to shed the mass energy and so prime the local energy field locally, only to find that the influence which preserves energy equilibrium as between the quantum underworld and matter then recreates the proton and so deludes us into thinking that the proton is stable when, in fact, it is subject to the same decay processes as other elementary particle forms.
The question must then be recast as: “What is the nature of that decay process?” The answer is of published record and the physics is the same as that involved in the theoretical derivation of the neutron lifetime. Indeed, it is the same physics that applies to the actual process by which the proton is created. That sea of energy in the quantum underworld involves the ongoing creation and annihilation of muon pairs and the probability of these merging in a certain way is what governs the creation of the proton and so its mass. Similarly the probability of this muonic field getting involved with the neutron and its leptonic entourage or with the proton itself determines the action which triggers decay.
Now, of course, these are mere statements and it needs detailed analysis of the physics involved to give this quantitative support, and that is why one needs to refer to the first of the appended papers in my book “Aether Science Papers”, along with the supporting references. The paper, first published in 1986, is entitled: “The Theoretical Nature of the Neutron and the Deuteron”, but it further shows the theoretical derivation of the proton-electron mass ratio and the lifetime of the neutron, both in remarkable agreement with their experimentally measured values.
In summary, those concerned with the question as to whether protons are stable should face up to the fact that the answer lies in explaining how the proton is created initially as this can explain why, in decaying, the energy shed is deployed in a regenerative process which creates a new proton virtually at the seat of demise of the original proton, so disguising the decay and leading us into thinking it is a stable particle form.
HOW DID THE UNIVERSE BEGIN?
This is the sixth question listed in the Academy of Sciences report. One may now well ask how the learned committee mustered to define and then answer such questions can themselves begin such a task. Certainly I, in spite of all my knowledge of physics, would not know how to set about this quest, given that one really needs to know first and with certainty what existed originally in the space now occupied by the universe we see around us.
So I will assume that question can be worded rather differently. Remember that physics is about the order of things, compliance with laws of Nature and uniformity of action with an essential underlying connection between all the elements of the universe. In the absence of order there is no language by which one can express an answer to such a fundamental question as “How did the universe begin?”. So the word ‘ordered’ is implicit and the question is better expressed as “How did the ordered universe begin?”, a question which has the equally implicit answer “It came from a state of disorder, a condition in which energy is distributed throughout space, a state of chaos.”
The answer we seek is that of explaining how order giving basis for the laws of physics was distilled, as it were, from a state of chaos. I cannot imagine how that panel of US physicists and astronomers can sit around a table and debate this problem, unless someone on that committee has already had a flash of inspiration of the kind I experienced in my emergence from my Ph.D. research concerning energy anomalies in ferromagnetism.
Digressing for a moment, to explain this, take note that in that period, the early part of the 1950s, I did not accept that the conventional explanation of the ferromagnetic state gave a sufficient insight into the phenomenon. My research project was essentially an experimental pursuit and, although it was in no way part of my Ph.D. work, I spent many an evening doing some calculations on assumed atomic structures and the electric and electromagnetic interaction forces between atomic nuclei and electrons in orbit around those nuclei. What eventually emerged from this pursuit was, firstly, an insight into the law of electrodynamics effective between discrete electric charges in motion as opposed to the conventional version of the law which applies where at least one of the charge forms is smeared into an effective closed circuital current flow. Secondly, bear in mind that this electrodynamic law had been used to calculate the forces between iron atoms in the ferromagnetic state in order to establish the value of the mechanical stress condition associated with that ferromagnetic state. The analysis suggested that the criterion for ferromagnetism to exist was whether or not that stress was below the rupture strength of the material and whether or not the associated strain energy density was lower than or exceeded the magnetic energy density of the ferromagnetic state. However, the onward step from that analysis was the portrayal of an ordered system having electrons featuring in a cubic structure and which involved a synchrony of electron motion. From this came the inspiration that heralded a unified field theory.
If space itself had an analogous form with its Maxwell displacement current properties seated in a cubic structure comprising some fundamental electric charge form, then my analysis had several important implications. These were:
1. Vast regions of space filled with a chaotic energy system, on cooling through a certain temperature (by analogy the Curie temperature in iron) would develop order and crystallize into a domain pattern (by analogy with magnetic domains in iron).
2. A state analogous to ferromagnetism would be set up within those domains, a state by which electrodynamic force action sets up forces of mutual attraction between the elements constituting that domain.
3. The attraction forces set up within this space medium would actually be a manifestation of gravitation, from which one concludes that the onset of order in space as its energy form cooled through a critical temperature would switch the force of gravity on as an event accompanying the transition from disorder to order.
4. The model developed in dealing with the ferromagnetic problem gave an insight into the structure adopted by the space medium, but for reasons involving energy potential and avoidance of a negative energy potential condition for space itself, the space structure had to be simple cubic rather than body-centred cubic as applies in iron.
5. The resulting model of space, when analysed for its reaction in storing energy exhibited angular momentum properties with quantum features and gave basis for an understanding of the photon backed by rigorous derivation of the value of Planck’s constant, in its relationship to light speed and unitary electric charge theory. The fine-structure constant, a dimensionless quantity calculable from the geometry of the space structure, emerged and by its comparison with the experimental value provided the convincing validation of this theoretical analysis. I note that over the years which followed this effort of mine in the 1950s others were to outline a vague but somewhat similar scheme for what can only be described as the ‘crystalline aether’. In saying this I refer to a passage included at pp. 58 and 59 of my book ‘Aether Science Papers’ which I reproduce here:
If you feel that the ‘aether’ is not something one should take seriously and prefer to read about ‘electroweak theory’ then, to ease your thoughts as you begin to read the first of the selected fourteen papers, I quote from the opening three paragraphs of my 1983 paper entitled ‘Planar Boundaries of the Space-Time Lattice’.
‘Modern physical theory is tending to regard the vacuum medium as having structure somewhat analogous to that of crystalline materials. Thus we see WEISSKOPF [1] discussing quantum electroweak dynamics and asserting that the Higgs field implies that the vacuum has a certain fixed direction in isospace, namely that of the spinor associated with the Higgs field. WEISSKOPF states that the situation is like that of a ferromagnet, in which the direction in real space is determined as long as the energy transfers are smaller than the Curie energy.
This, of course, implies an ordered structure of the vacuum medium, a feature discussed at some length by REBBI [2] in an article entitled ‘The lattice theory of quark confinement’. REBBI refers to a 1974 proposal by WILSON that QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics) should be formulated on a cubic lattice, an array that divides space and time into discrete points, but is essentially an approximation to real space-time. The advantage is that this allows calculations to be made that would otherwise be impossible.
This author, in collaboration with Dr. D. M. Eagles [3], has advocated the analysis of a vacuum structure and shown how a value of the fine-structure constant correct to about one part in a million can be determined by a cubic lattice model of the vacuum. Further research on this model has now shown the essential need for a particular boundary condition imposed upon a physical portrayal of the vacuum state expressed in terms of electrical charge. It is in view of the current interest in lattice theory as applied to the vacuum field system that it seems appropriate to draw attention to what has been, to the author at least, a rather elusive consideration.
[1] V. C. WEISSKOPF: Physics Today, v. 34-11, p.69 (1981)
[2] C. REBBI: Scientific American, v.248, p.36 (1983)
[3] H. ASPDEN and D. M. EAGLES: Physics Letters A, v. 41, p.423 (1972).”This paper went on to explain why the storage of electric field energy in the vacuum (the aether) demands the presence of planar lattice boundaries, which implies a domain structure in space somewhat analogous to that found in ferromagnetic materials. The paper was written in 1983, a few weeks after I retired from my executive position with a multinational corporation to engage in a private research venture as a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at my local university.
The paper reference is Lettere al Nuovo Cimento, 38 243-246 (1983).
Reverting now to our original question, that of how the Universe began, the answer has emerged, in that the chaos of the prevailing surplus of energy permeating all space experienced a step transition as gravity came into being and caused that energy to cluster by forming stars. Each domain of space would nucleate its own star, owing to the gravity field being local to each such domain and there being domain boundaries with matter sitting on different sides of such boundaries not being subject to mutual gravitational attraction.
That energy would create protons and electrons, an ionized plasma, and, in coalescing under the action of gravity as resisted by electrostatic forces, this would result in atoms forming an embrionic star in each domain, which star would have initially a positive electric charge. The reason for this is that the proton-proton gravitational attraction is so much stronger than the electron-electron attraction. That residual positive core charge of the star would cause it to spin by sharing angular momentum with the coextensive sphere of structured space. The physics justifying this had emerged from the analysis of the effects of that state of sychrony already mentioned. Then eventually, as the stars evolved from this primordial state and move in relation to the domain boundaries, they could cluster somewhat, with several stars coming to share the same domain, leaving many domains unoccupied. The result is a disjointed chain-like interaction in the mutual gravity pull between stars and the development of galactic groupings with anomalous gravitational properties owing to the range of gravitational action being bounded within each local domain.
Suffice it, therefore, to say that the creation of the Universe as we know it began by the ‘switching-on’ of gravity and the key to understanding this is the unification of the phenomena of gravitation and electromagnetism, an insight into which comes from probing the mysteries of ferromagnetism.
SEVEN CURIOUS QUESTIONS!
Of the remaining questions there are but two that warrant special comment. The other seven are rather devious questions hardly of any significance. Consideration of those two questions will follow the observations now presented in this section.
The second and the fourth questions, “What is dark matter?” and “What is the nature of the dark energy?” ask for answers to something undefinable. Because astrophysicists think that the force of gravity has no limitation on its range of action at constant G, they interpret certain observations of the motion of remote stellar matter as being attributable to mass they cannot see. Then, instead of posing the question: “What is wrong with our understanding of gravitation?”, they ask one another to explain the invisible that they call ‘dark matter’. Surely they need to put their efforts into solving the mystery of gravitation first by explaining what determines G and so seeing what factors are limiting.
As I have indicated above the necessary theory exists and is of published record and I submit it is pertinent for me to ask the question: “Why has this theory been ignored?”.
The ninth and tenth questions, “Are there new states of matter at exceedingly high density and temperature?” and “Is a new theory of matter and light needed at the highest energies?” are also bound up with the same problem concerning gravity. Presumably these questions concern the black hole hypothesis. If the force of gravitational attraction can bring protons so close together that the force transcends their electrostatic force of repulsion, then I can see why the questions are asked. However, I have always assumed that physicists expect one day to understand how electrical action and gravitation can be unified into a common theory, as by gravitation being a special case of the mutual force of attraction we know is effective between two electric charges of the same polarity moving along side-by-side. One abandons hope of discovering a unified field theory if gravitation is assumed to be so dominant a force that it can overwhelm electric action. The notion of the black hole is mere hypothesis based on unwarranted extrapolation of theory unbounded by the experimental limitations on which it is founded. So, again, I say that we must understand gravity and its link with electromagnetism and explain what determines G, as by deducing the value of G as a function of the electromagnetic charge and mass of the electron, before wandering into the field of wild hypothesis and asking if a new theory is needed to explain what cannot be seen inside a fictitous ‘black hole’.
As to the eighth question: “How do cosmic accelerators work and what are they accelerating?”, well, if we cannot see something that is accelerating in the depths of outer space, there is no reason to pose the first part of this question and if we can see something then that has to be what is accelerating. So one can only assume that there is something to be seen in space that betrays acceleration without there being an obvious cause. Again, therefore, since something out there having mass and presumably radiating energy is moving at an accelerated rate, our attention is directed to gravitational force and induced electrical action.
In considering this question I would urge that some consideration be given to what I have said above about space comprising domains separated by boundaries that confine normal gravitational interaction to matter sharing a common domain. I offer the thought that adjacent domains could be regions in which matter in one domain sits alongside antimatter in an adjacent domain, meaning a reversal of charge polarity. I base this on matching a pattern of historic reversals of the geomagnetic field with a pattern set by the cosmic motion of the solar system taking body Earth through such a system of space boundaries. Such events leave a geological trace of major upheavals, sometimes with extinctions of living species, the possible consequence of the Earth’s gravity adapting to a few minutes transit through the boundary between two space domains. One may even wonder if there is a kind of antigravitational action between adjacent matter sitting on either side of a space domain boundary.
If you consider this you will see scope for a rather special circumstance when a star moving at its cosmic speed happens to approach such a space boundary at a very acute angle of incidence. The longer it takes to make the crossing, the greater the intrinsic forces tending to break the star into two. Maybe this is what we really see as a super nova, certainly an event in which cosmic accelerating forces are at work as anomalous gravitational action. Maybe also it is when a star crosses a space boundary that it sheds its planets and is active in creating heavier atoms, as I discuss further below in dealing with the last question.
The third and seventh questions both pertain to the notions of Albert Einstein: “Are there additional spacetime dimensions?” and “Did Einstein have the last word on gravity?”
The first of these questions leaves us in doubt in causing us to ask “Additional to what?” The word ‘spacetime’ is itself a presumptuous term if one is intent on engaging in a debate about the physics concerned with the nature of the universe. I am reminded by a conversation I once had at Cambridge with Dr. Sciama, the university don who supervised the Ph.D. research of Stephen Hawking. I was seeking to interest Dr. Sciama in my theory of the aether, stressing its quantum connection by its theoretical evaluation of the fine-structure constant and its relevance to gravitation. Nothing came from that conversation other than a comment which stands in my memory. Dr. Sciama said: “We all believe there is an aether but we never use that word; instead, we call it ‘spacetime’”. I may add that Dr. Sciama and I were both members of Trinity College, Cambridge and were awarded our Ph.D. degrees in the same year, 1954.
The point I make here is that play on words as between ‘aether’ and ‘spacetime’. To me, the aether, as my name for what exists as the medium permeating all space, has but three mutually orthogonal linear space dimensions and has an intrinsic state of cyclical motion, a universal sychrony, that acts as a clock and so determines time. ‘Spacetime’, on the other hand is a word I associate with Einstein’s theory of relativity, a notion which allows an observer to distort his vision so as to see what he wants to see, namely physical phenomena occurring with the close confines of a laboratory local to that observer and seemingly having no dependence on motion through space.
Most physicists regard ‘spacetime’ as having four dimensions, all mathematically dependent on length and time, but yet giving no picture by which ‘spacetime’ can be portrayed. So I even question the step from three to four space dimensions, without going beyond that in search of additional spacetime dimensions.
In answering this third question in the list I see only a “No” and would urge those pondering on whether space has more than three dimensions to take stock of what can be explained by staying in a three-dimensional space, particular the phenomenon of gravitation.
As to the seventh question as to whether Einstein had the last word on gravity, I suggest that physicists should look more carefully into the question whether gravity is concerned with a law of force or a phenomemon regulated by energy deployment. If a planet were to move in circular orbit about the Sun, keeping its orbital radius constant, then no energy is being exchanged as between gravitational potential and kinetic energy. A force of gravity does exist and it balances the opposed forces that arise inertially from accelerating the interacting bodies in circular orbit.
However, if the planet describes an elliptical orbit, then in some small measure energy is exchanged cyclically as between kinetic energy and gravitational potential, the latter being a deficit energy state. Now whereas Einstein prescribed constraints by which the mass of the Sun distorted the orbital path which the planet must follow, there is cause to consider how the energy in transit between these two energy forms is accounted for in the analysis.
Surely, physicists accept that force is not a primary factor in nature. A law of force is an artificial formulation usually related to steady-state conditions, meaning conditions in which energy in a particular form remains constant even though motion is involved. Newton’s law of gravitation is a law of force but the force arises because a certain amount of gravitational potential energy exists as a function of the separation distance between two interacting bodies. Since energy is conserved any change in that separation distance must deploy energy elsewhere, so changing the kinetic energies of the two bodies whilst some energy is in transit between the bodies and the region where that gravitational potential energy is seated. That energy in transit is ignored in deriving Newton’s law and was equally ignored by Einstein who preferred to postulate a force law based on Newton’s law but distorted by his notions of four-dimensional space as opposed to the familiar three dimensions recognized by Newton.
So, no, Einstein did not have the last word on gravity! Einstein’s error needs correction, whereas Newton’s contribution, being an empirical law, needs adjustment to cater for the observed discrepancies, those of astronomers of the 19th century revealed primarily in the motion of planet Mercury.
Do keep in mind here that, although light travels at the speed of light, given meaning because we see a source and the path followed by that light, gravitational potential energy has no single source as it comes from space in the near proximity of the interacting bodies. Although it flows to one or other of those bodies its path is by no means a straight track and the speed at which the energy seemingly travels, which no doubt is of the order of the limiting speed of light, will not have a mean value as high as it would if all the gravitational potential energy were sourced in one or other of the bodies and could flow directly between them along a straight line. In fact, the effective speed of the gravitational energy transfer will be somewhat lower than light speed. This must retard the action postulated by Newton’s law of force. Indeed, it will retard the radial oscillation frequency of the planet in orbit relative to the orbital frequency and result in what is observed, a progressive advance of the perihelion of what otherwise would be a simple truly elliptical orbit.
All this was, of course, known long before Einstein came onto the scene, notably from the work of Paul Gerber [1898], but physicists did not put in the effort to do the calculations properly, given that the spatial distribution of gravitational potential energy has features which present a simple easily calculable energy distribution as a function of distance from either of the interacting bodies. It was left to await my contribution in convincing U.K. Institute of Physics referees that this was possible [1980] before the correction was recorded in a mainstream physics periodical. What emerged, expressed as a modified force law, was identical to that derived from Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, but none of Einstein’s notions were needed. The problem was a straightforward energy calculation based on the assumption that the energy in transit could not contribute to the gravitational force.
Note that the reason I used the words ‘seemingly’ and ‘effective’ in the above references to the speed of energy transfer takes account of the process by which an amount of energy released by matter at A is there absorbed into the omnipresent pool of aether energy and although it may appear to travel to a position B at very high speed, all we see is energy shed at B by the aether. An analogy is a drop of water fed into a pool at A followed by a wave ripple which spreads outwards but somehow sends signals by which the same amount of energy is returned to matter at B. The water does not travel at the wave speed, which in our aether energy scenario is the speed of light. The effective speed is further modified if the source A or destination B are not single points but have a field distribution such as applies to gravitational energy potential.
So I claim that Einstein did not have the last word on gravity and point out further that if ‘last word’ criteria are under consideration, the last word on the subject surely must involve the ultimate unification of theory so long expected by the physics community. Gravity and electromagnetism must be linked by a unified theory and, further, the reason why G, the constant of gravitation, has a certain specific value must be explained and its value derived from pure theory. This is also of published record, one of the many references being the 1989 paper entitled ‘The Theory of the Gravitation Constant’ which is reproduced as the tenth appended paper in my 1996 book ‘Aether Science Papers’.
The panel of US physicists and astronomers of the National Academy of Sciences in seeking an answer to the question “Did Einstein have the last word on gravity?” will surely find it worthwhile to take the above into account in their onward deliberations.
At this point this exercise to review the seven lesser questions is complete, and we can now address the remaining two, these being a question concerning neutrinos and one asking how the elements from iron to uranium were made.
THE ELUSIVE NEUTRINO
In my opinion the neutrino concept is the work of a relativistic accountant who tries to balance his books by making a fictitous entry. He does not recognize the existence of the aether and so, when accounting for something where an energy transaction involves an energy transfer to or from the aether, he incorporates an entry under the heading ‘neutrinos’.
That said, I have a mild curiosity when reading the question: “What are the masses of the neutrinos, and how have they shaped the evolution of the universe?”.
The latter part of this question has already been answered by my references to the role played by the aether in creating protons and electrons which bring the universe as we know it into being. The first part of the question I cannot answer because I cannot compound, as it were, that accounting error by fiddling some numerical subterfuge that purports to be a mass quantity.
So I leave the subject to await events, noting however, the web link offered by the U.K. Institute of Physics in drawing attention to the eleven questions, the link to ‘Super-Kamiokande finds neutrino mass’.
If you pursue that link you will see how a few faint flashes of light in a tank containing 50,000 tons of ultrapure water 1000 meters below ground in Japan is said to reveal that the neutrino has a mass of 0.07 electron volts, but that budget cuts prevent completion of the experiments.
So, you may ask how I react to this claim that 0.07 electron volts is the amount of energy representing the mass of a neutrino that I suspect does not even exist. Well, I can but say that this finding led me to ask what happens if a particle and its antiparticle are annihilated to transfer their energy to the aether and the particle pair is then recreated from aether energy at some other place, the kind of event we associate with quantum-electrodynamics.
The point of interest to me is the energy 3kT/2 possessed by each particle of matter owing to its thermodynamic equilibrium with other nearby matter. Whatever the physical process which determines the fundamental mass-energy of the particles involved, I just cannot believe that Mother Nature takes account of the local temperature when she decides to reconstitute the particle pair in matter form. I suspect that they are delivered in their ‘birthday suits’, as it were, and have to rely on help from the existing material world to acquire heat and so warm to the ambient temperature T.
In other words, the event I am discussing will shed an energy quantum 3kT and leave the recovery at particle recreation to a non-quantum process. I will then say no more, other than to point out that 3kT is, given that Boltzmann’s constant has the value 1.38×10-23 joule/oK and that underground water tank used in the neutrino tests can only have a temperature T a little above 273 Kelvin. This gives 1.13×10-20 joule, which, since 1 electron-volt is 1.6×10-19 joule, corresponds to 0.07 electron-volts, exactly the value reported by the Japanese tests!
IRON TO URANIUM?
The last of the eleven questions is “How were the elements from iron to uranium made?”. The simple answer to this question is to be found by piecing together what I have documented in my earlier writings, but I will present here a summary account. It simply depends upon the creation of matter, whether electrons or positrons or protons or antiprotons within the atoms already created, but as combined with an understanding of why new atomic matter created in this way is stable. The creation stage is a function of chance, a statistical activity spread over eons of time, but the real governing factor is the physics that determines the stability of what is created and it is the latter that poses the intellectual challenge.
I have stated above that the energy shed from space (or rather the aether) creates protons as it seeks a state of energy equilibrium. The process also involves the creation of electrons and positrons but a residue of electrons survive to combine with those protons to form hydrogen.
I have also stated that space domain boundaries may be regions here anti-gravitational effects can exist between matter on opposite sides of those boundaries. This is because domains define space regions in which there is a common electrical system, namely one where there are aether charges, all of the same electrical polarity, arrayed in an orderly cubic pattern by their mutual repulsion but set in a uniform continuum of opposite polarity charge. In a domain where those aether charges are of negative polarity, then the matter form comprises protons and electrons. However, in adjacent domains these polarities are reversed. In such domains energy shed by the aether creates antiprotons and positrons. This gives scope for a theory which suggests that a star traversing a domain boundary may become very active in generating heavier atoms as it experiences that transit.
Note further that a planet such as Earth carried across such a boundary will find that all its electrical charge components reverse their electrical polarity. This being a relative condition, as between all matter on Earth, the physical effects will be the same as before after the transit is complete, except, however, that the Earth’s magnetic field will reverse in direction. This needs a little clarification because the notion that electrical polarities reverse on transit through a space domain boundary should not affect the physics of electrical action within each such domain region. The reason is that electrical polarity has meaning only in a relative sense and the measurement of polarity will involve a reference base which itself has undergone polarity inversion.
Nevertheless, I claim that there will be a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field upon transit through a space domain boundary, the reason being that the geomagnetic field derives its direction from the Earth rotating. If the aether coextensive with body Earth rotates in the same direction as the cyclical motion of the aether charges, the field has a certain direction, but if those aether charges spin in an opposite sense in the adjacent domains then a boundary traversal must be accompanied by a reversal of the geomagnetic field. Taken collectively the space domains must have an overall balance of angular momentum and, in electrical character, the space domains and anti-space domains must also balance.
The principal feature which defines domain structure is, as within a non-polarized ferromagnet, an equality in the domain volumes having opposite orientations. Indeed, the electrical polarity feature can define a system having mutually parallel boundary but not one divided into cuboidal domains. The spin direction of the aether charges is in a sense the magnetic factor which accounts for the domain structure.
See pp. 22-25 of ‘Aether Science Papers’ for enlightenment on this theme. The theory of how the Sun was created was developed hand-in-hand with the theory of the geomagnetic field in the very early stages of this author’s research and it was very rewarding to find that the Earth’s geomagnetic moment could be calculated by pure theory using the same foundations that were involved in deriving the fine-structure constant.
In any event one can now see that our interest in how heavy atoms were created might well have to focus on the limited periods when stars make a transit through a space domain boundary. It is then that there is scope for antiprotons to be created and find their way into the stable matter form that we see as a heavy atom. This I need now to explain.
Ignoring hydrogen and its isotopes deuterium and tritium, suppose that the
atom comprises a positively charged nucleus plus an entourage of antiprotons. The reason I say this is because these antiprotons displace some of the negative aether charges that form the sub-structure of space of our local domain and so appear electrically neutral, though augmenting the mass of the atom in proton mass units. The positive nucleus is built from Z positrons which merge into a common body of charge Ze having the same charge volume as Z separate positrons. The system stays together as a stable atomic nucleus because there are ‘strings’ or ‘chains’ of electron-positron pairs forming links between charge sites in the space lattice structure and because each such chain includes a positive meson which, owing to its attachment to the antiproton, introduces a negative electric potential energy which more than compensates for the mass-energy of the meson and the rest of the electron-positron chain. This means that there is a bonding action effective because nucleons can combine to form units which have lower mass-energy than that of the two separate nucleons.
So there is no problem in explaining how, given the existence of hydrogen, atoms can combine to build heavier atoms, at least over an initial range of build-up of Z. However, as Z increases further we find that the mass of that Ze core charge increases non-linearly with Z and, adding this core charge mass to the atomic mass, can overtake the mass reduction due to the binding links. Then the mass per nucleon increases and so gives rise to the question we are considering, namely how atoms of higher mass can form if the mass per nucleon increases. It cannot be by a kind of merger between two atoms. Indeed, for those higher mass atoms to form, that multipositron core charge Ze must build up progressively by the incidence of positron creation inside the space occupied by the nucleating core charge.
Now, in writing this, I am conscious that here is something I spent a great deal of time researching many years ago, without properly documenting my findings and so I can but ask the reader to heed what I have said above and await my eventual web publication on this subject. It will be a Lecture in this series entitled IRON AND BEYOND: THE CREATION PROCESS. Meanwhile, however, I have, in preparing this Lecture, decided to include in these web pages a copy of a privately published paper of mine dating from 1974. It is very relevant to the subject just discussed. See, THE CHAIN STRUCTURE OF THE NUCLEUS.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion it can be said that the efforts of that National Academy of Sciences panel in seeking answers to their eleven questions can be greatly eased if they heed the message of this web page. It needs no major injection of funds to provide the answers they seek, because the task they face is really only an intellectual exercise given the experimental facts already known. Essentially, the task is a deciphering problem aimed at unlocking the code, the genetic code of Nature’s own kind of DNA, the aether, with the solution confirmed by deriving theoretically the specific values of the fundamental dimensionless physical constants. These are the fine-structure constant, the proton-electron mass ratio and the constant of gravitation as expressed as a function of the charge to mass ratio of the electron.
In reviewing my theory one can work through the deciphering exercise to verify my findings and so become confident in the interpretation of the physics of the Universe that I have outlined above.
However, human nature being what it is, what will no doubt emerge from the deliberations of that panel of wise US physicists and astronomers will be the promised priority listing of the questions, each coupled with a recommendation for funding a related project in search of the ever-elusive answers.
I personally can but hope that what I have said here will dent their confidence just a little, enough that if the panel regard my endeavours as ill-founded one of their recommendations might be to commission some of their students to locate errors in my analysis.
I can say that several years ago when I tried to interest a leading physics journal in publishing my findings concerning the precise theoretical evaluation of one of the basic constants, it was sent to a learned professor as referee, a professor who clearly did not wish to waste his time on a paper that preached heresey concerning the aether and real particles having physical as opposed to a mathematical form. What he did was ask one of his research students to comment on it. The student was interested and astounded and, after spending two days on it, could but confirm the result. It caused the professor in his referee capacity to report this to the Editor of the journal, being careful to avoid lending his authority as support for publication as he could not really spare the time it required, but giving the clear message that, much to his surprise, it could warrant the Editor approving publication. Why else would the Editor have copied me on that referee report? The Editor, however, declined to accept the paper for the reason that it was too far reaching and not presented in the context of mainstream thinking.
Such is the world of physics!
Readers interested in purchasing a copy of Aether Science Papers should refer to the publication details: ISBN 0 85056 0152. Readers may see the introductory text of the book, minus the 14 fully reprinted papers forming the appended major section, by using the link to: Aether Science Papers.
H. Aspden
February 12, 2001
