Some numbers
This blog was started in 2010.
By the end of 2011, 100,000 blog pages were opened by 55,000 readers. 1,100 people downloaded Comay’s scientific article showing that the Higgs cannot exist; most of them are plausibly physicists.
The blog demonstrates 20 phenomena that are incompatible with QCD, which is the currently accepted theory of strong interactions.
These phenomena can be explained by 1 physical theory.
To date, there were 0 scientific attempts to refute neither the claims nor the theory.
| “This is the stuff we’re made of, and it’s showing that maybe we don’t understand it as well as we thought.” Francis E. Close, Science News 1989 |
| “We have this elegant theory of quantum chromodynamics, which is supposed to describe the binding of the fundamental constituents of all matter, but we don’t know how to make it work. We can’t even do something as basic as building protons out of quarks.” Robert L. Jaffe, Science News 1989 |
| “Even now, two decades after QCD was formulated, little is known from first principles about the structure of the nucleons and other hadrons.” Robert L. Jaffe, Physics today, 1995 |
The invisibly obvious
Let’s recall the phenomena which are incompatible with QCD. These phenomena show that it is nearly obvious that the structure of the proton is similar to the structure of an atom with two or more electronic shells. In the proton the quarks play the role of the atomic electrons, and the three valence quarks belong to the outer quark shell.
An illustration of the nucleons according to Comay’s model. In analogy to a noble gas atom, each quark has one negative strong charge unit, the nucleon’s core (blue) has positive strong charge and it attracts the quarks which repel each other. The total strong charge of each nucleon is 0.
The force inside the atomic nucleus
| “Ironically, from the perspective of QCD, the foundations of nuclear physics appear distinctly unsound.” Frank Wilczek, about QCD vs. the strong nuclear force, Hard-core revelations, NATURE, Vol. 445 156 (2007) |
The main features of the strong nuclear force which stabilizes the atomic nucleus, are known for seven decades, but are not explained by QCD. This force behaves very similarly to the force between atoms of noble gas (van der Waals force). According to QCD, it is not clear why nucleons stop attracting each other at a certain distance (unexplained phenomenon #1), it is not clear why they strongly repel each other in shorter distance (#2), and it is not clear why the graph of nuclear potential vs the distance looks like the graph of the van der Waals potential (#3).
| “Currently, the color van der Waals force does not seem to be a correct model for nuclear interaction without modifications.” S.S.M. Wong, about QCD vs. the strong nuclear force, Introductory Nuclear Physics, (Wiley, New York, 1998). p.102 |
Furthermore, the first EMC effect which was found in 1983 is not understood: it is not clear why the volume of nucleons’ quarks is larger inside large atomic nuclei (#4). The analogous effect in the liquid state of a noble gas and molecules is well known.
| “The results are in complete disagreement with the calculations… We are not aware of any published detailed prediction presently available which can explain the behaviour of these data.” J.J. Aubert et al., about the 1st EMC effect, J.J. Phys. Lett. 123B, 275 (1983) |
Furthermore, the nuclear tensor force acts between nucleons similarly to the force that acts between atoms with spin. This force is known since the early days of nuclear physics and is not explained by QCD (#5).
The similarity of the force between quarks and the force between electrons
In the proton, the antiquark is pushed towards the outer region, like in the analogous case in which a positron is pushed away from the atomic nucleus. This phenomenon is unexplained by QCD (#6). The phenomenon where the mean square charge radius of the neutron is negative has the same underlying theoretical basis. This phenomenon is unexplained by QCD as well (#7).
An analysis of the proton form factor shows that the quarks distribution inside the proton is similar to the electrons distribution inside atoms (they have higher probability to be located near the center). In the analogous case, in atoms, this is explained in quantum mechanics by the fact that the attraction force between the nuclear positive charge and the electrons is stronger when the electrons are close to the center. This seems to contradict QCD whose asymptotic freedom implies that the quark-quark attractive force becomes weaker when the quarks are closer to each other (#8).
An analysis of the proton-proton cross section curve shows that the forces between components of one proton and components of another proton are stronger when they are closer. This too is incompatible with QCD (#9).
Furthermore, it was found that the strong force, like the electromagnetic force, conserves charge conjugation and parity. These phenomena, lead to the Strong CP Problem, are not compatible with the Standard Model (#10).
Using QCD laws scientists predicted the existence of several particles and matter states that systematically failed to show up in experiments, like glueballs (#11), di-baryons (#12), strange quark matter (#13) and pentaquarks (#14).
| “The whole story – the discoveries themselves, the tidal wave of papers by theorists and phenomenologists that followed, and the eventual “undiscovery” – is a curious episode in the history of science.” C.G. Wohl (LBNL), a review about the search after the Pentaquarks, 2008 |
QCD cannot provide explanations to the proton spin crisis, which was discovered in 1987 (#15). This phenomenon is explained easily by applying the same laws existing in atomic electrons.
| “In 1988, however, physicists were shocked to find experimental evidence suggesting that very little–perhaps none–of the proton’s spin comes from the spin of the quarks…” Ivars Peterson, Science News 1997 |
| “The proton is complicated, but it is a very, very important object in our lives. It is unsatisfying intellectually that we cannot understand how the inside of the proton behaves.” Emlyn W. Hughes, Science News 1997 |
The interaction with light
Photons interact with electric charges, as every physicist knows for more than 100 years. More than 50 years ago it was discovered that hard photons interact strongly with quarks. This phenomenon is unexplained by QCD (#16). Furthermore, QCD does not explain why the interaction of a hard photon with a proton is similar to its interaction with a neutron, in spite of the different electric charge of their quark constituents (#17).
| “No direct translation between the Standard Model and VMD has yet been made.” H.B. O’Connell, B.C. Pearce, A.W. Thomas and A.G. Williams, About the hadronic properties of the photon, Prog. Nucl. Part. Phys. 39 (1997) |
Proofs of the existence of massive objects inside the nucleons
The discovery by SLAC during the 1970s that the quarks carry only part of the proton mass caught QCD supporters by surprise. They quickly recovered by invoking the idea that the gluons carry the other part of the mass. However, there are many other phenomena that show beyond any doubt that nucleons contain inner massive objects (gluons are not massive objects).
The rise in the high energy proton-proton total cross section shows that the proton contains other massive objects. This phenomenon is known for 10 years now and cannot be explained by QCD (#18). Furthermore, the rise in the elastic cross section shows that there is a massive object that can be hit and it acts like a solid billiard ball without creating new hadrons. This cannot be explained by QCD (#19) because QCD doesn’t allow any massive objects inside the proton, besides the three valence quarks (and the quark-antiquark pairs). In nearly all collision events, these quarks create new hadrons when hit by highly energetic projectiles.
| “The observed excess may indicate that quarks contain something smaller, representing a new level in the composition of matter.” Ivars Peterson, Science News, 1996 (in 1996 there weren’t enough data to confirm this phenomenon which was established only in the beginning of 2000s) |
QCD provides weak or no explanation why a meson, which is a quark-antiquark bound state, is not confined inside baryons (#20).
Let’s stop counting here. Twenty unsolved fundamental questions are more than enough for doubting any theory, including QCD.
The sociological question
Why such obvious failures of one of the most important parts of the standard model are ignored by scientists? Why scientists do not even discuss the most obvious explanation to these failures? Why these failures are known for many decades and still many scientific journals do not publish any theory which is not inline with QCD? Why despite spending billions of Euros every year, basic QCD predictions are not substantiated by experimental discoveries for so many years?
The answer, I believe, is inside the question itself. Particle physicists do not discuss this issue because this explanation is obvious, and because they failed to see it for so many years, and because many of them blocked scientific articles which were against the standard model, and maybe also because they are happy to spend billions of Euros every year.
If you have any idea how to change this reality – I will be happy to listen.
Physicists who wish to read a scientific review about this subject – can read it here: EJTP 9, No. 26 (2012) 93–118.
