by Wal Thornhill

Until we have a sensible theory that can explain the natural spiral shape of galaxies without invoking unseen matter and strange forces, we have no right to claim we have the ability to deduce a “theory of everything.”

It has been said that the human talent for self-delusion is our most highly developed faculty. The very notion that some scientists are within grasp of a “theory of everything” is a fantasy on a par with the flat Earth theory. It is not possible to have a theory of everything until we know everything about the universe.

Physics’ greatest endeavour has ground to a halt. We are in “a period of utter confusion”, says Nobel laureate David Gross. That is worrying because the topic is central to finding a “theory of everything” that will describe every force and particle in nature.

Einstein’s relativity, which reigned supreme for a century, is a flawed basis for such a theory. Although it deals with gravity, it tells us nothing else about the nature and interactions of matter. Crucially, general relativity is incompatible with quantum theory. Since the 1960s, theorists have struggled to solve this problem, so far to no avail. And the trouble is we have nothing to put in relativity’s place.

Big Bang Bust

Our present cosmology is known as “the big bang” theory. It grew out of the assumption that the redshift of faint objects in deep space is due to the Doppler effect of their recession from us. Extrapolating these velocities backward gave an origin in time and gave rise to the concept of the universe having been created in a primeval explosion. Einstein wrote equations that attempted to describe the behaviour of this expanding universe. His equations pointed to its probable instability. Gravitation was either strong enough to counteract its expansion or too weak to prevent its expansion forever.

“In spite of the fact that we call it the big bang theory, it tells us absolutely nothing about the big bang. It doesn’t tell us what banged, why it banged, or what caused it to bang. It doesn’t allow us to predict the conditions immediately after the bang.” – Alan Guth in the BBC Horizon program, Parallel Universes.

Toward a Real Theory of Everything

“We feel clearly that we are only now beginning to acquire reliable material for welding together the sum total of all that is known into a whole, but, on the other hand, it has become next to impossible for a single mind fully to command more than a small specialized portion of it. I can see no other escape from this dilemma (lest our true aim be lost for ever) than that some of us should venture to embark on a synthesis of facts and theories, albeit with second-hand and incomplete knowledge of them – and at the risk of making fools of ourselves.” – Erwin Schrödinger, Mind and Matter (1944).

If we deal with the real universe of our senses, augmented by modern technology, we stand the best chance of developing the physical concepts leading to a “real theory of everything.” Neither Einstein’s relativity nor quantum mechanics are physics so we cannot use them as a foundation for our new model (although we should find that the mathematics that works in the real world still applies). We have to discard “modern” physics and return to the classical physics of a century ago. This, perhaps, is the greatest hurdle – to discard our training and prejudices and to approach the problem with a beginner’s mind.

Electrical Structure of Matter

That “something absolutely fundamental” that is missing in our explanation of gravity and quantum behavior is the electrical structure of matter. Here we are not talking about negative electrons and positive atomic nuclei. We must “go down” one more level and propose that all subatomic particles, including the electron, are resonant structures of electric charges of opposite sign that sum to the charge on that particle.

The electron is not a fundamental, point-like particle. It must have structure to provide its dipole magnetic field. There must be orbital motion of charges within the electron to generate the magnetic dipole. The transfer of electrical energy between the charges in their orbits must be resonant and near-instantaneous for the electron to be a stable particle. The same model applies to the proton and the neutron. This model satisfies Einstein’s view that there must be some lower level of structure in matter to cause resonant quantum effects.

Why Must It Be Electrical?

We cannot have a theory of everything until we have a workable concept of the structure of matter that satisfies the observation that inertial and gravitational mass are equivalent. When we accelerate electrons or protons in an electromagnetic field they become less responsive to the fields the more they are accelerated. This has been interpreted as an increase in mass. However, charges have no mass. So how do they give the electron, proton and neutron the property of mass?

The accelerating electromagnetic field will distort the orbits of charges within the electron or proton. It seems the more distorted a particle becomes, the more easily the energy supplied to accelerate the particle is assimilated in further distortion rather than in acceleration. Hence the apparent increase in mass. The inertial mass of a particle is a measure of the degree to which it responds to an electric field by distorting rather than accelerating. It implies the charge centers of a proton at rest have to be separated more than those in an electron at rest. That allows the proton to distort more readily than an electron in the same electric field and accounts for their differences in size and mass.

“What we call mass would seem to be nothing but an appearance, and all inertia to be of electromagnetic origin.” – Henri Poincaré, Science and Method.

A neutron combines the charges from a proton and an electron in a barely stable resonance, which decays in minutes. Its decay must have a cause and may involve an interaction with a neutrino. However, when combined with protons it seems neutrons form a new stable resonant structure that serves to bind the protons electrically despite the overall positive charge on the nucleus.

The notion that matter can be annihilated when normal matter meets antimatter is a confusion of language. Matter can neither be destroyed nor created. Einstein’s E = mc² refers to mass, a property of matter. The mathematical relationship represents the restructuring of resonant systems of charge. What seems to happen in “annihilation” is that the complementary resonant charge structures of a particle and its antiparticle combine so that almost all of the internal energy is radiated away and the combined charges form a new collapsed particle of low internal energy.

The Neutrino

The most collapsed form of matter is the neutrino, which has a vanishingly small mass. However, the neutrino must contain all of the charges required to form two particles – a particle and its antiparticle. This symmetry explains why a neutrino is considered to be its own anti-particle. A neutrino may accept energy from a gamma ray to reconstitute a particle and its anti-particle. “Empty space” is full of neutrinos. They are the repositories of matter in the universe, awaiting the burst of gamma-radiation to expand them to form the stuff of atoms. The weird “zoo” of short-lived particles created in particle accelerators and seen in cosmic rays are simply unstable resonant systems of charge.

The equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass implies that gravity is also an electrical force. Before Einstein, some noted scientists were suggesting that the gravitational force between neutral particles might ultimately be due to electrical polarization within the particles. In 1882, Friedrich Zöllner wrote in the introduction to his book, Explanation of Universal Gravitation through the Static Action of Electricity and The General Importance of Weber’s Laws, “we are to conclude that a pair of electrical particles of opposite signs, i.e. two Weberian molecular pairs attract each other. This attraction is Gravity, it is proportional to the number of molecular pairs.” Indeed, gravity can be represented as the sum of the radially aligned electric dipoles formed by all subatomic particles within a charged planet or star.

This new electrical concept suggests that Newton’s “universal constant of gravitation,” or “G,” is a dependent variable. G depends upon the charge distribution within a celestial body. Highly charged objects like comets look like solid rock, yet they have a gravitational field that suggests they are fluff-balls. And as they discharge they suffer what is euphemistically called “non-gravitational” accelerations. The extreme weakness of the force of gravity, compared to the electric force, is a measure of the minuscule electric dipolar distortion of nucleons. Gravity cannot be shielded by normal electrostatic shielding because all subatomic particles within the gravitational field respond to the dipolar distortion, whether they are metals or non-metals.

What About Magnetism?

Ampere’s law for the magnetic force between two current carrying wires is found to be equivalent to the transverse electric force caused by the distortion of electrons in an electric field. This distortion causes them to form tiny collinear electric dipoles. That is, the magnetic force is simply another manifestation of the electric force.

This simple electrical model of matter has the great virtue of reducing all known forces to a single one – the electric force. However, it has a price. We must abandon our peculiar phobia against a force acting at a distance. And we must give up the notion that the speed of light is a real speed barrier. It may seem fast to us, but on a cosmic scale it is glacial. Imposing such a speed limit and requiring force to be transmitted by particles would render the universe completely incoherent. If an electron is composed of smaller subunits of charge orbiting within the classical radius of an electron, then the electric force must operate at a speed far in excess of the speed of light for the electron to remain a coherent object. In fact, it has been calculated that if released, the subunits of charge in the electron could travel from here to the far side of the Andromeda galaxy in one second!

We have direct evidence of the superluminal action of the electric force, given that gravity is a longitudinal electric force. Indeed, Newton’s celebrated equation requires that gravity act instantly on the scale of the solar system. It has been calculated that gravity must operate at a speed of at least 2×1010 times the speed of light, otherwise closely orbiting stars would experience a torque that would sling them apart in mere hundreds of years. Similarly, the Earth responds to the gravitational pull of the Sun where it is at the moment, not where the Sun was 8 minutes ago. If this were not so, the Earth and all other planets in the solar system would be slung into deep space within a few thousand years. Gravity is therefore an electrical property of matter, not a geometrical property of space.

How About The Nature of Light?

Einstein’s special theory of relativity was disconfirmed right at the start by the Michelson-Morley experiment, which showed a residual due to the aether. This was later confirmed by far more rigorous repeats of the experiment by Dayton Miller. But by then popular delusion and the madness of crowds had taken hold and contrary evidence would not be tolerated. The Dayton Miller story makes interesting reading. If it weren’t for the extraordinary power of self-delusion, commonsense would tell us that a wave cannot exist in nothing. So Maxwell was right, light is a transverse electromagnetic wave moving through a medium, the aether.

But What Is The Aether?

In the vacuum of space, each cubic centimetre is teeming with neutrinos. And since neutrinos are resonant orbiting systems of charge, like all matter, they will respond to the electric force by distorting to form a weak electric dipole aligned with the electric field. The speed of light in a vacuum is therefore a measure of the delay in response of the neutrino to the electric force.

What about the bending of starlight by the Sun, which discovery raised Einstein to megastar status? The residual found in the Michelson-Morley experiments shows that the Earth and all ponderable bodies “drag” the Aether along with them. The bending of starlight near the Sun is simply the effect expected of an extensive neutrino atmosphere held to the Sun by gravity. Light will be slowed in the denser medium – causing normal refraction or bending of light.

What About Time?

With all bodies in the Milky Way galaxy communicating their positions effectively in real time through the electric force of gravity, it means there is a universal time. There can be no time distortion or time travel – something that common sense always told us.

What About Black Holes?

They are a mathematical fiction, a near-infinite concentration of mass, required to explain concentrated sources of energy seen at galactic centers, by employing the weakest force in Nature – gravity. It is the high-school howler of dividing by zero. Plasma cosmology shows that where electrical energy is concentrated at the center of a galaxy, gravity can be ignored in favor of far more powerful electromagnetic forces. The collimated jets of matter coming from that focus are also replicated to scale in plasma labs. The jets are inexplicable if a black hole is supposed to be a cosmic sink for matter.

Biological Implications

The implications for biological systems in this electrical model of matter are profound. A method of near-instantaneous signalling between resonant molecular structures within cells and on cell walls seems plausible and may provide a way of looking at the mind-body connection and other communications external to the body. It may provide a link between classical physics and the pioneering work of the biologist, Rupert Sheldrake, in biological morphogenesis and telepathy.

Also, the work of the outstanding French biologist, Louis Kervran, may gain a working physical model to explain how biological enzymes are capable of transmuting chemical elements at body temperatures. It seems that by exquisite tuning, one resonant system of nuclear charges may be transformed into another. And like the decay of the neutron, ubiquitous neutrinos are implicated as a catalyst. It may be that the answer to our future power needs will be answered when we understand how to extract nuclear energy resonantly instead of by using brute force as we do now. The New Jersey based company, Black Light Power, seems to have stumbled upon a similar process using a resonance between hydrogen and the iron atom. It is interesting that biological systems also use heavy elements like iron and magnesium to perform their minor miracles of transmutation of elements.

The electrical relationship allows us to understand how quasars can be newborn objects that have low mass and brightness and high intrinsic redshifts. With time, their mass increases and their intrinsic redshift decreases in quantum jumps. This shows that quantum effects also occur on a galactic scale. It is another powerful argument for the near infinite speed of the electric force. The electrical nature of the universe reveals the currently accepted life story of stars as an elaborate fiction. Stars do not self-immolate. Plasma cosmologists identify cosmic electrical power lines of unknown origin that shape galaxies and light the stars in our small corner of the universe. These findings about intrinsic redshift and electric stars explodes the big bang myth: The universe we can see is not expanding; it is only a small part of the universe that is of unknown extent and unknown age.

This outline may seem like the basis for a “theory of everything” but in truth the greatest mysteries remain. We cannot talk sensibly about a beginning of the universe since the mystery of the origin of electric charge and the nature of the electric force remain.

Meanwhile, the good news for us on this tiny blue planet is that we are not isolated by time and space in a universe of dark matter that we cannot sense. We are an integral part in real-time of this sensible electric universe.