William Atkins
Monday, 10 August 2009 18:54
Science -
Energy
Page 2 of 9
Behind the new theory lie no new axioms or postulates, not even a new idea. In fact, the basic idea is well known, and can be traced back to ancient Greek philosopher Anaximander (about 611-547 BC), who suggested that matter originates from eternal motion in some kind of “primeval matter.”
Later, physicists have talked about “vortices in the ether,” suggested that space is a “perfect fluid,” etc. What is new with the present theory is that the full consequences of Anaximander's idea are worked out.
Momentum Equation The natural starting point is the momentum equation. This equation is sometimes referred to as the “fundamental hydrodynamical equation” because it provides the basis for our understanding of how fluids (liquids and gases) behave. Its role in weather prediction probably makes it the world's most heavily used equation.
The momentum equation has a solution in the form of a very simple equation. Assuming that it is applicable to space, it is found that this
“space equation” may be interpreted to picture a (negatively or positively charged) “stationary electron,” showing a snapshot of the particle at the very instant of its birth.
It turns out that, in addition to explaining the electron's charge and spin, the “space equation” explains expansion as a predetermined unperturbable feature of nature on the same footing with spin and charge. Gravity, in turn, is only a side effect of the expansion, with no role to play in the early phases of the Universe.
Another consequence of the space equation is that the Universe must have been born cold—that is, without temperature in the conventional meaning of the word according to which pressure and temperature arise when molecules or particles bounce off each other.
(The early Universe is in an indeterminate quantum state with charged leptons and background photons only appearing in the form of entangled pairs. In other words, there is no kinetic energy, and all energy comes in the form of rest energy of composite particles [pairs of elementary particles].)
This fact means that the Universe originally was very simple, and that its early evolution may be tracked in detail in a computer simulation. By demanding that the results match the actually observed Universe, the simulation answers several previously open questions.
For instance, it becomes clear that the Universe initially contains equal amounts of matter and antimatter (or particles and antiparticles) and remains cold until the first proton-antiproton pair appears, after which the antiproton immediately is forced to decay into an electron, thereby heating matter (proton plus electron) to a temperature of about a thousand billion Kelvin.
An immediate consequence of the Universe being initially cold is that the Higgs boson is expected to be no heavier than the electron (for which holds m
ec
2 = 0.511 MeV, that is, m
e = 0.511 MeV/c
2). Supposedly, such a light, neutral and spinless particle is difficult to experimentally observe at present. (Compare with the light, neutral and spinning neutrinos, which are abundantly produced in nuclear reactors, but rarely captured in detectors.)
Even so, a readily testable negative prediction can be made: No Higgs bosons will be detected in CERN's LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiment, in which high-energy particles are looked for (a Higgs particle born in the intense heat of an originally “infinitely” hot Universe is expected [by most particle physicists] to have a mass ranging between a few GeV/c
2 and a few TeV/c
2).
So, Predictive Cosmology contends that when the Higgs boson is some day experimentally “observed” its rest mass will be at a minimum several thousand times smaller than that presently predicted by leading particle physicists.
Page 3 continues with some predictions from Predictive Cosmology.
