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Aren't you embarrassed to put your simple theory out in public when hundreds of physicists are putting their life's work into quarks?
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The quark theorists say that the strange particles' decays are the result of "quarks" changing "flavors" by "virtual gluons" and you want me to be embarrassed for suggesting those decays are actually the subatomic equivalent of a well-understood atomic process? I refuse!
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What about all the other subatomic particles?
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Heavy nuclei that emit alpha particles are separated by two protons and four total nucleons, so if the subatomic comparison holds, there is plenty of room for other semi-stable particles between the "strange baryons." The strange baryons are unique in that they have very long lifespans compared to most subatomic particles...they live thousands or millions of times longer than most others. There are other particles called kaons, however, which decay by emitting two or three pions. They don't have a proton in their decay products because they have less mass than a proton to begin with...the atomic equivalent would be an even-proton-numbered nucleus such as oxygen or beryllium, which have multiple alpha particles as constituents but have less mass than a lead nucleus. Many other particles are "resonances," like atoms with excited electrons, and they decay very quickly. What I am trying to convey is that, once you see the pion as a subatomic alpha particle, the stability of particles with multiple pion units becomes clear, and other particles, while allowed, just wouldn't be so stable.
What muddies the water is that the total energy of the particles is shared with intangibles like momentum, causing multiple decay paths to be allowed. The same particle may sometimes decay to a proton plus extra particles, or a neutron and a different set of extras, for instance. It is not as easy to discern particle decays by pion emission as the subatomic form of alpha radioactivity as it is to see the decays of heavy nuclei clearly decrementing them by two protons and two neutrons. The decays of heavy nuclei are up a level of granularity, and that makes them more defined.
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Don't neutrinos and antineutrinos only have opposite spins if they move at the speed of light? Would that still hold if they existed inside a pion?
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Moving at the speed of light, free neutrinos can only have one spin orientation, and that orientation (anti-parallel to each other) is how I view them as they make up the pion. Nothing would prohibit them from also having anti-parallel spins when confined. If electrons pair up with opposite spins in the shells of atoms, and nucleons pair up with opposite spins in alpha particles, why shouldn't neutrinos do it?
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Aren't strange particles always produced in pairs? Isn't that how the concept of assigning each such particle a "strangeness quantum number" came about?
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Yes, they say that they are always produced in pairs (but not particle-antiparticle pairs like the proton or electron). While my theory doesn't prohibit a proton, pion and lambda particle from being produced all at once, according to the quark theory the "strangeness" of the lambda would prevent this, and it would be presumptous of me to suggest that in forty years of looking at particle decays they would not have found such a set if it had been produced. Okay, chalk one up for the quark theory...but how would I explain it? I would look for similarities at the atomic level. When uranium, with its 92 protons, decays by fission you would expect it to produce two daughter nuclei of palladium, which has 46 protons. Yet more often other daughter nuclei are produced instead, with krypton (36 protons) and xenon (54 protons) dominating. Why? It's all about dividing the energy between the most stable configurations. (Note: There is a difference between producing particles from "scratch" and having them appear as decay products, but since the events that produced heavy nuclei happened long I can only look at decays.)
Suppose they finessed their machines to the energy required for a proton-antiproton pair...then that's what they'd make. Now suppose they doubled that amount...they'd get two protons and two antiprotons. But now suppose they turned it to some intermediate level. Protons are baryons so can only be produced with an anti-baryon, therefore they could only make one proton-antiproton pair. So where does the extra energy go? It gets divided up, in the form of subatomic alpha particles called pions, between the proton and antiproton to make two strange baryons. Or you get one proton, one strange baryon and a kaon. That's all that's happening folks! The extra energy above one proton but less than two gets divided up and the resulting particles are unstable, like heavy nuclei, so they decay! It HAS to be that way precisely because it is so simple!
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Physicists didn't previously have a problem explaining the stability of the lead nucleus as a balancing act between the attraction of the strong force of all nucleons and the repulsive coulomb force between protons, but you seem to be suggesting that the lead nucleus is stable for other, unanticipated reasons?
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I don't make the rules, I just decipher them! It's true, I do suggest that on my "predictions and speculation" page, and I personally suspect it to be the case. However, if the particle-antiparticle pair I mention on that page doesn't exist, and lead turns out to be stable for the old reasons, then the parallels between alpha radioactivity at the atomic and subatomic levels still hold. It just means that the concept of "granularity" doesn't scale up beyond the proton-antiproton pair, or if it does it looks different. One of the differences between levels of granularity might be that rules and definitions change discontinuously.
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Why do you link a single subatomic particle, the kaon, to a range of atomic particles, nuclei with even Z-number?
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You are refering to the last few charts on my "Granularity of Matter" page. Think of it as though I'm linking two regions of the mass-energy spectrum, rather than specific particles. There are only a handful of baryons between the mass of a proton and a proton-antiproton pair, and many more atomic elements heavier than lead, and yet I link those areas, too. There's just not a 1:1 relationship between the number of particles at each level. If it appears that there's only one particle between the mass of a pion and that of a proton, well that's just how it works out. Anyway, there are actually two types of kaon; some decay to two pions and some decay to three. Physicists have their own reasons for calling both by the same name.
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Didn't they recently find the Top quark?
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How can they find something that their own theory says can't exist freely? What they found were more jets of ordinary particles such as muons and electrons, and that's all they ever see. They have a blip in a curve near a mass-energy level of 180 GeV, with no idea as to why it occured at that energy level, but claim that it's evidence of the top quark. I have a better idea of where that energy level fits in...see my predictions and speculation page for more on that.
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Aren't you afraid that your attitude will keep you from ever finding work as a physicist?
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Pretty sure that wasn't going to happen, anyway! For one thing, I'm math-challenged. I did examine what it would look like if my theory were applied at the celestial level and believe I made significant observations. Astrophysicists are encouraged to look up my copyrighted paper called "The Organization of Celestial Objects." I think it would be worth their while.
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Do you have delusions of grandeur?
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The tables of particle decays are the "bottom line" of the collider experiments, and my theory is based on organizing those decays. If knowing Quantum Chromodynamics causes physicists to wash over the fact that the neutron decays to a hydrogen atom plus an antinutrino, then I don't want to know QCD. Given the choice between believing my own vision, that the structure of the universe is a pattern of behaviors repeated at the subatomic and atomic levels, or believing the convoluted and inherently unprovable quark theory, I choose my own. For me to share it publicly takes confidence in my own powers of perception.
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