9th July 2010
Matter is an energy trap
[Note: On reflection, I've changed the title of this post from 'Mass is an energy trap' to 'Matter is an energy trap'.]
If you recall, a few weeks ago I raised the question of how matter can exist when only energy was created at the Big Bang.
The model I 'expounded' was based purely on some internal thinking. So I've now shortlisted some physics books to read over the next year or two [e.g. here and here]. The first of these (that I've just started reading) has persuaded me that I've probably proposed at least a viable solution to something that is bugging the physicists even today. Indeed, the more I think about it, it becomes obvious to me that matter is an energy trap (explained in my previous post, and briefly below).
It appears that theoretical physicists have been grappling with this problem (that to me was not a "problem" till it popped up inside my head recently!) for quite a while now, without success.
'Mark Wise is a leading theorist working on particle physics beyond the standard model. At a recent seminar … he talked about the problem of where the masses of the elementary particles come from. "We've been remarkably unsuccessful at solving that problem," he said. … [W]e have no idea why neutrinos (or any of the other particles) have mass.' [Smolin, Les, The Trouble with Physics, London: Penguin, 2006, p. xi, xiii).
(I've just started reading this book, so I'll have something more to say after I've read it).
I wonder if they've realised that there can be NO other explanation for mass apart from the energy trap theory. Why am I so confident about this energy trap model?
I say so because the only raw material available at the time of creation of the universe was energy. Nothing else. [Where this energy comes from is the next question, which the pantheistic model (advaita) explains simply by the tautology that God and the universe, including us, are essentially the same. Not very illuminating, but it is unlikely that science will ever breach this question and explain the first formation of energy.]
My point is that if energy is the only raw material, and energy has just a few properties (e.g. waves travel in a straight line and are limited by the speed of light), then mass can ONLY be explained as a combination of energy and space. Mass simply can't spring up from ether! It is made up of energy and space.
Intense energy is trapped inside a tiny, warped, space bubble, and travels at the speed of light in a straight line inside it for ever (actually, the more one thinks of it, this can't occur merely at the speed of light. This must relate to a phase change – when energy travels FASTER than the speed of light). This warped space bubble distorts nearby space and creates the property of attraction and replusion that gives us the APPEARANCE of mass. There is, in this model, no mass, only energy. Mass is irrelevant, being only a property of high-intensity energy.
It would seem to me that this theory is fully compatible, in principle, with quantum theory and the uncertainty principle.
Of course, this theory must have been been examined at length in the theoretical physics literature. Such an obvious explanation couldn't possibly have been missed. So in the next few weeks/months/years, in my spare time I'll read a lot more on this topic and clarify where things stand.
ADDENDUM
"The consensus among physicists is that particles began massless and got their mass subsequently from something known as the Higgs field—the search for which was one reason for building the Large Hadron Collider, a huge and powerful particle accelerator located near Geneva. Mass, then, is not thought an invariable property of matter." [
Source]
Addendum
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Further thoughts: I'm inclined to disagree with anything that goes outside the standard four dimensions (including time), therefore the string theory seems to be highly contrived and unsuited to explain the phenomenon of matter. Gravity, being a weak force, is able to change the shape of space at vast – literally infinite – distances, thus creating an accelerating force inwards. It is the 'outer' distortion of space by quarks and leptons. The inner distortion of space is absolute, i.e. the space appears to have been bent into a tiny sphere, which bends energy accordingly. Anyway, this is what it appears to me at this stage.
Now I've got to read a lot and revive the knowledge of mathematical physics which I left off in 1980 when I switched from considering physics for the IAS exam to psychology (I did take maths, so I hope remnants of mathematical knowledge remains inside my head when I start getting into the maths of the modern theories).