John A. Gowan
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/jag8/index.html
The Charges of Matter are the Symmetry Debts of Light
Contents:
The conceptual basis of the Unified Field Theory, as presented in these pages, can be briefly sketched as follows:
In the "global vs local gauge symmetry" representation of the cosmic conservation mechanism, the global symmetry is carried by massless light, space, absolute motion (the intrinsic and invariant motion of light), and "gauged" (regulated) by c, the universal electromagnetic energy constant. The local symmetry is carried by massive matter, various charges, causal history, relative motion (including the intrinsic but variable motion of time) and gauged by G, the universal gravitational constant. Connecting these two realms of free vs bound electromagnetic energy (and their conservation domains of space vs history), are the field vectors of the forces, whose function is to translate the invariant symmetry of the global realm into the invariant charges, spin, mass, and "interval" of the local realm, and vice versa, conserving energy, symmetry, entropy, and causality, throughout both conjoined domains. (See: "The Tetrahedron Model of Light and Conservation Law".)
I will employ the "global vs local gauge symmetry" representation of the cosmic conservation process (due to the "Standard Model" of "establishment" physics) throughout the following analysis, in combination with certain symmetry principles, as elucidated by the "Tetrahedron Model" originating in these web pages: "the charges of matter are the symmetry debts of light". Four conservation laws and corollaries (energy, entropy, symmetry, causality); Noether's Theorem; and a few invariance principles: (charge, elementary particle mass, velocity c, the "Interval", causality, Lorentz invariance of Special Relativity, etc.), are the key to understanding the operation of the forces and the unified field theory. (See: "Global vs Local Gauge Symmetries in the Tetrahedron Model".
Note (2): The format of this paper ("Row 1", "Row 2", etc.) follows a 4x4 table which the reader should access and print out for ready reference (also available at the end of this paper). This table provides a convenient way to organize an extensive subject matter, and is furthermore part of a General System, or Fractal Model of the Universe, which facilitates comparison and correlation with other "world systems". An introductory paper: "Synopsis of the Unification Theory: The System of Spacetime" provides a general summary of the topic.
Note (3): Symmetry in nature is found in many forms. The symmetries of the four forces usually discussed by "establishment" physics in the context of unification are mathematical, derived from the "group theory" of Evariste Galois, Sophus Lie, and Wilhelm Killing. These generally describe "rotations in phase space" in which particles, forces, and/or actions are rendered indistinguishable from one another (see Ian Stewart: "Why Beauty is Truth" (Basic Books 2007) for an expert discussion at the layman's level of the mathematical symmetries of the Lie groups). Because I worked independently of the mathematical physics "establishment", I discovered and used a different set of symmetries to achieve a unification among the forces. "My" symmetry principles are derived from (my own reading of) Noether's Theorem: the charges of matter are the symmetry debts of light. The two sets of symmetry principles actually complement each other, illustrating the great value of independent approaches to a common problem. Both come together in the "Table of the Higgs Bosons and Weak Force IVBs". For another view of the synthesis between my own and the establishment's version of unification, see: "The 'Tetrahedron Model' vs the 'Standard Model': A Comparison"; and: "Global and Local Gauge Symmetries in the Tetrahedron Model".
Note (4): In each of the four rows below I suggest a financial metaphor for the energetic process characteristic of the row, beginning with the assumption of a debt, followed by two contrasting payment modes, and ending with a full repayment. The intent is to help the reader gain an overview of and feeling for the unfolding energy budget of the Cosmos as outlined in this model, by reference to another quantitative system with which we are all familiar.
Row 1: Incurring the energy, entropy, and symmetry debt - "taking out a loan, opening a mortgage account" - symmetry-breaking during the Big Bang. Important concepts in Row 1 include the nature of light and its intrinsic motion, as gauged by "velocity c"; the establishment of the spacetime metric; "Noether's Theorem" and the conserved symmetries of light; the interaction of light with metric space to create the particle "sea" or "zoo"; and finally, the breaking of the symmetry of light, the spacetime metric, and matter-antimatter particle pairs by the asymmetric interactions of the weak force with matter vs antimatter. Symmetry-breaking results in the creation of isolated particles of matter - the atoms which form our material Universe.
How the Universe actually begins (for example, "inflationary" scenarios) is not considered in this account (see: "The Origin of Matter and Information" and "The Higgs Boson and the Weak Force IVBs" for "genesis" scenarios). I assume, however, that the initiating positive energy is completely balanced by some type of negative energy (such as gravity). Furthermore, it is not unreasonable to suppose that our Universe is but one of many (a member of the "multiverse"), whose unique physical constants are constrained only by the "anthropic principle" (must allow the evolution of our life form), and the requirements of energy conservation within such a complex Universe.
Light
The Universe begins with light (in physics, as in many "genesis" mythologies) - free electromagnetic energy - which is a perfectly symmetric energy form. Light is massless, carries no charges of any kind, produces no gravitational field, and has no time dimension in the ordinary sense. Light's intrinsic motion (gauged by "velocity c") is the primordial entropy drive of free energy, and also the gauge of a "non-local" symmetry condition formally characterized by Einstein as light's zero "Interval". Light's zero "Interval" (the "Interval" is an invariant measure of spacetime) defines light's symmetric energy state of "non-locality".
Light is a 2-dimensional transverse wave whose intrinsic motion sweeps out a third spatial dimension. Lacking both a time dimension and one spatial dimension (in its direction of propagation), light's position in 3-dimensional space or 4-dimensional spacetime cannot be specified. Since both time and distance are meaningless to light, and yet light has intrinsic motion, light has in effect an infinite amount of time to go nowhere. Hence in its own reference frame (moving freely in the vacuum of spacetime at velocity c), light must be considered to be everywhere simultaneously. From this results the "non-local" (and therefore atemporal and acausal) symmetric energy state of light. "Non-locality" is the primary symmetry condition of massless free energy, and its chief distinction from massive, local, temporal, and causal bound energy. Several other symmetries are associated with light's non-local energy state, all of which require conservation (in accordance with "Noether's Theorem" - see below).
Light's "zero Interval" means that light is everywhere throughout its conservation domain simultaneously - a symmetry condition with respect to the distribution of light's energy in spacetime ("symmetry" refers to a condition of balance, sameness, or equality). It is due to this symmetry condition that we can (in theory) circumnavigate the Universe within a human lifetime - in a rocket ship moving at nearly velocity c. At exactly c it takes no time at all (time does not exist - clocks stop - at velocity c).
The electromagnetic constant c is the universal "gauge" or regulator (in the sense of railroad track or wire gauges) for the "metric" of spacetime, the fixed relationship which establishes the equivalence of measurement within and between the dimensions: 300,000 km of space is metrically equivalent to 1 second of time. At c this equivalence is complete and time is suppressed to a locally implicit state (light has no time dimension). The suppression of the asymmetric time dimension (and time's asymmetric companions, mass, charge, and gravitation), and the equilibration of the 3 spatial dimensions, is the principle symmetry-keeping function of c. To think of c as a velocity, even as a "non-ordinary" velocity, is to miss the point: the physical significance of c is that it is the symmetry gauge and the primordial entropy drive of free electromagnetic energy in its metric, dimensional, or spatial expression. It is because of these "gauge" functions that c appears to us as an effectively "infinite" and invariant velocity. Another famous gauge function of c (also discovered by Einstein) fixes the energetic equivalence of free to bound electromagnetic energy: E = mcc. c also functions as the gauge or messenger of causality. These various gauge functions indicate the primacy of light in our Universe - and the fundamental significance of Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity.
The Metric of Spacetime
Imagine a Universe of pure light, before the creation of matter, in which the metric is everywhere the same, as no gravitational fields are present to disturb its symmetry. The metric is a necessary condition of the spatial domain, indeed the very reason for its existence, as it is the regulatory mechanism which performs the conservation function of the domain (via "inertial" forces), controlling and coordinating the rate of expansion and cooling of space both globally and locally, regardless of the changing size of the Universe. It is for this reason that a "non-local" metric gauge such as c is required - one whose regulatory influence can be everywhere simultaneously, irrespective of the physical extent (or expansion) of its domain. Both space and its metric are created by the intrinsic motion of light. Without the metric every photon could have a unique velocity; it is the metric which imposes the universal constant c upon them all. While we conceive of the metric as produced by light, the metric's origin is in the inherent conservation parameters of light, including entropy (intrinsic motion) and symmetry (non-locality).
The primordial entropy drive of light (free electromagnetic energy) is expressed through its intrinsic motion, expanding and cooling the Universe, hence reducing the Cosmos' capacity for work. But it is light's intrinsic motion which also creates the conservation domain of spacetime and maintains its metric symmetry, suppressing time, equilibrating the spatial dimensions, etc. Therefore light and space are related through the first and second laws of thermodynamics, while c functions as both the primordial entropy drive and symmetry gauge of free electromagnetic energy. It is the function of entropy's primordial form to create a dimensional conservation domain in which energy can be transformed, used, but nevertheless conserved. Without entropy (the 2nd law of thermodynamics), the Universe could not spend its energy capital, since the 1st law of thermodynamics (energy conservation) would forbid any use of energy at all. The dimensions of spacetime are entropy domains, created by the intrinsic (entropic) dimensional motions of light (creating space), time (creating history), and gravitation (converting space to time and vice versa), as gauged by "c" (the intrinsic motion of light), "T" (the intrinsic motion of time), and "G" (the gravitational constant). (See: "A Description of Gravitation".)
The intrinsic motion of time is also primarily gauged by c as the temporal duration (measured by a clock) required by light to move a given distance (measured by a meter stick). G is the entropy conversion gauge, fixing the volume of space which must be annihilated and converted to time per given mass unit. Gravitation converts the entropy drive of free energy (the intrinsic motion of light as gauged by velocity c) to the entropy drive of bound energy (the intrinsic motion of time as gauged by velocity T) and vice versa (as in the conversion of bound to free energy in stars). (See: "Spatial vs Temporal Entropy".)
Our physical Universe, including the conservation domain of spacetime, is wholly the product of a single form of energy - electromagnetic energy (the "monotheism" of physics). Light is the most primordial form of this energy, which we know because light has the greatest symmetry of any energy form, and provides the basic gauges, both metric and energetic, for either free or bound electromagnetic energy. Light is the only energy form which can produce its own conservation domain from its own nature (intrinsic motion c) - matter must produce its historic domain from preexisting space via the gravitational conversion of space to time. Finally, light is the form from which all other kinds of energy are created, and to which they all reduce and return (as in matter-antimatter annihilations). (See: "Entropy, Gravitation, and Thermodynamics".)
"Noether's Theorem" (Emmy Noether, 1918) states that in a multicomponent field (such as the electromagnetic field, or the metric field of spacetime), where one finds a symmetry, one will find an associated conservation law, and vice versa. Noether's Theorem is saying that in the conversion of light to matter (for example), not only must the raw energy of light be conserved in the mass and momentum of particles, but the symmetry of light must also be conserved - not only the quantity but the quality of energy must be conserved.
Before symmetry-breaking we find Noether's Theorem expressed through: 1) the inertial forces of metric symmetry-keeping as gauged by "velocity c", suppressing the asymmetric time dimension; 2) through the electrical annihilation of particle-antiparticle pairs, suppressing the asymmetric appearance of any immobile bound energy form, whether matter or antimatter. After symmetry-breaking (in the "Big Bang"), we find additional expressions of Noether's Theorem in: 1) the metric fields of gravitation and time; 2) the conserved charges (and spin) of particles - which all work together (as in our Sun) to return asymmetric matter to its original form of symmetric light. The gravitational process (of symmetry conservation) drives to completion via Hawking's "quantum radiance" of black holes.
I think of Noether's theorem as the "Truth and Beauty" theorem, in reference to Keat's great poetic intuition:
The two common examples of Noether's Theorem enforced in Nature - charge (and spin) conservation among the particles, and gravitational and inertial forces in the spacetime metric - are the more enlightening because the former is an example of symmetry conservation and debt payment deferred indefinitely through time, while the latter is an example of raw energy conservation in which the debt must be paid immediately. Furthermore, in the case of inertial forces, we see the implication that gravitation will also fall under the conservation mantle of Noether's Theorem, via Einstein's "Equivalence Principle". This indication is borne out and verified by the discovery that gravitation is indeed a symmetry debt of light, responding to and conserving the non-local spatial distribution of light's energy, a symmetry broken by the immobile, undistributed concentrations of mass energy (E = mcc) represented by matter.
Noether's theorem tells us why the basic forces of nature are all busy converting matter to light: matter was created from light in the "Big Bang", but since light has greater symmetry than matter, it is to conserve light's symmetry that all the charges and forces of matter work to accomplish the return of bound energy to its original symmetric state. The charges of matter are the symmetry debts of light. These charges produce forces which act to return the system of matter to light (free energy). Our Sun is an archetypical example of symmetry conservation in nature; the radiance of our star is the evidence of a completed symmetry circuit. (See: "Currents of Symmetry and Entropy".)
A program of unification is therefore clearly indicated by Noether's Theorem: identify the (broken) symmetries of light carried, represented, and conserved by the charges of matter. The actions of the forces produced by these charges should offer clues as to what these (broken) symmetries are. This will allow us to refer all the charges and forces of matter to their respective origins as specific symmetries of light, accomplishing our conceptual unification. Matter is but an asymmetric form of light, as time is an asymmetric form of space, and gravity is an asymmetric form of inertia. The charges and forces of matter act to return bound energy to its symmetric, original state of free energy. In the pages which follow, we will follow out this simple conceptual program of force unification, by identifying the broken symmetries of light represented by the conserved charges of matter - including gravity's "location" charge. While this is a conceptual rather than a quantitative unification, is is hoped that by framing the argument firmly within the constraints of the conservation laws, a route to a more formal, quantitative, mathematical unification will be indicated.
Particles
Matter consists of two types of massive particles, the elementary particles with no internal parts, called leptons, and composite particles with internal parts (quarks) called hadrons. Together they comprise atomic matter, the electron a member of the lepton family, and the nuclear particles (protons and neutrons) examples of the hadron family. Hadrons containing a quark-antiquark pair are known as mesons, while those containing 3 quarks are called baryons; no other quark combinations are thought to exist in nature - at least commonly (see: Discover "The Year in Science" Jan. 2006 page 39). (See: "The Particle Table").
Together, light and metric spacetime have the capacity to produce particles, which are essentially a "packaging" of light's free energy. The mechanism by which the primordial transformation of free to bound electromagnetic energy occurs is still unknown, although actively investigated. We believe our Universe began as an incredibly hot, energy dense, and spatially tiny "singularity" (the standard "Big Bang" model - see Steven Weinberg's "The First Three Minutes"). One can readily appreciate that a simple "packaging" mechanism for compactly storing the wave energy of light - which by its very nature (its intrinsic motion) takes up a lot of space - would be useful in the spatially cramped conditions of the initial moments of the Big Bang.
In a purely pragmatic way the "packaging" concept accounts for the existence of particles and some of their salient features: the spectrum of identical elementary particles of various masses (the leptonic series), the heavier ones presumably more useful "packages" at earlier times and higher energy densities, and similarly, the spectrum of composite particles (baryons), which can store additional energy internally, as if they contained a set of compressible springs (the quarks). Finally, massive particles can store an unlimited quantity of energy as momentum, a feature of particular utility in the early Universe, helping to avoid the "still birth" of a cosmic "black hole". (The conversion from a spatial (free energy) to a temporal (bound energy) entropy drive, preserving the Universe's capacity for work by storing energy as immobile, non-expanding mass (E = mcc), is perhaps an even better "reason" (from the "anthropic perspective") for the initial conversion of light to matter.) Still another argument for the existence of mass is that the gravitational field of massive particles provides a form of negative energy which exactly balances the positive energy of the "Big Bang", allowing the Universe to be born as a quantum fluctuation of the "void" or "Multiverse", containing no net energy (as in Alan Guth's theory of "inflation").
I presume there is a mechanical or "resonant" relationship between the metric of spacetime and the structure of particles - the dimensional structure of spacetime is carried into, reflected in, or otherwise directly influences, the structure of particles. Light exists as a 2-dimensional energetic vibration of the metric structure of spacetime. Usually this vibration is simply transmitted by the metric grid at velocity c, the "inertial" symmetry condition imposed upon light by its conserving metric. However, it is also possible for this vibrational energy to become "entangled" in the metric and tie itself into higher dimensional "knots", which cannot be transmitted at c because they are no longer 2-dimensional. The elusive "Higgs boson" is thought to play a central role in these entanglements, endowing the elementary particles with mass (see: "The Higgs Boson vs the Spacetime Metric"). Such metric "knots" comprise particle-antiparticle pairs, and their energy, structure, and information content is derived from the mixture of metric spacetime and light's energy. The otherwise inexplicable existence of three energy families of both quarks and leptons is probably a consequence of the origin of particles as electromagnetic "knots" in the 3 spatial dimensions of the metric. The mathematical/geometric connection between energy, the metric, and the structure of particles is currently being investigated (in 10 or 11 dimensions!) by "string" theory (see Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe"). In this paper, however, I sketch much simpler ideas in the usual 4 dimensions. (The totality of historic spacetime may be conceived as a 5th spacetime dimension - see: "Juan Maldacena's 5-Dimensional Universe".)
It remains a mystery how the elementary leptons are related to the composite baryons, but it is plausible that this relationship is through an ancestral, heavy, leptonic particle (the "leptoquark"), which "fractured" under the high pressure of the Big Bang, and so could arrange its internal fractional charges in electrically neutral configurations - as in the neutron. This notion is based on the theory of "asymptotic freedom" (Politzer, Gross, Wilczek - 2004 Nobel Prize) - a symmetry principle which observes that as the quarks of a baryon are squeezed together, the strong force which binds them becomes weaker, affording the quarks more freedom of movement. If the quarks are squeezed together completely - as by the ambient pressure of the "Big Bang", the "X" Intermediate Vector Boson (IVB) of the weak force, or the gravitational pressure of a black hole - the color charge of the gluon field sums to zero (see Row 4, "Gluons", below), leaving a particle indistinguishable from a heavy lepton, the hypothetical "leptoquark". A "colorless" and electrically neutral leptoquark would therefore be susceptible to a typical weak force decay via a leptoquark neutrino and the "X" IVB, hypothetical particles we examine in the following section. (See also: "The Origin of Matter and Information".)
Symmetry Breaking and the Weak Force
Leptons as Alternative Charge Carriers
The leptonic elementary particles (charge-bearing particles with no internal parts or sub-units, exampled by electrons and neutrinos) function as alternative charge carriers for the hadrons (mass-bearing particles containing quarks). Without these alternative charge carriers (electrons carry electric charge, neutrinos carry number or "identity" charge), the massive hadrons would remain unmanifest, locked in symmetric particle-antiparticle pairs, forever annihilating and reforming. (Mesons also function as alternative charge carriers for the partial charges of quarks, especially in transformations of baryons.)
In fact, we discover that in order to produce an asymmetric, "singlet" particle of matter from a symmetric particle-antiparticle hadron pair, we require: 1) an electrically neutral, composite, primary mass-carrying field (quarks bearing partial charges); 2) a secondary field of alternative charge carriers (electrons, neutrinos, and mesons); 3) the secondary field must furthermore be asymmetric in its interaction with the primary field, such that its reactions with particles proceed at a different rate than its reactions with antiparticles; 4) interactions between the hadron and lepton field are brokered by a third quantized mediating field, the Higgs boson and the Intermediate Vector Bosons (IVBs) of the weak force, the W, Z, and X particles (in which the asymmetric principle is probably located; IVBs and the scalar Higgs function to regulate and standardize the reaction pathway and products, such that all elementary particles (of a given species) are exactly alike whether created today or in the "Big Bang"); 5) a final requirement is that there must exist some fundamental basis of similarity between all three fields if they are to interact at all - they must be able to recognize and mesh with each other at the quantum level of charge. For example, the electrical charge of the proton must be exactly equal in magnitude to that of the positron or electron (hence the supposition of their common origin in the leptoquark). (See: "The Higgs Boson and the Weak Force IVBs".)
Obviously, the relationship between the hadrons and leptons must be intimate, and almost certainly they are related through ancestry, that is, one is derived from the other, both are derived from the metric, both are decay products of the leptoquark, etc. A complex arrangement, but nothing less will suffice to break the initial symmetry of free energy and the particle-antiparticle pairs it so abundantly produces. Free energy is flirting with the danger of manifestation in the ready creation of these virtual particle pairs, and in the end it pays the price, as flirts usually do. (See: "The "W" IVB and the Weak Force Mechanism") (also available in HTML format).
IVBS - Quantum Process and Particle Transformation
The field vectors or force carriers of the weak force are known as Intermediate Vector Bosons, or IVBs. The IVBs include the W+, W-, and Z (neutral) particles. As a group, they are the most unusual particles known and the most difficult to understand (I also include in this group the hypothetical super-heavy "X" particle thought to be responsible for producing leptoquark and proton decay.) The charge carried or mediated by the IVBs is the "number" or "identity" charge of the weak force.
The weak force is the asymmetric and symmetry-breaking physical mechanism that produces elementary massive particles from light (more specifically, from light's particle-antiparticle form), and governs the creation, destruction, and transformation of elementary particles, both quarks and leptons. Only 3 massive leptonic elementary particles are known, the electron, muon, and tau, identical in all their properties other than mass and identity ("number") charge. This is the leptonic particle family, series, or spectrum. It is a quantized mass series, each member separated from the others by a large, discreet, and exact mass difference. I suspect the leptoquark is the 4th and heaviest member of this series, representing the primordial common ancestor of the baryons and leptons. It is the role of the IVBs to mediate or broker the transformation, creation, and destruction of the elementary leptons, and transformations of quark "flavors" in certain situations, notably in the decays of baryons. The "Z" governs electrically neutral weak force interactions in which particles simply scatter ("bounce") or swap identities; the super heavy "X" is hypothesized to govern proton and leptoquark decay. The actual weak force transformation mechanism is discussed below. (See also: "The Weak Force: Identity or Number Charge").
What is most remarkable about the IVBs is that they seem to be "metric" particles providing bridges between real particles and their counterparts in the "virtual particle sea" of the vacuum. The IVBs are not particles like the leptons and baryons which form stable matter; they are particles of interaction, present only when mediating a reaction, "virtual" particles usually known only by their effects, existing within the "Heisenberg Interval" for virtual reality, but real enough and producible as distinct, massive entities if the ambient energy density is sufficient.
The W particle (which is nowadays readily produced in accelerators) is approximately 80 times heavier than the proton, which explains the relative weakness of the weak force - there is a huge energy barrier to surmount before weak interactions can occur. However, this also raises the obvious question of what this massive particle is composed of - certainly not ordinary matter, the stuff of baryons and leptons. My guess is that the IVBs generally are nothing other than a piece of very compact spacetime metric, similar to the dense metric of the early moments of the Big Bang. The huge mass energy of the particle is the binding energy required to compress the metric, perhaps fold it, and secure it in the particular configuration that characterizes the W, Z, or X. Hence these particles are perhaps similar to the compacted, topological, multidimensional particles of "string" theory. The hypothetical "Higgs" boson may also be a "metric" particle. (See details of the weak force transformation mechanism in row 3, cell 3.) See also: The Higgs Boson and the Weak Force IVBs for a further discussion of the weak force in its full energy spectrum.
The IVBs are an especially complex example of nature's penchant for quantization, and like other quantum processes, are responsible for a good deal of head-scratching. I can think of two reasons why the process of particle transformation should be quantized: 1) quantized units are indefinitely reproducible without loss of information or precision (Nature's "digital" information coding); 2) to ensure the charge invariance of the "hidden" or implicit lepton number charge (see below) - or in fact, any other charge. (See: Global-Local Gauge Symmetries of the Weak Force.)
In the initial phase of particle creation, particle-antiparticle pairs, presumably of all types, are created but annihilate each other instantly, recreating the light energy from which they are made. So long as these pairs are created and annihilated in equal numbers, the symmetry of the light Universe is maintained. But there is an inherent asymmetry in the way the weak force interacts with matter vs antimatter, with the consequence that even though particle pairs are created symmetrically (via the electromagnetic force), they do not decay symmetrically (via the weak force). Most probably these asymmetric decays occur in neutral leptoquarks, heavy analogs of the neutron. An excess of matter is produced in this process, breaking the symmetry of the particle-antiparticle pairs and the light Universe, creating the matter comprising the Cosmos we see today. It is the consequence of this broken symmetry of light, manifesting as massive matter-only particles, their quantized charges, and time and gravitation, that we will trace in the remaining rows of the model.
With symmetry-breaking and the creation of matter from light during the "Big Bang", we pass from the initial global symmetry of light, space, and absolute motion, as "gauged" (regulated) by the universal electromagnetic constant c, to the local asymmetry of matter, time, and relative motion, as gauged by the universal gravitational constant, G. The basic challenge posed to the forces of nature is to conserve energy and symmetry (in some form) in both situations simultaneously.
Mass or Bound Energy
Einstein's most famous formula, E = mcc, expresses the notion that the energy stored in mass is enormous and somehow related to light through the electromagnetic gauge constant c. DeBroglie noted that Planck's formula for the energy of light E = hv (where v = the frequency of light, and h = Planck's constant) contained the same E; putting the two together, DeBroglie wrote hv = mcc, expressing the conversion of free energy to its bound form (or vice versa). This equation states that all the energy of light is conserved in massive form in this transformation.
We might think with some justification that energy conservation is satisfied by DeBroglie's equation and nothing more need be said. But this is just raw or total energy conservation, conservation of quantity, not quality. The conservation of the quality, or symmetry, of free energy has not been addressed by this formula, nor has the conservation of light's entropy. No massive particle can be created from free energy without engendering a symmetry (and entropy) debt and charge of some sort. If the free energy is simply absorbed by an existing massive system (for example, the absorption of a photon by the electron shell of an atom) without the creation of a new charged particle, then at least a gravitational (= entropy) charge will be recorded.
Whenever we encounter the intrinsic dimensional motions of "velocity c" (light), "velocity T" (time), or "velocity G" (gravity), we are dealing with the entropy drives of free and bound energy in their primordial or primary forms. At its most basic level, the gravitational charge represents the transferal, conversion, and conservation of the spatial entropy drive of free energy to the temporal entropy drive of bound energy (in the case of gravity a symmetry debt is always combined with the entropy drive). Free energy cannot be transferred to bound energy (or vice versa) without also transferring, converting, or conserving the entropy drive of that energy; in massive particles, the intrinsic motion of time is the primordial entropy drive of the system. Time is created by the gravitational (or quantum mechanical) conversion of space and the drive of spatial entropy to time and the drive of historical entropy (see: "Entropy, Gravitation, and Thermodynamics"). Hence we must include time, the primordial entropy drive of bound energy, along with gravitation in Row Two, keeping in mind, however, that gravitation has in addition to its entropy conservation role a symmetry conservation role which links it to the charges and discussion of Row Three.
The basic function of mass and momentum is apparently the compaction ("packaging") and storage of free energy, and the conversion of light to a bound energy form with a less destructive entropy drive, as touched upon in the discussion of Row One. We also took note of the role of gravitation as a supplier of negative energy in the creation of matter during the "Big Bang". Mass is bound electromagnetic energy, and it is asymmetric in many ways by comparison to the free electromagnetic energy (light) from which it is created. For this reason mass carries various charges, which are symmetry debts whose origins we have traced to the conservation of light's perfect symmetry (see Row 3). The most fundamental symmetry debt of mass is dimensional - mass is 4-dimensional, with no (net) intrinsic spatial motion, but with a time dimension which moves instead. Because time exists (among other reasons) to establish and control causality, the time dimension itself is necessarily one-way, hence asymmetric. Free energy, from which mass is formed, is a 2-dimensional transverse wave, whose intrinsic motion sweeps out a third spatial dimension. Four-dimensional massive matter or bound energy is local, temporal, and causal; two-dimensional massless light or free energy is non-local, atemporal, and acausal.
Time and Entropy
Time is a dimensional asymmetry, or dimensional symmetry debt of mass; time is also the primordial expression of entropy in matter: the intrinsic motion of time is the entropy drive of bound energy and history. Gravitation creates the time dimension of matter by annihilating space and extracting a metrically equivalent temporal residue. The gravitational field of bound energy is a remnant of the entropy drive or intrinsic motion of the free energy which originally created matter. Essentially, gravitation converts the intrinsic motion of free energy (as gauged by "velocity c") into its entropic and metric equivalent, the intrinsic motion of matter's time dimension (as gauged by "velocity T"). (See: "The Conversion of Space to Time".)
The intrinsic motion of light creates space and the intrinsic motion of gravity creates time. Time marches on to create history, the temporal analog of space. The intrinsic motion of light is the spatial entropy drive of free energy, and the intrinsic motion of time is the historical entropy drive of bound energy. Space and the drive of spatial entropy (S) are gravitationally transformed into time and the drive of historical entropy (T), a transformation which can be symbolically represented in a (non-quantitative) "concept equation" as:
-Gm(S) = (T)m
(See: "A Description of Gravitation".)
Bound energy's most obvious asymmetry (matter's 4-dimensional energy state) is due to matter's lack of intrinsic spatial motion c, meaning bound energy is "local" and associated with temporal causality chains. The 4-dimensional energy state of matter gives bound energy a different inertial status than free energy, because light is 2-dimensional. The "Interval" of free energy = 0 and light produces no gravitational field; bound energy has a real, positive Interval (because of its time dimension) and a gravitational field. Both time and gravity are asymmetric dimensional attributes. I associate the gravitational charge ("location") with the entropy drive of bound energy (the intrinsic motion of time), and with the broken symmetry of the universally equitable distribution of light's energy throughout space (light's symmetric "non-local" energy state or "zero Interval"). Both local time and local gravity vary in intensity with the quantity and density of matter, demonstrating their association with the local character of bound energy, and with the significant dimensional parameters of the asymmetric spacetime distribution of matter's immobile energy content, especially matter's location, quantity, and density.
When free energy is converted to bound energy, a portion of the entropy-energy driving the spatial expansion of the Universe is gravitationally converted to the entropy-energy driving the historical expansion of the Universe; in the process, space is gravitationally annihilated, decelerating the spatial expansion accordingly. (See: "A Spacetime Map of the Universe".)
The gravitational conversion of space to time is physically demonstrated by black holes, and mathematically formulated in the Bekenstein-Hawking theory relating the surface area of a black hole to its entropy content. (See: "The Half-Life of Proton Decay and the 'Heat Death' of the Cosmos".)
Time also plays a crucial part in the symmetry conservation role of gravitation, as we will see below when we consider the "location" charge of gravity, providing the historical dimensional parameter within which charge conservation has meaning.
The invariance of charge in the service of symmetry conservation is another rationale for the tangential relationship between matter and matter's entropic conservation domain, historic spacetime. Matter, and matter's associated charges, exist only in the present moment of time, and do not participate in the entropic expansion of historic spacetime. The charges of matter, as well as the energy content of matter, are therefore protected from entropic enervation or dilution. Atoms simply do not age, and charge magnitudes are invariant through time. The tangential contact between matter and historic spacetime is also the reason for the weakness of gravity: gravity need supply matter with only enough temporal entropy to maintain or service the tiny tangential point of contact. At this point of contact, gravity is actually the same strength as the electromagnetic force - as the black hole demonstrates. This notion accords well with the observation of P. A. M. Dirac that the ratio of the strength of the gravitational force to the electromagnetic force is the same as the ratio of the radius of an electron to the radius of the Cosmos - the electron representing the physical size of the "tangential" point of contact between matter and historic spacetime.
Of course, Special Relativity also tells us that matter cannot move with the metric equivalent of "velocity c", and that therefore the time dimension must move instead, while matter remains stationary and rides the "time train". There are multiple reasons for matter's isolation in the "universal present moment", illustrating the seamless interweaving of all natural law, and raising again Einstein's question: is there any latitude in the construction of the Universe? From the perspective of the "Anthropic Principle" (natural law must allow human life), the answer is "no".
Entropy exists in several forms in nature, always with the same purpose, to prevent violations of energy conservation. Unless the context indicates otherwise, when I refer to "entropy" in these papers (especially in such phrases as "space and spatial entropy" or "time and temporal entropy"), I am referring to entropy in its most primordial or pure form, as the intrinsic motion of light "gauged" or regulated by "velocity c" (in the case of "spatial entropy"), or as the intrinsic motion of time "gauged" or regulated by "velocity T" (in the case of historical or "temporal entropy"). Of course, time is also ultimately "gauged" or regulated by "velocity c", since time is defined as the duration (measured by a clock) required by light to travel a given distance (measured by a meter stick). See: "Spatial vs Temporal Entropy".
The Dimensions
Bound energy (matter) requires a time dimension to establish and maintain causality, to provide an entropy drive, and to balance its energy accounts, because the energy contained in mass varies with its relative velocity, and relative velocity involves time. Light does not require a similar accommodation because light's absolute velocity is non-relative and invariant; light's energy varies not with velocity but with frequency. Time is one-way because raw energy conservation forces the continual updating of matter's energy accounts, from one instant to the next, protecting causality, the temporal sequence of cause and effect. The "local" character of matter requires a causal temporal linkage, whereas the "non-local" character of light does not. Causality itself requires the one-way character of time; energy conservation requires the presence and protection of causality and its associated temporal entropy drive in every system of bound energy.
The intrinsic motion of time ("velocity T") is the primordial entropy drive of bound energy, causing the aging and decay of matter and information, and creating and expanding history, the conservation domain of information and matter's "causal matrix". History is the temporal analog of space: "intrinsic motion T" and "intrinsic motion c" are metric equivalents. The entropy drives T and c both produce analogous dimensional conservation domains for their energy types, history for information (matter's "causal matrix"), space for light. Space connects light; time and causal history connects matter. It is the energetic nature of light that requires a spatial entropic domain, whereas it is the causal nature of matter that requires an historic entropic domain. Gravitation (entropy drive "G") converts space into time and matter into light (as in the stars), producing the equilibrated joint dimensional conservation domain of historic spacetime, where both free and bound electromagnetic energy can interact and find their conservation needs satisfied.
Entropy is a necessary corollary of energy conservation, actually responsible for the creation of our dimensional experience of spacetime through the intrinsic (entropic) motions of light, time, and gravitation (the entropy drives or "gauges" c, T, G). (See: "The Tetrahedron Model of Energy and Conservation Law" - also available at the end of this paper.)
The "Interval" is Einstein's mathematical formulation of a quantity of spacetime that is invariant for all observers regardless of their motion, uniform or accelerated. It is the analog of the Pythagorean theorem in 4 dimensions. The "Interval" of light is zero, which means light is "non-local". This is the fundamental symmetry condition of light. Light could not create its spacetime conservation domain, perform its entropy function, nor gauge its metric without the spatio-temporal symmetry of non-locality. But the Interval of mass, or bound energy, is always some positive quantity greater than zero, and this is because the time dimension is necessarily explicit for immobile, local mass, for reasons of entropy, causality, and energy conservation we have considered above. Conversely, because light is missing both the X and the T dimensional parameters, light's position in 4 dimensional spacetime cannot be specified. The basic function of Einstein's "Interval" is to rescue causality from the shifting perspectives of Einstein's relativistic reference frames.
This all makes sense when we think about space filled only with light - in such a domain there is no purely spatial Interval because there is nothing to distinguish one place or point from another - all is uniform and indistinguishable spatial, metric, and energetic symmetry. But enter mass with its inevitable companions, time, charge, and gravitation (the asymmetric "gang of four"), and immediately we can distinguish a point or place - here is the particle - more importantly, here is the gravitational field pointing to the particle's location from every other place in space (the influence of the field is universal in extent). The gravitational field organizes the formerly featureless space around the particle's center of mass. But one more thing is needed to pin down this location as absolutely unique: because the Universe is always moving, either expanding or contracting (due to the spatial entropy drive of light's intrinsic motion), the time dimension is also required to specify which of an endless succession of moving locations we are to consider.
Does Light Produce a Gravitational Field?
The positive Interval of mass represents a dimensional asymmetry because it is unique, distinguishable, and invariant for all observers. Light has no associated gravitational field because it has no "location". Being non-local, light cannot provide a center for a gravitational field, and an uncentered gravitational field constitutes a violation of energy conservation (because of producing "net" motion and energy). Consequently, freely moving light cannot and does not produce a gravitational field. Light's zero Interval is precisely the symmetry condition necessary to prevent the formation of an explicit time dimension and its associated gravitational field. Light could hardly function as the metric gauge of spacetime if it were itself plagued by a metric-warping "location" charge and gravitational field. Finally, light has no time dimension nor the gravitational field which could produce one.
This is the basic conservation reason why the intrinsic motion of light - whatever its actual numerical value - must be the "velocity of non-locality", the symmetry gauge and entropy drive of free energy, the gauge of the metrical equivalence between time and space, effectively an infinite velocity within its spatial domain. Otherwise light would have a "location charge", a time dimension, and a gravitational field, and spacetime would immediately collapse into a black hole. (If light produced a gravitational field, the Universe would have been "still born" as a black hole; instead of a "Big Bang" there would have been a "Big Crunch". The fact that the scientific "establishment" believes that free light produces a gravitational field continues to be a major conceptual roadblock in their ongoing effort to unify gravitation with the other forces. This is a major, crucial, and (at least in principle) testable point of difference between the "Tetrahedron Model" and "establishment" physics.)
In fact, the recently announced "acceleration" of the cosmic expansion of spacetime (see, for example, Sky and Telescope March, 2005, pages 32-39) provides observational evidence favoring my view that light lacks a gravitational field. As mass is converted to light in stars and quasars, by quantum radiance and particle and proton decay (and by analogous conservation processes in "dark matter"), the total gravitational field of the Cosmos is reduced, resulting, over time, in the observed "acceleration". (See: "Does Light Produce a Gravitational Field?".)
Symmetries of Light Conserved in Matter
In terms of conservation: in obedience to Noether's theorem, bound energy stores the symmetry of light as the conserved charges (and spin) of matter; in obedience to the first law of thermodynamics, bound energy stores the raw energy of light as the mass and momentum of matter; in obedience to the second law of thermodynamics, bound energy stores the spatial entropy drive of light as the gravitational field and temporal entropy drive of matter. Gravitation and time induce each other endlessly. Thus entropy produces the dimensional conservation domains of free energy (space - through the intrinsic motion of light), and of information and matter's "causal matrix" (historic spacetime - through the intrinsic motion of time and gravitation). This is the iron linkage between the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Noether's theorem is drawn into this "trinity" of natural law because velocity c is both the entropy drive and the symmetry gauge of free energy, and as a conservation consequence, gravitation is a symmetry as well as an entropy debt. (See: "The Double Conservation Role of Gravitation").
Time and space are both implicit in the description of the motion of an electromagnetic wave: "frequency" (time) multiplied by "wavelength" (space) = c, the velocity of light. In the quantum-mechanical creation of a time "charge", when an electromagnetic wave collapses or becomes "knotted", it switches from the spatial or "wavelength" character of a moving wave to the temporal or "frequency" character of a particle or stationary wave - like a coin flipping from heads to tails. It is reasonable to call this temporal expression a "charge" because time is asymmetric; being one-way, time has the asymmetric or informational character of any other isolated charge of matter. Time differs from the other charges in that it is an "entropic charge" - a charge with intrinsic dimensional motion. The asymmetric time charge produces a specific "location" in the otherwise symmetric field of space - giving the massive particle it is associated with a positive "Interval", whereas the light from which the particle was produced had a "zero" Interval. (See: "Gravity Diagram No. 2".)
This is the formal character of gravity's "location" charge - the positive Interval of bound energy breaks the non-local symmetry of the free energy which created it. This non-local symmetry state had produced the equitable distribution of light's energy throughout spacetime, a symmetry broken by the concentrated lump of immobile energy represented by bound energy's undistributed "rest mass". It is the distributional asymmetry of matter's energy content which is the origin of gravity's "location" charge. Demonstrating this point, the "location" or gravitational charge records the spacetime position, quantity, and density of the asymmetric energy distribution represented by any form of bound energy. Nor is gravity a passive signal: gravity will direct you to the center of this asymmetry by carrying you there bodily. Finally, gravity will repay the symmetry debt by converting bound to free energy in stars (partially), and via Hawking's "quantum radiance" of black holes (completely).
As magnetism is the invisible, "intrinsic", projective, "electro-motive" (electrically active) force of the loadstone, so gravity is the invisible, "intrinsic", projective, "inertio-motive" (dimensionally active) force of the ordinary rock. In the case of magnetism, we trace the force back to the moving (and aligned) electric charges of the atoms in the loadstone; in the case of gravity, we trace the force back to the moving (and one-way) temporal charges of bound energy in the rock. A moving electric charge creates a magnetic field; a moving temporal charge creates a gravitational field. In both cases the field is produced at right angles to the current. The relation is reciprocal as well: moving magnetic and spatial fields (gravity) create electric and temporal currents (time). This is the intuitive analogy between electromagnetism and gravitation which so intrigued Einstein. Finally, gravitation and time induce each other endlessly, as do the electric and magnetic components of light.
The "graviton" or field vector of the gravitational charge is a quantum unit of temporal entropy, a quantum unit of time, the transformed, "flipped", or inverted spatial entropy drive or intrinsic motion of the photon (implicit vs explicit time = photon vs graviton). Time is the active principle of gravity's "location" charge; time is the implicit entropy drive of free energy and the explicit entropy drive of bound energy; time is the connecting link between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. (See: "The Conversion of Space to Time".)
Quantum Mechanics and Gravitation
Gravitation is both a symmetry debt and an entropy debt, unique among the charges and their forces. Gravity's double conservation role is due to the double gauge role of c, which gauges both the entropy drive and the non-local symmetry state of free energy. Gravity cannot conserve either gauge function of c without conserving both. This double nature is reflected in two different mechanisms, both of which convert space to time, one at the quantum level of charge - the entropy debt, and one at the macroscopic level of gravitational force - the symmetry debt. The two mechanisms are distinct but both are part of the gravitational conversion of space to time, connecting the quantum-mechanical aspect of gravitational charge (particle-charge-time-entropy) to the macroscopic aspect of gravitational flow (mass-location-time-symmetry). For a more extensive discussion of the mechanics of gravitation and the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravitation, see: "Entropy, Gravitation, and Thermodynamics"; and: "A Description of Gravitation".
Global vs Local Gauge Symmetry and the Gravitational Metric: Energy Conservation
The gravitational contribution to the matrix at this position (row 2, cell 2) is the time dimension of bound energy. In the "global vs local gauge symmetry" interpretation of the cosmic order, the global symmetry state of reference in the case of gravity is the spatial symmetry state established by the electromagnetic constant c in row 1, cell 2, immediately above "time" in the matrix representation. Time is the compensating component of the local gauge symmetry "current" or field vector (the graviton or spacetime), derived from the global state by the gravitational annihilation of space and the extraction of a metrically equivalent temporal residue. The local state is derived from, imposed upon, and "warps" the global state, being an asymmetric derivative which introduces a one-way temporal and gravitational metric, both with a privileged or defined directionality ("forward" in time and "downward" in space). (See: "Global vs Local Gauge Symmetry in Gravity".)
The function of a metric is the conservation of energy. In the local, temporal metric established by gravitation (as gauged by the universal constant G), time is the new dimensional parameter which is required to conserve the energy accounts of matter, for at least three reasons: 1) the energy content of matter varies with its relative motion (whereas in the global, spatial metric, light's energy varies with frequency, not motion); 2) providing the entropy drive of matter (unlike light, matter has no intrinsic spatial motion to supply its entropy drive); 3) to order the causality linkages of matter (and the invariance of matter's "Interval") in the information domain of historic spacetime (whereas light is acausal, being both non-local and atemporal).
Through the dimensional agency of time, energy conservation is accomplished in the local gravitational metric of relative motion and matter gauged by G, no less than in the global spatial metric of absolute motion and light gauged by c. The spherical symmetry of a gravitational field is crucial to its energy conservation role, not only to extract time from space, but to avoid imparting a spatial motion to the central mass. All gravitational fields of whatever strength are exactly symmetric (in their net effect), and vanish or self-annihilate at the center of the field where the temporal residue, the metric equivalent of the annihilated space, is extracted.
The temporal entropy drive of matter is provided at the expense of the spatial entropy drive of light. The expansion of history is funded by the expansion of space, resulting in the gravitational deceleration of the spatial expansion of the Cosmos. The energy for matter's expanding historical domain comes (via gravity) from the expansive energy of light's spatial domain. This conservation/symmetry circuit is completed by the gravitational conversion of bound to free energy in stars and related astrophysical processes, returning light to its spatial domain, reducing the total gravitational field of the Cosmos, and allowing the Universe to accelerate toward a gravity-free rate of spatial expansion.
The historical parameter of spacetime is a rationale for the long-range character of gravitation. Light is linked by space, matter is linked by time, causality, and history. Historic spacetime is the conservation domain of matter's causal information "matrix" or network, the "karmic" field of consequences, cause and effect, and historical connectivity. Today is the causal effect of yesterday, and yesterday must remain real in historic spacetime if the reality of our present moment is to be upheld. The material Universe is bound together by gravitation, historic spacetime, and temporal causality.
Mass assumes quantized, specific, particulate form as the strong force quarks and hadrons, and the weak force leptons. Hadrons are defined as particles containing quarks; hence all hadrons carry "color" charge, the source of the strong force. Leptons contain no quarks and hence carry no color charge. Leptons carry lepton "number" or "identity" charge, the source of the weak force. The leptons are true elementary particles whereas the quarks are sub-elementary. Electrons are familiar examples of the heavy members of the lepton family (electron, muon, tau, and (?) leptoquark); neutrinos are (nearly) massless members of the lepton family (there is a separate and distinct neutrino for each massive lepton). Protons and neutrons are familiar examples of the "hadron" family; they are further distinguished as members of the "baryon" class of hadrons, which are composed of 3 quarks. The only other hadrons are the mesons, which are composed of quark-antiquark pairs (see: "The Particle Table"). In general, the baryons function as mass carriers, and the leptons and mesons function as alternative charge carriers, balancing charges of matter in place of antiparticles (as for example the familiar and ubiquitous electron-proton combination of atomic matter).
3 Elementary Families Each of 4 Particles
The quarks and the leptons each occur in three "families" of differing energy levels; the quark and lepton families appear to be paired in these 3 families as follows (a precisely corresponding set of antiparticles exists but is not shown):
1) up, down (u, d) quarks and the electron and electron neutrino (e, ve);
There is no generally accepted explanation why there should be 3 energy levels of particles, why they occur in apparently correlated pairs, or how the quarks and leptons are related. Ordinary matter (including stars) is composed of the 1st family only. It seems likely that the quarks and leptons are both derived from a high energy, primordial "ancestor" particle, the "leptoquark"; it is also likely that the 3 energy families of particles are somehow reflecting the 3-dimensional metric structure of space. (See: "The Leptoquark Diagram"; and also: "The Hourglass Diagram".)
In contrast to the "long-range" electrical and gravitational forces, which have an infinite range through spacetime, the strong force is a "short-range" force, an internal characteristic of nuclear matter. Quarks occur in only two kinds of particles: "baryons" composed of 3 quarks, and "mesons" composed of quark-antiquark pairs. Baryons are familiar to us as neutrons and protons, but there are many other 3 quark combinations possible using the heavier members of the quark family ("hyperons"). In addition, every quark combination seems to have many possible energetic expressions, or "resonances", just as electron orbits have many "excited" states. Typically, all excited states are exceedingly short-lived. Six quarks are known in three "energy families"; the quarks are named "up, down"; "charm, strange"; and "top, bottom". Ordinary matter consists only of the up, down quarks in their unexcited or "ground" state (protons and neutrons).
All quarks carry a 1/2 unit of strictly conserved "spin", and a partial "flavor" ("number" or "identity") charge; quark "flavor" charges are not strictly conserved. However, the whole unit identity or number charge of the baryon is apparently strictly conserved, analogously to the strictly conserved number charges of the leptons. Quarks also carry partial electric charges (u, c, t quarks carry +2/3; d, s, b quarks carry -1/3), and fractional divisions of their distinguishing charge, color. There are three fractional color charges: red, green, yellow (not actually colors, just names of convenience), which are exchanged between quarks by the "gluon" field; each "gluon" is composed of a color-anticolor charge pair. One of the nine possible combinations of color-anticolor is doubly neutral ("green-antigreen"), leaving eight effective members of the gluon field. The constant "round-robin" exchange of the (massless) gluons from one quark to another (at velocity c) is the strong force mechanism which binds the quarks together.
At a higher level of strong force structural order and cohesion, a meson exchange field binds nucleons (protons and neutrons) into compound atomic nuclei. This higher-order or nucleon-level expression of the strong force (inter-baryonic rather than intra-baryonic) is essentially an "oscillation" of the nucleons between their possible neutron or proton identities (sometimes known as "isospin" or "isotropic spin" symmetry). "Isospin" symmetry amounts to an oscillation between quark up and down "flavors", whereas the lower order or gluon-level strong force amounts to an oscillation between quark red, green, and blue "colors" (leading in the gluon case to a symmetry known as "asymptotic freedom"). We will discuss strong force symmetry effects more extensively below and in row three.
The baryon is an incredible, miniature Universe of structure, information, charge, and activity. A large compound atomic nucleus is a swarming "hive", a veritable metropolis of quantum mechanical action and force exchange, all quite beneath our notice, due to the short-range character of (both expressions of) the strong force. The essential miracle of matter resides within the massive bound energy system of the baryon.
Being composed entirely of color-anticolor charges, the gluon field as a whole sums to zero, a crucial symmetry known as "asymptotic freedom" (Gross, Wilczek, and Politzer, 2004 Nobel prize). Quarks are permanently confined by gluons to meson or baryon combinations; they never occur alone or in any other combinations in nature. Finally, only quark combinations which sum to zero or unit (leptonic) electric charge, and neutral or "white" color charge, are allowed. Hence the quark-antiquark pairs composing mesons carry a single color and its corresponding anticolor (summing to "neutral" color), whereas in baryons the color charges of the gluon field pair with anticolors in all possible combinations (summing to "white" color).
Quarks are sub-elementary particles, as they carry electric charges which are fractions of the unit electric charge of the leptons, the only truly elementary particles. When one considers the properties of a baryon, it is hard to escape the impression that this is what a lepton would look like if it were somehow fractured into three parts. Since, by definition, you cannot "really" fracture an elementary particle, perhaps you could do so "virtually", provided the parts could never become "real" (individually separated), but remained forever united in combinations that sum to elementary leptonic charges. In this way, the fractured particle would still "look like" an elementary particle to the outside observer; nature is not above such tricks, as we have learned from the virtual particles and Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle". It seems probable that baryons are, in some sense, primordially "fractured" leptons. Such an origin (the "leptoquark") would go far toward explaining both the differences and the similarities of these two fundamental classes of particles. Just as the baryon seems to be a fractured lepton, so the gluons seem to be a fractured photon ("sticky light") - the divided field vector of the original leptonic electric charge. Hence the strong force gluon field appears to be a permanently confined derivative of the electromagnetic force, and both are strictly symmetric in all their interactions.
Fermions and Bosons
Collectively, the hadrons and leptons, which comprise the material component of atomic matter (the nucleus, electron shell, and associated neutrinos), are known as "fermions". All fermions have a "spin", or quantized spin angular momentum, in 1/2 integer units of Planck's energy constant (1/2, 3/2, etc.); fermions obey the Pauli exclusion principle, which simply states that no two fermions can be in the same place at the same time, if all their quantum numbers are also the same. Fermions cannot pile up on top of one another indiscriminately; they keep their own counsel, which is why we get specific, discreet, sharp and crystalline atomic structure rather than goo.
In contrast to the fermions is the class of energy forms known as "bosons", which includes the force carriers or field vectors of the 4 forces: the photons of electromagnetism (the quantum units of light), the gravitons of gravity, and the gluons of the strong force. As their name implies, the IVBs (Intermediate Vector Bosons) of the weak force have some characteristics of both classes, being very massive bosons. Together, the fermions and bosons comprise the particles and forces of matter. Bosons have whole integer spins (1, 2, etc.) and they can and do superimpose or pile up on one another. Thus a photon or graviton can have any energy because it can be composed of an indefinite number of superimposed quanta, whereas an electron has a single, specific rest energy and charge. The bosons all bear some relationship to light and the metric, their probable common origin. Thus we have the photon (ordinary massless light), the graviton (inverted light), the gluon (divided or "sticky" light), and the IVBs (massive light).
Once again we have a natural dichotomy which invites our curiosity, experiment, and speculation. What is the relationship between the quarks and leptons? They seem made for each other - are they indeed made from each other - perhaps both arising from a common ancestor?
I speculate that the ancestral particle of the quarks and leptons is the "leptoquark", the heaviest member of the leptonic elementary particle series. The leptoquark is a lepton at very high (primordial) energy densities, when its quarks are sufficiently compressed (by ambient pressure during the Big Bang) that its color charge vanishes through the principle of "asymptotic freedom". (The gluon field, being composed entirely of color-anticolor charges in all possible combinations, sums to zero when compressed to "leptonic size".) At lower energy densities, the quarks expand under their mutual quantum mechanical and electrical repulsion, causing the color charge to become explicit. The explicit (and conserved) color charge stabilizes the baryon, since neutrinos, which would otherwise cause its decay, do not carry color charge. Through the internal expansion of its 3 quarks, the leptoquark becomes a baryon, decaying eventually to the ground state proton, producing leptons and mesons (via the "W" IVB) along the way, which function as alternative charge carriers for the electric and identity charges of quarks and other leptons. (See: "Introduction to the Weak Force".)
The neutrinos remain mysterious particles and are actively being researched. Whether or not neutrinos actually have mass is still a question. If neutrinos have mass, why is it so small, and how do they escape carrying an electric charge, as do all other massive particles? Is there a 4th "leptoquark" neutrino? What is the smallest possible natural mass quanta? Are neutrinos composite or elementary particles? It is currently believed that neutrinos have a very small mass and "oscillate" between their several possible identities, just as the massive leptons, whose identity charges they carry in "hidden" form, can change identities among themselves via reversible weak force decays, as mediated by the IVBs. (See: Science, Vol. 306, 26 Nov. 2004, page 1458.)
Neutrinos were thought to be massless leptons with intrinsic motion c. They are now thought to have a tiny mass and to move very nearly at velocity c because they are so energetic when formed. Neutrinos are the explicit form of lepton number ("identity") charge, which is "hidden" or implicit in the massive leptons (and probably also in the massive baryons and the leptoquark). Neutrinos, if they have any mass at all, are so light that they are apparently completely dominated by their deBroglie "matter waves". Hence in the particle-wave spectrum of energy forms, neutrinos are more wave than particle. (See: "deBroglie Matter Waves".)
Each massive lepton (electron, muon, tau, and (perhaps) the hypothetical leptoquark) is associated with a specific neutrino, or number charge, which I refer to as an "Identity" charge to acknowledge the symmetry debt carried by the weak force. All photons are indistinguishable one from another, but the leptons do not share this "symmetry of anonymity". While all electrons are identical, they are distinct from the photon, and from the other elementary particles - the muon, tau, and leptoquark. Neutrinos are the hallmark of an elementary particle; they are telling us that there are only three or four; all else is a composite (or, as in the case of the quarks, a subunit). Due to Noether's Theorem, the conservation domain requires this identity asymmetry to be recognized and accounted for, but nature is economical in its bookkeeping, concerning itself only with massive elementary particles. All neutrinos have left-handed spin, while all antineutrinos have right-handed spin, neatly distinguishing the leptonic series from its antimatter counterpart. Evidently, these specific "identity" charges function to facilitate annihilation reactions between matter and antimatter, allowing the various particle species to identify their proper "anti-mates". Through the facilitation of annihilation reactions (which must occur within the Heisenberg time limit for virtual reality), the identity charges make their proximate contribution to conserving light's symmetry. The neutrino's ultimate symmetry conservation role is to provide a physical embodiment for identity charge, which is conserved through time, can act as an alternative charge carrier for the identity symmetry debt, and is forever payable upon demand (via annihilation with the appropriate anti-identity charge). (See: "Identity Charge and the Weak Force".)
Neutrinos are quanta of information keeping the symmetry records of spacetime concerning the identity and number of all massive elementary particles within its domain. Combined with the metrical warpage of gravitation, we see that spacetime contains an actual structural "knowledge" of the location, mass, and identity of every elementary particle. This startling fact informs us that spacetime is as scrupulous concerning symmetry conservation as it is concerning raw energy conservation. We have already noted that historical spacetime contains a complete causal record (in the form of information) of all past events. We are only beginning to appreciate the comprehensive meaning of the term "conservation domain".
I include in this section a discussion of the global vs local gauge symmetry model for each force. It is in the invariance of charge as translated between global and local metrics and energy states by the field vectors of the forces that a synthesis between the "Tetrahedron Model" and the "Standard Model" of "establishment" physics can be made, at least in terms of symmetry conservation and Noether's Theorem.
Electric Charge
The charges of matter are the symmetry debts of light. Charge (and spin) conservation is a temporal form of symmetry conservation. Forces generated by matter's charges are the demand for payment of the symmetry debts they represent. Noether's theorem is the formal theory addressing the conservation of the symmetry of free electromagnetic energy (radiation, light). Charges are quantized to help protect their values from inflation or deflation over time by entropy or relative motion in spacetime; otherwise, charge conservation would have little meaning. This is also the reason why matter must be separated and protected from the expansive or enervating effects of its entropy drive, time. Matter does not participate in the expansion of its causal information matrix, the historic domain of spacetime; matter maintains a tangential position with respect to history, existing only in the "universal present moment". (See: "The Time Train".) Magnetic forces are also instrumental in protecting the invariance of electric charges in relative motion. (See: "Global vs Local Gauge Symmetries and the Tetrahedron Model".)
We do not ordinarily realize that the symmetry of energy is conserved as well as its total amount, but it has been known for a long time that this must be true. In a famous theorem, Emmy Noether proved mathematically that in a multicomponent field, such as the electromagnetic field (or the metric field of spacetime), wherever there is a symmetry one also finds an associated conservation law, and vice versa. This theorem has become the mathematical basis ("group theory") for modern efforts to unify the forces. In the model presented here, I trace the unity of the forces back to their origins as the conserved debts of light's broken symmetry. (See: "Emmy Noether: A Tribute to her Life and Work").
Charges arise naturally from the process of symmetry breaking. When virtual particle-antiparticle pairs are created from light, each member of the pair carries various charges which function to ensure instant and successful annihilation, reconstituting the light from which they were created. Since light itself carries no charges, it can only create particle pairs whose charges balance, cancel, or neutralize each other, summing to zero. The electric charge is prototypical of this effect.
Initially, all massive elementary particles are created in particle-antiparticle pairs with equal but opposite electric charges (among others) summing to zero. Opposite electric charges attract each other powerfully, and at long range, allowing the particles to find each other anywhere in space and recombine, motivating an annihilation reaction which returns their bound energy to light, conserving the symmetry of the free energy which created them. Since photons, or light quanta, are the field vectors (force carriers) of electric charge, we see light actively protecting its own symmetry in matter-antimatter annihilation reactions, through the forces generated by electric charge. Finally, because the electrical annihilations of virtual particles are caused by photons traveling at velocity c, virtual particles are created and destroyed within the Heisenberg time limit imposed upon virtual reality. Virtual particles do not live long enough to exist in "real" time, and hence they also, like the light which created them, cannot produce a gravitational field.
When one member of a particle-antiparticle pair is isolated, as by the asymmetric decay of matter-antimatter leptoquark pairs during the Big Bang, the conserved charges of that isolated particle, which were intended to motivate and facilitate an annihilation reaction with its antimatter partner, are simply "hung" in time. The isolated particle is one-half of a symmetric particle-antiparticle pair, one-half of light's symmetric particle form, and its uncanceled but conserved charges are one-half of light's symmetry-keeping forces. These charges can therefore be fairly characterized as the "debts" or asymmetric remnants of light's broken symmetry.
The charges of matter are the symmetry debts of light. Light has global symmetry; charges are a local transformation of light's global symmetry. Local symmetry is global symmetry in a temporally conserved form. Charge-neutral, cold, atomic matter represents a "ground state" of local symmetry. Gravity is the only charge of matter that cannot be neutralized - because of gravity's double conservation role as both an entropy debt and a symmetry debt of light. The entropic component (time, history) of the gravitational charge must continuously increase, until it is satisfied by the return of bound to free energy (as in the stars).
While electric charge is always associated with mass, it is independent of the quantity of mass; the three leptonic particles electron, muon, and tau, for example, have vastly different masses but carry the same electric charge. Electric charge is not associated with bosons which move with intrinsic motion c, such as the gluon, photon, or graviton. There is definitely a major, general asymmetry associated with the loss of light's intrinsic motion which electric charge is powerfully guarding against, and we would like to distinguish it from the asymmetry associated with the gravitational charge. The gravitational constant (G), the electromagnetic constant (c), and the magnitude of electric charge (e), are all invariant; their values are independent of the quantity of energy they are associated with.
The asymmetry I single out as the cause of electric charge is dimensional - light is 2-dimensional, mass is 4-dimensional. Light lacks the x, t dimensions of bound energy, as Einstein discovered. The jump from 2 to 4 dimensions in the conversion of light to particles (or bound to free energy) is a general loss of symmetry, since the 4th dimension inevitably includes time, which is an asymmetric, one-way dimension. It is this particular asymmetry, time, which electric charge protects against. Electric charge, through matter-antimatter annihilations, protects light's dimensional symmetry by preventing light from devolving into matter, gravitation, and the asymmetric time dimension which is matter's entropy drive and causal relation. Electric charge is not related to the quantity of mass because the dimensional asymmetry of time applies equally to all 4-dimensional massive forms, irrespective of magnitude. Like most symmetry debts, electric charge is a charge of "quality" not "quantity". Raw energy debts (mass, momentum) are "quantity" debts. Gravity is unusual in that it partakes of both, as gravity is both an entropy (quantity) and a symmetry (quality) debt of light - see below.
From the global vs local gauge symmetry viewpoint, the magnetic field of a moving electric charge constitutes the local symmetry "current" (the compensatory component of the field vector), that translates the relative motion of an electric charge into an electrical form (magnetism) that does not affect - and hence protects - the invariant magnitude of its source. The electric charge is the global symmetry state, invariant and universal, independent of the mass of any carrier (such as the electron or proton), and likewise invariant with respect to relative motion - thanks to the magnetic field. In a similar fashion, the magnetic component of an electromagnetic wave compensates the electric component of the wave, rendering the photon (light) electrically neutral and invariant with respect to charge.
Because charges represent symmetry debts which must be paid in full upon demand (as for example when they annihilate with an antiparticle or neutralize an anticharge), symmetry conservation and charge conservation would have little meaning if such debts were inflated or diminished by entropy, age, gravitation, or relative motion. Therefore, all four forces have some compensatory component in their field vectors which act to preserve the invariance of the original, global values of charge as they are translated and transferred to new or material carriers, or otherwise interact with the relative and variable realm of matter.
In the case of the electromagnetic force, the local compensatory component of the field vector (the photon or electromagnetic quantum) is the magnetic field; in the case of gravitation, the analogous component is time (in which the field vector of gravitation is taken as spacetime); in the case of the strong force, it is the color-anticolor composition of the gluon field (producing the permanent confinement of quark partial charges to whole quantum charge units); in the case of the weak force, it is the mass of the IVBs and the particle-antiparticle composition of the alternative charge carriers in their virtual modes.
Another example is provided by the Doppler effect. Here the frequency or color of light changes in response to relative motion, leaving the velocity of light invariant. In this case, however, no projective force such as magnetism is produced, since c is a metric gauge, not an electric charge. Hence the metric parameters of the wave are affected, frequency (time) and wavelength (space), rather than the electrical parameters of the wave. In the gravitational Doppler effect, we again find only a metric effect. Magnetic effects due to relative motion can be referred to an even more fundamental level of compensatory flexibility in the dimensions of the spacetime metric, the "Lorentz Invariance" of Einstein's "Interval" and Special Relativity, protecting the invariance of velocity c, causality, charge, symmetry conservation, and energy conservation.
Gravitational Charge
In row 2 we emphasized the gravitational conservation role with respect to entropy, the creation of matter's time dimension, and the conservation of energy (raw energy conservation). Here in row 3 the gravitational role emphasized is with respect to the "location" charge, and the asymmetric distribution of matter in spacetime (symmetry conservation). The two major conservation roles of gravitation (entropy and symmetry) are due to the role of velocity c as the entropy and symmetry gauge of free energy.
Gravitation is a dimensional or "spacetime" charge, at once the most common and familiar, but perhaps the most mysterious and intractable to explain. The symmetry debt associated with gravitation is "location", representing the (broken) spatio-temporal distributional symmetry of light's "non-local" character. When light is converted to mass, light loses its intrinsic motion and hence its non-local symmetric energy state. Whereas light (in its own reference frame) is everywhere simultaneously within its conservation domain (light's Interval = 0), mass has "intrinsic rest" and acquires a time dimension (via its gravitational charge) and a positive Interval. The distributional symmetry of light's energy within spacetime is therefore broken; mass is a concentrated lump of undistributed energy with a specific location in spacetime. The location of matter is actually identified energetically and inertially in terms of both the quantity and density of bound energy by the warped metric produced by the gravitational field of mass. Whereas light is 2-dimensional, mass is 4-dimensional; the acquisition of the extra dimensions, especially time, identifies the spacetime coordinates and specific location of immobile mass-energy.
But the gravitational charge is unusual in that it is more than just a symmetry debt; unlike electric charge, color, or number, gravity is also the entropy debt of light. The gravitational force creates time and spacetime (bound energy shares spacetime with free energy as a compound conservation domain), converting space to time, via the annihilation of space and the extraction of a metrically equivalent temporal residue. Gravity and time induce each other: they are primordial expressions of entropy in matter. -Gm = the negentropic energy of mass, the energy associated with the time dimension of bound energy (T)m. The complexity of gravitation is due to the fact that its conservation function addresses both the first and second laws of thermodynamics (through time, causality, and entropy), as well as symmetry conservation (through the "location" charge and the positive Interval), simultaneously. The active principle of the gravitational "location" charge is time, which is both a symmetry (4-D location) and an entropy (intrinsic dimensional motion) debt. It is gravitation's entropic character that causes it to so aggressively and relentlessly pursue its symmetry conservation agenda (the conversion of bound to free energy, as in stars) - unlike electric charge, for example, which is only a symmetry debt and is readily neutralized. (See: "The Double Conservation Role of Gravitation".)
Think of the round, full Moon and the Sun; although they are of the same apparent size in the sky, they illustrate for us the vast difference (and apparently opposite reactions) characteristic of the two great conservation roles of gravity. The Moon illustrates gravity's proximate entropy (and hence energy) conservation role (the conversion of space to time); the Sun demonstrates gravity's ultimate symmetry conservation role (the conversion of bound to free energy).
Gravity is a collapsing spatial wave centered on a massive particle whose dynamic is supplied by the intrinsic motion of time, the entropy drive associated with the bound energy of the particle. The collapse of space produces a metrically equivalent temporal residue, whose entropic march into history collapses more space in an endless self-regenerating cycle. (See: "The Conversion of Space to Time".) The temporal entropy drive thus supplied to matter is the conserved entropy drive of the free energy which originally created the annihilated space - the transformed intrinsic motion of light. The temporal entropy drive of matter is not quenched until it succeeds in returning bound energy to its original free state, as seen in stars and via Hawking's "quantum radiance" of black holes, fulfilling the mandate of Noether's Theorem regarding the conservation of light's symmetric non-local energy state. This is the gravitational pathway of symmetry conservation, employing the engine of (temporal) entropy. The electrical pathway (of symmetry conservation) is via chemistry and matter-antimatter annihilations, and the strong and weak force pathways are through particle fusion, fission, and proton decay - all with the same end, the conservation (restoration) of light's symmetric energy state.
Global and Local Gauge Symmetry in Gravitation: Symmetry Conservation
In the gravitational case (which is essentially that of the spacetime metric), the global symmetry is characterized by space and the non-local distribution of light's energy. Light's "Interval" = 0, and light has no time dimension or "x" dimension (in the direction of propagation). Having no time or distance parameters, light has forever to go nowhere: the result is that light is everywhere within its spatial conservation domain simultaneously. All spatial coordinate positions in space are equivalent to light; light favors no particular "location". This is light's global symmetry condition of non-locality, the consequence of light's intrinsic motion or spatial entropy drive, "velocity c".
However, light's symmetric spatial distribution does not hold for matter, the central player (with time and gravitation) in the local gauge symmetry. Matter is a concentrated, immobile lump of bound energy with no spatial distribution, and with no intrinsic spatial motion. The "Interval" of matter is always greater than zero, due to the explicit presence of the time dimension. While matter is the local energy form (in contrast to global light), time is the local dimension (in contrast to global space). The "location" charge of gravity responds to the broken symmetry of light's non-local energy state as represented by matter (or any form of bound energy). The gravitational "location" charge identifies the position, magnitude, and density of any violation of free energy's distributional symmetry, such as immobile mass-matter. The active principle of the gravitational "location" charge is time. Time specifies the 4-dimensional position of matter in an ever-expanding, entropically driven spatial universe: "here and now". A gravitational charge specifies an energetically and inertially preferred location in spacetime (the center of mass, the present moment).
The intrinsic motion of the entropic time dimension (time is produced by the quantum mechanical and gravitational collapse of space) pulls space along into the point-like beginning of the time line, leading into the historic domain. Space self-annihilates at the point center of mass, leaving behind a metrically equivalent temporal reside, which also marches off into history, repeating the endless, self-feeding entropic cycle. Meanwhile, all material objects are carried toward the gravitational center of mass by the flow of space, resulting eventually in huge astronomical accumulations of matter (planets, stars, galaxies), in which bound energy is returned to its symmetric (and spatially entropic) form of light by such processes as nuclear fusion, the nucleosynthetic pathway of stars, supernovas, quasars, and the complete gravitation conversion of bound to free energy by Hawking's "quantum radiance" of black holes.
This is the symmetry conservation role of gravitation as distinct from its energy conservation role discussed in row 2 (above). Here in row 3, we focus on the non-local distributional symmetry of light's energy and light's zero "Interval" as consequences of light's intrinsic motion (following from the suppression of time by the metric symmetry gauge "velocity c"). In row 2, we focused on the entropic role of light's intrinsic motion, expanding and cooling space, and the entropic role of the gravitational production of time, conserving light's spatial entropy drive in the form of matter's temporal entropy drive. Time also conserves the energy accounts of matter in relative motion, protects the causal linkages of matter (and the invariance of matter's "Interval"), and creates historic spacetime, the conservation domain of matter's causal information "matrix" or network.
The principle of charge invariance in the gravitational case is found in the invariance of the "Interval" and "causality". Massless light is non-local, atemporal, and acausal; massive matter is local, temporal, and causal. When light or free energy is transformed to matter or bound energy, the invariant, zero "Interval" or non-local symmetric energy state characteristic of light is transformed by gravity into the equally invariant but positive "Interval" of matter. This transformation accords with the symmetry-conserving mandate of Noether's Theorem, and the energetic necessity to conserve local matter's causal linkages and temporal relations.
The flexibility and interchangeability of time with space are necessary to the invariance of matter's Interval - as per Einstein's Special Relativity. Again, relative motion is involved (in matter), rather than absolute motion (in light). Relative rather than absolute motion requires flexible dimensions to maintain the invariance of matter's Interval: time is the metric analog of the magnetic field of electric charge. Moving clocks run slow; the effect of relative motion upon the local clock rate varies with velocity ("Lorentz Invariance"), just as the strength of a magnetic field varies with the relative velocity of an electric charge.
The tenacious gravitational charge associated with the positive Interval of matter (the "location" charge whose active principle is time) will not be satisfied until matter is finally returned to light. Once this symmetry restoration (conservation) is accomplished (as in stars), time and the gravitational field vanish, as light has neither.
Energy conservation within a temporal, relative, and local metric (as gauged by the universal gravitational constant G), rather than within a spatial, absolute, and global metric (as gauged by the universal electromagnetic constant c), is the local gauge symmetry "ground" state of row 2 (raw energy and mass conservation). Planet Earth, and the Earth-Moon orbital system, are typical examples of this quiescent, gravitational "ground state" of local symmetry and energy conservation - comparable to the electrically quiescent ground state of cold, charge neutral, atomic matter. On the other hand, "location" charge and symmetry conservation in terms of the restoration of light's non-local symmetry by the gravitational conversion of mass to light, is a topic for row 3 (symmetry and charge conservation). Our Sun is a typical example of this active gravitational stage, a completed "circuit" of symmetry conservation - comparable to the weak force radioactive decay of atoms, and the strong force fusion of compound nuclei. See: "Currents of Symmetry and Entropy"
Gravitation produces both an energy-conserving and symmetry-conserving local temporal metric for matter (gauged by G), derived from, imposed upon, and conserving the global spatial metric of light (gauged by c). In both cases, time is the compensating and variable local gauge symmetry component of the gravitational field vector (spacetime or the graviton). Time conserves energy, entropy, causality, and the Interval on the one hand, while simultaneously conserving symmetry by identifying the coordinate position, magnitude, and density of bound energy on the other. The latter information (provided in the inertial terms of an energetically preferred spacetime "location charge"), results in the eventual conversion of mass to light, as in the stars. Gravity accomplishes the transformation of a global spatial metric to a local temporal metric (and back again) by the gravitational annihilation of space and the extraction of a metrically equivalent temporal residue, followed by the gravitational annihilation of matter and the extraction of energetically equivalent light - as in stars and via Hawking's "quantum radiance" of black holes. (See: "Global and Local Symmetry in Gravitation".)
For a more complete discussion of the gravitational charge and its mechanism, see: "Entropy, Gravitation, and Thermodynamics" and "A Description of Gravitation".
(row 3, cell 3)
Strong Force Binding in Compound Atomic Nuclei
There are two types or structural levels of the strong force, one involving binding the individual quarks inside baryons via "color" charges and the exchange of gluons (discovered by Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig (1964)), and the other involving binding nucleons (protons and neutrons) in compound atomic nuclei via "flavor" charge and the exchange of mesons (discovered by Hideki Yukawa (1935)). These are very different forces, even though both involve nuclear material and both are called "strong", and they have very different consequences: quarks are permanently confined, and can never escape the binding force of the gluon field; nucleons are tightly held, but given sufficient energy, can and do escape the grasp of the meson field (as in radioactive decay).
What is the conservation basis of the meson binding force of the compound atomic nucleus? It is evidently the simple fact that when nucleons are herded together in sufficiently close aggregations, they are able to exist in a lower bound energy state than when they exist singly. Just like poor college students, they find that living in groups is cheaper than living alone. And any condition or state that reduces bound energy and releases free energy is favored by the conservation laws, especially by symmetry conservation.
So what is it about the communal state of heavy nuclei that is so energetically favorable for the individual nucleon? It apparently has to do with the clouds of virtual particles which surround any real particle, and which constitute a part of the bound energy state or endowment of real particles.
The quark composition of a neutron is udd, that of a proton is uud+. The only difference between them is a single u or d quark, and these are very nearly the same in mass. In virtual reality, it is a relatively simple matter for a ud+ meson to change a neutron into a proton, and for a ud- meson to change a proton into a neutron (antiparticles underlined). Note how the ud+ and ud- mesons make a neat particle-antiparticle meson pair. Protons and neutrons, if they are sufficiently close together, will find themselves constantly being transformed into one another simply by the exchange of these mesons in their surrounding virtual particle fields. In fact, they can get rid of some of these virtual mesons if they are close enough to share them, and share also the energetic cost of their production and maintenance. Hence sharing these (very similar) virtual particle fields is a means of reducing their bound energy content, if these nucleons can come together closely enough and in suitable combinations. The (individually and collectively) reduced mass energy of the nucleons then becomes a binding principle or "glue" - any liberated energy must be replaced if the nucleon is to be made whole again and become free.
The most energy-efficient nucleon combinations are called alpha particles, or helium nuclei, consisting of 2 protons and 2 neutrons. I point out elsewhere that this is a "classic" 4x3 General Systems resonance or fractal combination - 4 nucleons each consisting of 3 quarks. (See: "Nature's Fractal Pathway".) The alpha particle is for some reason an especially stable nuclear configuration, and becomes the "brick" or standard building block of the stellar nucleosynthetic pathway. (See: "The Fractal Organization of Nature".)
As the compound atomic nucleus grows in size, there is a diminishing energetic return (in terms of the release of binding energy) with the addition of each new nucleon. This is because the shared field of virtual particles eventually becomes saturated - all the advantages and possibilities for sharing the burden of virtual particles have already been explored and exhausted. There's just no more room at the commune. Furthermore, the collective long-range electrical repulsive forces of the protons finally increase beyond the strength of the short-range binding energy of any individual new proton trying to join the party.
After the nucleus has grown to iron 26, fusion nucleosynthesis becomes endothermic - as much energy must be expended to break through the "front wall" of nuclear electrical resistance as is gained by the release of binding energy. However, given an external source of energy to surmount the initial barrier (such as gravitational acceleration), enough nuclear binding potential energy remains available to grow compound nuclei (in nature) up to uranium 92. Humans have created several dozen more trans-uranic heavy nuclei in accelerators, of which plutonium is the best known. Most are extremely short-lived.
As noted above, there are three "color" charges which are exchanged between quarks by the "gluon" field; gluons are composed of a color-anticolor charge pair. The constant "round-robin" exchange of the massless gluons (at velocity c) from one quark to another is the strong force mechanism which binds the quarks together. At the next higher level of nuclear structure, in compound atomic nuclei, protons and neutrons ("nucleons") are bound together by the exchange of virtual mesons, in which the nucleons swap "u" and "d" quarks in what amounts to a continual oscillation of identities. The binding energy of the meson and gluon fields is more efficiently utilized in heavy nuclei up to iron 56, resulting in the release of excess binding energy as the radiant output of nuclear fusion in stars. Beyond iron 56, element-building requires an input of energy, rather than producing energy. There is a strong resemblance between color and electric charge, suggesting that the strong force gluon field is possibly derived directly from the electromagnetic force (see below).
Quarks are sub-elementary particles, as we know from their fractional electric charges which are either 1/3 or 2/3 of the unit charge carried by the truly elementary leptons such as the electron. Allowed quark combinations always sum to zero or unit leptonic values of electric charge: the proton is +1, the neutron 0, mesons are 0, +1 or -1. The symmetry which the strong force is protecting is this quantum unit of electric charge, the elementary leptonic charge, and whole unit charges generally. If quarks were not confined as they are, there would be no way to annihilate or even neutralize their partial electric charges, or other partial charges they may carry (such as color and identity). Symmetry could not be restored and conserved if individual quarks roamed free. The strong force protects symmetry by confining these sub-elementary particles into whole quantum unit packages of charge which can be neutralized and/or annihilated by elementary unit anticharges. The strong force protects the quantum mechanical requirement of whole unit charge in the service of symmetry conservation.
If one were to fracture an elementary particle into three parts, but require that when it became "real in time" it must retain its "virtual" leptonic character in terms of whole quantum units of charge, one would need a confining force with exactly the characteristics of the strong force as produced by the gluon field of the color charge. And just as the quarks appear to be the remnant of a fractured lepton, so the gluon field appears to be the remains of a fractured photon - "sticky light" - the divided field vector of a shattered leptonic electric charge. Earlier we noted that the ability to assume electrically neutral internal configurations (as in the neutron or neutral leptoquark) was the fundamental reason why the baryon must be a composite particle, if it is to break the symmetry of the primordial particle-antiparticle pairs. (See also: "Proton Decay and the Heat Death of the Cosmos".)
The strong force represents a compromise between the necessity of cosmological symmetry-breaking and the requirement of quantum mechanical whole unit charge symmetry-keeping: the irresistible agenda meets the immovable principle. The force of the collision accomplishes the impossible, but via an accommodation - the "virtual" fracturing of an elementary particle with the permanent confinement of its quarks and partial charges.
The strong and weak forces (the "short range" particle or nuclear forces), form a symmetric-asymmetric force pair which is essential to the creation of matter. In this regard, they are curiously similar to the two "spacetime" forces, electromagnetism and gravitation (the "long range" forces). (See: "Diagram of the Spacetime and Particle Forces".)
The principle of "asymptotic freedom" illustrates the symmetry-keeping role of the strong force. As the quarks move apart, their partial charges increasingly threaten the symmetry-keeping function of whole quantum unit charges, and the strong force responds by strengthening its grip. Conversely, as the quarks move closer together, the threat to whole charge unit symmetry-keeping posed by the quark's partial charges diminishes, and the strong force relaxes.
Strong Force Global and Local Gauge Symmetry
Proton decay has never been seen, and we many fairly presume that it requires the mediation of the "X" IVB, a very massive particle, the "big brother" of the "W" IVB. The function of the "X" IVB is the same as that of the "W" IVB - to recreate the metric and energetic conditions in which the particles and transformations it now mediates were originally formed (leptoquark and baryon genesis in the "Big Bang" during the "GUT" era of strong and electroweak unification). Only in this way can the multiple conservation issues (of charge invariance and symmetry conservation) surrounding the partial charges of the quarks be resolved, which are analogous to, but even worse than, the conservation issues confronting the alternative charge carriers for which the "W" is required (because quark partial charges require the additional "gluon" field).
The gluon field, the field vector of the strong force, is composed of color-anticolor charges in every combination. The gluon's anticolor component is necessary to annihilate the quark's old color charge, allowing its replacement by the new color component. The analog of the magnetic field in the electromagnetic force, and time in the gravitational force, is the confining action of the gluon field, as it is confinement which restores the partial quark charges to whole quantum unit charges, protecting charge invariance and symmetry conservation. The field vectors of all the forces are their own antiparticles, either individually, or in sum. It is specifically this characteristic which allows the field vectors to communicate (in either direction) between the global realm of light (which is symmetric with respect to particles vs antiparticles), and the local realm of matter-only particles.
In the strong force, whole quantum unit (elementary) charges constitute the universally invariant global gauge symmetry (ultimately derived from the elementary leptons via the decay of the leptoquark), while the partial charges of the quarks represent the local gauge symmetry. The gluon field functions to combine and maintain the various partial quark charges (color, spin, electric, flavor) into whole quantum unit charges, which can be neutralized and/or annihilated by whole elementary charges, including those of the alternative charge carriers (leptons, neutrinos, and mesons). Neutral heavy elements, for example, represent the ground state of a local gauge symmetry achieved despite the various partial charges of the quarks, or the relative motion of the electron vs the proton, or the fact that the electron and proton are not each other's antiparticles, or the fact that compound atomic nuclei are composed of two different kinds of baryons.
The Weak Force: Lepton "Number" or "Identity" Charge
The leptonic charge is known as "number" charge. I prefer to call it "identity" charge, a name which better reflects its reason for existence. Photons (individual light quanta) are indistinguishable and anonymous. They are all alike, and hence form a symmetry of identity which I call "anonymity". Elementary particles, on the other hand, are not all alike; they are distinguishable between "species" and from the photon.
We know of three distinct elementary particles, comprising the leptonic spectrum or series: electron, muon, and tau, differing in their masses which increase (dramatically) from electron through muon to tau. Each has a specific neutrino associated with it, which functions as an alternative carrier of leptonic "number" ("identity") charge. (Neutrinos are the "bare" or "explicit" form of this charge, which is also carried in "hidden" or implicit form by the massive leptons). (See also: "The Weak Force: Identity or Number Charge").
The leptonic series has the appearance of a quantum mass series - that is, these elementary particles are always created with a specific, discreet mass and no other; there are no elementary massive particles in the gaps between their mass "slots", much like the discreet gaps between the rungs of a ladder, or the energy levels of atomic electron shells. The neutrino that is associated with each massive lepton is evidently the hallmark of the truly elementary particle (the sub-elementary quarks have no associated neutrinos).
It seems likely, however, that there is an undiscovered neutrino associated with the ancestral particle which gave rise to the quarks and baryons, which I assume to be the heaviest member of the leptonic series, the so-called "leptoquark". If we ever see proton decay, we would expect to see a leptoquark neutrino produced in the process. (The leptoquark neutrino is possibly the source of the "dark matter" or "missing mass" of the Universe - if neutrinos have mass at all.)
The lepton "number" or "identity" charge evidently facilitates particle-antiparticle annihilation reactions, identifies the several types of elementary particles, and by the handedness of neutrino spin neatly distinguishes matter particles from their antimatter counterparts (and so identifies suitable annihilation partners). Neutrinos also comprise a type of accounting system, recording the number and identity of elementary particles (or antiparticles) contained within the conservation domain of spacetime.
Identity or number charge plays a special role in the creation of the material universe. We can characterize the light universe, before the creation of matter, with just 2 numbers representing its symmetric charge state: Interval = 0, and Number = 0. After the creation of matter, both symmetries are broken and become positive: Interval > 0, and Number > 0. (Electric charge is zero both before and after the creation of matter, while color is an internal property of baryons, also summing to zero). The positive Interval represents gravitation and time, the positive number charge represents the weak force identity charge and particles. The metric Universe, the Universe of the dimensional conservation domains, responds to the positive number asymmetry by providing an asymmetric temporal entropy drive, an historic conservation domain for information and matter's causal matrix, and a compound conservation domain for both light and particles (spacetime), all through the quantum mechanical and gravitational conversion of space to time.
The universe manifests through the identity charge, as identity provides a basis for the interaction between the symmetric quark field (the leptoquarks), the leptonic alternative charge carriers (the neutrinos), and the asymmetric mediating field of the IVBs. It is through the identity charge that the IVBs recognize and separate leptoquark from antileptoquark, setting them upon separate and asymmetric decay pathways, breaking the symmetry of their particle-antiparticle pairs. (In a matter-antimatter pair of electrically neutral leptoquarks, one particle's identity charge is neutralized by its antineutrino, allowing it to decay, while (for unknown reasons) the other particle remains intact and unreactive.) Neutrinos are alternative carriers for identity charge, which allows this charge to be conserved or canceled without the presence of antiparticles (antileptoquarks), with their inevitable annihilation reactions. For a more complete discussion, see: "The Formation of Matter and the Origin of Information".
See also: "The Higgs Boson and the Weak Force IVBs" for a further discussion of the weak force in its full energy spectrum.
Weak Force Global and Local Gauge Symmetry
The role of the weak force is the most important in nature. It is the weak force that breaks the initial global symmetry of the light universe and matter-antimatter particle pairs, bringing the asymmetric, local, and temporal universe of matter into existence. But for the weak force, the universe would exist only as a cold spatial volume of ever-expanding and cooling electromagnetic waves.
Beyond its initial symmetry-breaking role (the details of which are still not understood), the weak force has the task of regulating the creation, destruction, and transformation of elementary particles: the quarks, leptons, and neutrinos.
It is especially important to understand that the weak force always operates in an asymmetric mode. Whereas the electromagnetic force also creates and destroys elementary particles, it does so only in matter-antimatter particle pairs; the weak force exclusively creates, destroys, or transforms single particles, which is the key to its unusual character. In order to perform its transformations, the weak force has to balance and neutralize charges. However, unlike the electromagnetic force, the weak force cannot directly use "real" antimatter particles to balance the charges of matter, for these would cause annihilations, not transformations (the weak force does use virtual antimatter particles for this purpose, however). For example, in the weak force decay of a neutron to a proton, the proton's positive electric charge is not balanced by an antiproton, but by the electrically negative electron.
We are nowadays so used to the electron-proton combination of neutral atomic matter that we tend to forget that this is a rather strange combination of particles: three quarks of two different flavors (uud) whose partial charges add up to the equivalent of a single leptonic charge. The proton's charge in turn is balanced by an electron's whole quantum unit negative charge in atomic orbit: 4 particles of three different kinds (ignoring the emitted but nevertheless indispensable electron antineutrino), which all sum exactly to neutrality, and what is more, are exactly equivalent to every other hydrogen atom ever made, regardless of when the particles were created or combined, the expansion of the cosmos, entropy, or any other vitia
"Noether's Theorem" states that in a multicomponent field such as the electromagnetic field (or the metric field of spacetime), where one finds a symmetry one finds an associated conservation law, and vice versa. In matter, light's symmetries are conserved by charge and spin; in spacetime, by inertial and gravitational forces. All forms of energy, including the conservation/entropy domain of spacetime, originate as light. During the "Big Bang", the asymmetric interaction of primordial, high energy light with the metric structure of spacetime produces matter; matter carries charges which are the symmetry (and entropy) debts of the light which created it. Charges produce forces which act to return the material system to its original symmetric state (light), paying matter's symmetry/entropy debts. Repayment is exampled by matter-antimatter annihilation reactions, particle and proton decay, the nucleosynthetic pathway of stars, and Hawking's "quantum radiance" of black holes. Identifying the broken symmetries of light associated with each of the 4 forces (and charges) of physics is the first step toward a conceptual unification of those forces.
Row 1 - Symmetric Energy States and the "Big Bang"
Note (1): I recommend the reader consult the "preface" or "guide" to this paper, which may be found at "About the Papers: An Introduction" and "The Sun Archetype". Because this paper is already too long, I have "farmed out" the discussion of several major but complex topics, including cosmology, gravitation, entropy, the weak force, etc., to other papers on my website devoted solely to those topics. The reader must consult these (and related) papers if a thorough discussion of these topics is desired.
(row 1, cell1)
(row 1, cell 2)
"... Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
in which Beauty corresponds to Symmetry and Truth corresponds to Conservation.
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know"
("Ode on a Grecian Urn": John Keats,1819)
(row 1, cell 3)
(row 1, cell 4)
Row 2 - Particles - Raw Energy Conservation
Row 2: "Down payment", "money up front", "pay now" - raw energy conservation. The major concepts of Row Two center on bound energy, mass, momentum, particles, time, gravitation, and inertial forces as raw energy debts, conserved states, or reactions occasioned by the conversion of light to matter in the Big Bang. The local, temporal, causal nature of matter vs the non-local, atemporal, and acausal nature of light is emphasized. The elementary particles of matter, the quarks and leptons, are examined.
(row 2, cell 1)
Time
(row 2, cell 2)
-Gm(S) - (T)m = 0
(See: "The Time Train".)The dimensions of spacetime are conservation/entropy domains, created by the entropic, "intrinsic" motions of free and bound electromagnetic energy (the intrinsic motion of light and the intrinsic motion of matter's time dimension). These domains function as arenas of action, where energy in all its forms can be simultaneously used, transformed, but nevertheless conserved. This is the major connection between the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics.
(row 2, cell 3)
2) strange, charm (s, c) quarks and the muon and muon neutrino (u, vu);
3) bottom, top (b, t) quarks and the tau and tau neutrino (t, vt).
(row 2, cell 4 - leptons)Row 3 - Charges: The Symmetry Debts of Light
Row 3: "Mortgage", "pay later", "pay through time". Symmetry and charge conservation in obedience to Noether's theorem are the primary topics of Row 3. Each of the 4 forces is examined in terms of its fundamental charge and the broken symmetry of light which that charge represents. Quantized charges are conserved through time for payment at some future date. Charge conservation is a temporal form of symmetry conservation. Gravitation pays the interest on this "mortgage" or symmetry debt by creating matter's time dimension, taking the necessary energy from the expansion of the Cosmos, which decelerates accordingly. Time is the relevant dimensional context in which concepts such as "time deferred payment" or "cancellation of a conserved debt or charge" can have meaning.
(row 3, cell 1)
(row 3, cell 2)
(row 3, cell 4)
