Proton Structure Isn't Fixed

Science Alert reports that, “Physicists are about to test a hypothesis that could rewrite the textbooks.” This momentous hypothesis is that the structure of the proton varies. If the proton is in an atomic nucleus, its structure may be different than if it’s a free proton.

According to the model that I’m presenting in this blog, this hypothesis is true! To see this, we can use the standard proton model which says that the proton is composed of three quarks. When the proton is in an atomic nucleus with other protons and neutrons, the quarks in all of the nucleons interpenetrate, that is, they get all mixed up so it’s impossible to tell which quarks belong to which nucleon. That’s why it’s impossible to separate the nucleons without applying enormous force and breaking them into a zillion pieces. It’s said that they are held together by the strong force, one of nature’s four forces, along with gravity, the electromagnetic force and the weak force.

If the proposed test is well done, I predict it will succeed.

Time Goes Backwards, But Not In A Mirror

An item on Quartz reports that two separate groups of scientists have decided that there may be a “mirror universe” in which time moves backwards. That time moves backwards shouldn’t surprise readers of this blog. However, this doesn’t happen in some mirror universe, but in our very own world. As I explained here, time in our universe takes a step backwards for every step forwards, so we live in a superposition of forward-time and backward-time universes. We only see the forward-time universe because the expansion of the universe guarantees that one direction of time always has more spacetime points and therefore more particles than antiparticles. All the antiparticles were annihilated, leaving essentially no trace of the backward-time universe. However, all of the backward-time spacetime points are still around  because points don’t annihilate. This is a good thing because we couldn’t explain the stardard model without them. Follow the link for more information.

750-GeV Bunp Excites Theorists

At A Quantum Diaries Survivor, Tommaso Dorigo estimates that since the LHC collaborations announced that they had found a small bump in their data at 750 GeV, more than 200 papers attempting to explain it have appeared. He maintains a healthy skepticism about the significance of the bump and opines that most of the papers probably don’t have the answer. nor do I. He singles out one paper that he thinks is worth reading, but unfortunately, it depends on supersymmetry, which doesn’t exist.

 This sudden deluge of papers triggered by an unverified bump shows how desperate the theorists are to find something new to theorize about. They’ve had essentially nothing for thirty years, and they’re starving. It’s frustrating to watch them stumbling around in the dark when so many of the answers they’re seeking are right here.

Want To Put The Fizz Back In Physics? Try A New Paradigm.

On Scientific American’s Cross-Check, blogger John Horgan offers a post entitled “How Physics Lost Its Fizz,” arguing that “Physics, which decades ago seemed capable of answering the deepest mysteries of existence, is now just recycling once-exciting ideas.” That’s true, of course, but what I want to tell you about isn’t John’s thoughts but a comment from one of his readers, identified only as daktari.

The comment is about the need for a new paradigm from time to time to allow continued progress in science, a point of view that I blogged on here. The spacetime model that I talk about in this blog is such a new paradigm, capable of putting the fizz back in physics.

Physics Q&A #3. Fate of the Universe

I spend a lot of time on this blog explaining a physical spacetime model and the underlying metaphysics. In this series of posts, each entry poses a physics question for the spacetime model, along with the answer. A separate series of posts will answer metaphysics questions.

Physics Question #3. Will the universe expand forever or eventually collapse? The recently observed acceleration of the expansion of the universe seems to say that the universe will expand forever. In my spacetime model, the structure of spacetime is determined by a lattice of fermionic points pushed together by gravity and held apart by the degeneracy pressure that comes from their fermionic nature, that is, they obey the Pauli exclusion principle. In astrophysics, it is well established that dying stars can have a similar balance of forces. If large enough, such stars will collapse to form black holes. If too small, they remain dead stars--neutron stars, for example. The spacetime of the inflaton spacetime model is expanding, so it is like a degenerate star that is getting bigger. Eventually, its gravity should overcome its degeneracy pressure, and the universe should collapse to a black hole. The final state is different from the initial state, so there would probably not be a bounce leading to a new big bang.

The Big Bang--Where Physics Meets Metaphysics

Scientific American’s Winter 2015 Special Edition, entitled “Physics at the Limits,” is a collection of articles by physicists and physics journalists describing the current status of efforts to solve the deepest mysteries of the universe. Some of these problems have been worked on for decades and are no closer to being solved. Ideas that looked promising and inspired hope years ago haven’t  panned out. I found the overall tone of the issue somewhat downbeat. Nobody is predicting that success is just around the corner.

Ho-Hum, Another Rejection

Just received a rejection letter from Classical and Quantum Gravity for a paper I had submitted called “Inflation, Dark Matter, and Dark Energy: A New Paradigm.” Not a new experience for me. The reason given was that “The manuscript displays a superficial understanding of fundamental physics.” This shouldn’t have been a surprise—I told them I’m an engineer. The evidence was that I asserted that quantum entities have to be either fermions or bosons without stating that this only applies in 3 + 1 dimensions. I admit I was ignorant of that qualification, but since spacetime does have three dimensions of space and one of time, not explicitly saying so had no effect on anything else in the paper. The reviewer had nothing to say about the actual content of the paper. Since the reputation of a respected journal can be ruined by publishing a crackpot theory, I suspect that the editors simply didn’t want to take a risk with my new paradigm but couldn’t find anything wrong with the physics, so they rejected the paper on the basis of the author’s qualifications. I understood this when I submitted the paper, so the rejection was no surprise. Maybe next time…

Gimme Predictions!

A question physicists always ask when someone pitches a new theory to them is, “What are some testable predictions of your theory?” If a theory doesn’t make testable predictions, they reject it immediately, unless it’s one of their own pet theories, such as string theory or the multiverse, both of which don’t make any predictions at all but are strongly supported anyway. Go figure. Anyhow, what are some predictions of the spacetime model featured in this blog?

Nobel for Neutrino Oscillations

Last week’s announcement that the Nobel Prize in physics had gone to the experimenters who first observed neutrino oscillations reminded me that I hadn’t covered the relevant physics in this blog. So here we go.

I told you what neutrinos are here, and I covered quantum superpositions of spacetime points here. In quantum mechanics a superposition of states is also a state, so superpositions of points are also points. Particles are resonances of points. In the latter post I showed how protons and neutrons and other baryons are resonances of superpositions of three points. Mesons are resonances of superpositions of two points. Electrons are resonances of single points. Thus, spacetime is really a superposition of spacetimes for different values of n, where every point in a particular spacetime is a superposition of n single or pure points. All of the particles observed so far are in the n = 1, 2, or 3 spacetimes, although there has been a recent report of a possible n = 5 sighting.

Hawking Solution Probably Not A Solution

In a talk given on August 28, 2015 at Hawking Radiation, a conference held at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Stephen Hawking presented his new theory of how information escapes from black holes. Sabine Hossenfelder blogged about the talk at Backreaction here, and again here, after a paper by Hawking appeared on the arXiv

Sabine thinks the theory “makes perfect sense” but doesn’t see how it solves the black hole information paradox.

The discussion of this problem will probably never end, because it’s become a complicated mess born of an incorrect spacetime model. As I explained here, given the correct spacetime model, there’s no paradox at all, and no problem. So far, however, nobody has asked for my help.

Physics Q&A #2: The Inflaton

I spend a lot of time on this blog explaining a physical spacetime model and the underlying metaphysics. In this series of posts, each entry poses a physics question for the spacetime model, along with the answer. A separate series of posts answers metaphysics questions.

Physics Question #2. What is the inflaton (the field responsible for cosmic inflation)? In my spacetime model, spacetime is self-generating. Spacetime itself is the inflaton. Points are defined recursively, with the result that the number of points increases from N to 2^N at each discrete time step. This is an extremely rapid expansion. It never stops, so spacetime is always inflating.

Dark Matter Comment Draws Arrogant Reply

Sabine Hossenfelder, whose blog Backreaction is one of my favorites, has contributed a post on Ethan Siegel’s blog Starts With A Bang. It’s called “Ten Facts Everyone Should Know About Dark Matter.” I noticed that when she discussed some potential explanations for dark matter, she left out the one we know is correct, that is, dark matter is a result of incomplete decay of the oscillatory energy that appears at the end of the inflationary period and decays to form normal matter. My comment was:

Paul Steinhardt Introduces The Anamorphic Universe

Paul Steinhardt has a new paper on the arXiv. Here is the abstract.

We introduce "anamorphic" cosmology, an approach for explaining the smoothness and flatness of the universe on large scales and the generation of a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of adiabatic density perturbations. The defining feature is a smoothing phase that acts like a contracting universe based on some Weyl frame-invariant criteria and an expanding universe based on other frame-invariant criteria. An advantage of the contracting aspects is that it is possible to avoid the multiverse and measure problems that arise in inflationary models. Unlike ekpyrotic models, anamorphic models can be constructed using only a single field and can generate a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of tensor perturbations. Anamorphic models also differ from pre-big bang and matter bounce models that do not explain the smoothness. We present some examples of cosmological models that incorporate an anamorphic smoothing phase

Physics Q&A #1: Discrete Spacetime

I spend a lot of time on this blog explaining a physical spacetime model and the underlying metaphysics. In this series of posts, each entry poses a physics question for the spacetime model, along with the answer. A separate series of posts answers metaphysics questions.

Physics Question #1. The model says spacetime is made of discrete points. OK, then what's between them? What keeps them apart? For that matter, what keeps them from flying away from each other? The first question has been used as a put-down ever since someone first suggested that spacetime might be discrete. The other questions are used in the same way. Actually, the answers to these questions are simple, although not obvious.

Converging To Nothing

Physics World magazine’s blog is one of my regular stops. This week they’ve been reporting on the Convergence conference held at the Perimeter Institute for Particle Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, June 20-24