Many of you know what a compulsion is. I am seeing the entire universe as consisting of only unifying particles. I am trying to falsify that view so I can go on with my life .

OK, maybe that is a little melodramatic. It isn’t really so far fetched. My compulsion is that I keep thinking about it and about how it can be compatible with what we observe. And beyond that I keep thinking about how it might better explain what we observe.

All matter would have to be composed of unifying particles. The weak force, strong force, electromagnetic force and gravity, all would be the result of unifying particles. Gravity would be closely related to unifying particles. Photons would consist of unifying particles. There would be unifying particles everywhere in the background. Matter would stand out from the background only because we can detect matter and we can’t detect the unifying particles that make up the background.

The background would have energy density and would be infinite. The fact that there is much evidence to say we are in an expanding arena we call the universe to me says we are in an arena of high energy density expanding within the background which has lower energy density.

Such a picture brings to my mind two adjacent regions of different energy density, our arena surrounded by the background. That picture brings to mind a process of energy density equalization as the two regions tend toward one combined region of equal energy density within the background.

One of two circumstances surely must exist; either this concept is so utterly false that no one has bothered to lift a finger to point out the simple overwhelming observation or fact that falsifies it, or those in the know are so frustrated that it can’t be falsified that they ignore the possibility on the basis that it can’t be proved.

On the probabilities one or both ideas will be false. As both mainstream and alternate theory can claim the high ground of unfalsifiability ... stalemate.

On the bright side ... as more scientists are on the side of mainstream the fundamental flaw (if found and if conceded) is more likely to be found in the mainstream idea by virtue of more people looking.

On the down side it doesn't help one little bit that a person like yourself Bogie, a person who has taken the time and effort to put together a brilliant idea gets no recognition for the effort put in to try and illuminate another light for science.

I'm going to assume that the concept of "unifying particles" is your own, and that you don't believe it to be related to anything in the standard model of Physics. If that's true, then I'm a little confused.

As I understand it, the standard model does include particles that seem to be similar to your concept. All the fundamental "forces" can be interpreted as being the products of particle exchanges.

Perhaps there's a third alternative to the two you mentioned: that your compulsion is merely a particularly strong intuitive grasp of a concept that is already well understood by subatomic physicists.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Maybe you are right; I certainly can’t jot down the formulas to construct a simple hydrogen atom using accepted physics or math like the Dirac equation for the hydrogen atom.

But there are some clear differences between my ideas and the standard model even if I lack an in-depth understanding of the physics that lead to the model.

The compulsion comes in because as I learn more I find it necessary to incorporate my new knowledge into my own model.

I am hoping that I can overcome this compulsion without paying $100 an hour for psychoanalysis.

Here is an example of the compulsion. The following paragraphs started out as a few short sentences and then the compulsion took over.

Last time I tried to stop I ended up changing vacuum energy within the spacetime universe to energy density equalization between the high energy density of our expanding universe and the low energy density of the greater universe. It works like a charm to explain accelerating expansion, i.e. the increasing rate of separation between the galaxies. As energy density declines, the force of gravity declines, and as a result the momentum of separate galaxies relative to each other has a greater value in the formula of net force acting on the galaxies.

Both the speed of light and the speed of energy density equalization, i.e. the speed of gravity, decline as energy density declines. But by using math that keeps C invariant (standard cosmology), the speed of gravity appears invariant mathematically as well.

So the separation of galaxies viewed with C invariant at an earlier energy density and at a later energy density will show them to be separating at an increasing rate; they do recede at an accelerated rate but for a completely different reason. That reason is a slower speed of light and weaker gravity due to lower energy density.

Energy density equalization still occurs at the speed of light but the speed of light is slower because energy density equalization slows down as the density differential between the two regions declines. Actually the speed of light and the force of gravity are different in each region as they trend toward equalization because conversely, as the energy density increases due to equalization, the speed of light and the force of gravity increase correspondingly.

When the two regions reach equalization, the speed of light and the force of gravity are equal across the combined regions, but are then influenced relative to the energy density of different adjacent regions.

I abandon the spacetime notion without resorting to string theory. Yikes, help me!

There are, no doubt, a dozen other possibilities ('circumstances') ... the last paragraph is a classic 'false dichotomy' or 'false dilemma', a form of faulty logic that is found all too often in 'alternative' explanations on the web.

For example, one other possibility is that your idea is so poorly stated that no one - other than you - can get a handle on it (and one path to overcoming this deep incomprehension - the formulation of your idea within a consistent mathematical, or formal symbolic, framework - is one that you are unwilling or unable to consider pursuing).

It is true that there are many possibilities. Suggesting one or the other of my two offered possibilities was an attempt to make the issue black and white to inspire someone to give me that key fact that falsifies the idea that I have overlooked

Granted it may be poorly stated and may be a good example of "not even wrong", but I don't think that. I think it is simple logic that makes perfect sense instead of faulty logic . Of course I do.

Here's a thought: if 'falsify' is your touchstone, then consider if your ideas could ever be falsified, by any 'fact'.

Another: consider a different paradigm - 'verifiability', what could be done (in principle) that would verify your idea?

Even more of a paradigm shift: in terms of phenomena, how is your idea different from what's in standard textbooks?

It's been said before, many times, in many ways: unless and until you can quantify your ideas, they may be highly resistant to either falsification ... or verification.

Thank you, Nereid. I have given some thought to what fact might falsify my ideas. One would be the detection of the graviton and evidence that it carries gravity but does not unite all of the forces. My idea says the particle responsible for gravity will also cause the other forces.

The detection of the graviton will require a field like the Higgs field, and the field of gravitons to serve up gravity will open new investigations into the association of matter to the gravity field. I’m predicting that matter forms from the same field that causes gravity.

Another fact that would falsify the idea is that if an isolated proton, at rest when released from containment like a Penning Trap, doesn’t form an electron from my supposed energy density of space. I guess that there are so many free ions out there that a free electron would soon find the proton, so maybe that wouldn’t prove anything. There might be some experiment along this line that could falsify the idea though.

If it can be shown neutrons don’t originate within stars that would falsify my idea. I predict that matter forms from high energy density released from an “event” quite different from a big bang. I call it a big energy burst from a big crunch inside which matter has been “negated” to energy. Negated matter does not contain any subatomic particles like protons or neutrons and is not the “soup” of Big Bang nucleosynthesis fame. The energy release is a high energy, low heat event. This scenario is neutron free until after a round of hydrogen stars produce the first neutrons from which nucleosynthesis proceeds.

If it could be shown that hydrogen atoms do not emit photons when in a low temperature confinement (not 0 Kelvin, but as low as a few degrees Kelvin), that would falsify my idea because I predict that the first atoms were hydrogen and that the hydrogen atoms once formed, immediately begin to create photons from the energy density of space. This is not absorption and re-emission. This occurs before any photons exist. It says that the sequence of matter formation from the energy released by the burst leads to protons that form from the unifying particles that merge, then electrons form around the protons, then the hydrogen atoms begin to release low energy photons. This photon generation is part of the cause of gravity in my scenario. They also are absorbed and re-emitted increasing the energy state of the hydrogen environment.

According to my idea all atoms will emit photons even if they are in a rest state and are not excited by an external source. They just draw energy from the field until the electron energy “bucket” is filled at which time a photon is emitted that was not in existence before. This effect is small in our current environment where most of the photons are absorded and re-emitted but it still lowers energy density surrounding mass. This low energy density plays a big role in the cause of gravity in my idea.

Enough babbling.

Or being of interest.

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One man's boredom is another man's compulsion ... hmm. One man's compulsion is another man's revulsion ... better I guess. No accounting for taste or interest ... better yet.

As good an example as any of how you are tripping yourself up ... 'graviton' and 'Higgs field' are theoretical concepts; 'detection of the graviton' only makes sense within a rich theoretical framework, one that (no doubt) is full of mathematical simplicity. Such a 'detection' would only be a 'fact' within that framework, and unless and until your ideas can be brought into some meaningful correspondence with that framework, the 'fact' can in no way 'falsify' your ideas!
Also as good an example of how your idea is immune to falsification as any.

Your idealised experiment contains, just below the surface, a universe of quantification (just a few examples: how 'isolated' is the proton? 'at rest' in what way? what relative motion is sufficient to qualify as 'at rest'? what does 'release' mean, in terms of the conduct of the experiment? over what time period should 'an electron form'?); without any way, even in principle, for your idea to address any of these, no experiment could possibly falsify it!

You are, no doubt, familiar with the various underground neutrino detectors, and with the many (terrestrial) experiments that looked for proton decay. At some, non-quantitative, level, every one of the results from these could be said to be 'facts' which falsify your idea. However, no doubt you have already dismissed them all; perhaps you could examine your dismissal from the POV of confirmation bias; perhaps you could go hang out at Physics Forums, and ask about the details of the hundreds (millions?) of different experiments that have been done?
Again, without quantification - even at a 10 OOM level! - I doubt that you have any way to tell if your idea isn't falsified every time you put the kettle on to boil, or every microsecond a nuclear power plant operates exactly as expected, or with every air shower originated by an EeV proton (a UHECR) from a nearby AGN, or ...

Of course, I'm saying nothing that hasn't been written a dozen times already, in one way or another, here in BAUT threads; it seems to me the only invariant is the inherent unfalsifiability (if there is such a word) of your idea, if only because you have not quantified it in any way.
As above; without quantification, I can't see how any 'fact', involving photons and hydrogen (at any temperature - there's nothing in your idea that makes "a few degrees Kelvin" important, it could just as well be a few thousand degrees K) could possibly falsify your idea. After all, perhaps the 'immediately' could be 'within 10^100 years', or it could be 'within 10^-100 seconds'; perhaps the 'photons' created could be 'PeV gammas', or perhaps '10^-100 Hz ELF radio'.
Are you so blinded by your compulsion that you cannot see how you've used a lack of quantification to make the idea quite immune to falsification? 'small', 'most', 'lowers', 'surrounding', 'low energy density' (to take just a few examples) are seductive - they seem to involve quantification - but IIRC you use null results ('facts') to calibrate your idea in such a way as to make it immune to testing; worse, because there are no quantitative links within your idea, consistency checking is impossible (so, for example, null results wrt one part cannot, even in principle, be shown to be inconsistent with any other part of the idea).

Here's a question for you: what does the term 'word salad' mean?

I admit that my word salad often fills the bowl. But on the other hand, you have also just given us a great example.

Your word salads are yet to show any inkling of recognition of what my ideas are. Ignoring my fundamental ideas is not the kind of response I am looking for. There is a real universe around us and out there. You can’t bar the door by referencing my short comings in regards to understanding the details of science. And you don’t want to bar the door to yourself either by ignoring alternative possibilities.

You may think that enough answers are already in and that you are in a position to wave off what you fail to even acknowledge is in my salad.

One rule of effective communication is to say what you hear the other person saying before you respond with why you think they are stuck servicing the salad bar. I didn’t see any acknowledgment of my basic premise.

For example, I am saying that spacetime does not work if our expanding universe is not all there is. If there was any pre-existing space, any pre-existing time then space time doesn’t hold the secret to our universe. I am saying that simple logic says that space and time both have always existed and are not coupled by an event 13.72145863 billion years ago.

I am saying that the particle model is not complete and may simply be missing a unifying particle.

The responses that I get to those personal conclusions are that the real universe is too complicated for that simple answer. We have professionals to figure those things out. By now they don’t give a passing glance to those ideas because they are so fraught with heavy salad dressing. It can’t be that simple or we would have figured it out long ago. No, let’s stick to the math. That way we can all talk the same language. True, there are many versions of what the math is saying, but let’s get as close to the real universe as we can with out digging into what else the real universe might be, the big picture.

So let’s put these large bowls of salad aside and just talk for a minute about the real universe. Such a talk doesn’t always have to result in “we don’t know, or we can’t know, or we have no evidence”. Are we as far as we can get to understanding the universe? I don’t think so.

Suppose I am right.

There is a whole grand universe out there that has always existed. Considering that would give us some new tools to explain what we can see and can't make fit in our existing models. What is really out there? Speculate, off the record. Anyone.

Bogie, it's your compulsion, not mine or (as far as I know) any other BAUT member's.Hmm ... I thought I'd made it clear that, for me at least, unless and until there is a better correspondence (read at least an attempt at a formal, symbol representation, with at least an attempt at OOMs of the key values) between words in your salad and words with the same spelling in standard (physics, cosmology) textbooks, it's not a question of ignoring your ideas (whether fundamental or not), but of simply being unable to comprehend them.
Bogie, a few minutes (or perhaps hours) surfing the net will, no doubt, turn up a hundred 'alternative possibilities', many of them more lucid, internally consistent, and better developed than yours ... and with explicit hooks into standard physics (and of course, many far less lucid, etc).

I think you know this.

That your idea is compelling to you seems very clear.

That you are frustrated about not being able to get others to be excited about it also seems clear.

What seems to be missing is a recognition, by you, of just why your idea, as presented here in BAUT to date, leaves all but a few BAUT members cold*.

Another thing that seems to be missing is an acknowledgment, by you, that your compelling idea is but one of hundreds (if not thousands) of 'alternative possibilities' that are similarly poorly described and weakly linked to any relevant part of standard physics. And that's not even mentioning the dozens of 'alternative possibilities' in peer-reviewed papers published in relevant journals.
Of course, you may choose to interpret whatever responses there are in any way you wish.

However, I think this is a serious misunderstanding of a big part of at least some of those responses ... at least one part of the responses may be summed up (oversimplified) as "'spacetime' is a theoretical construct in GR, and really has meaning only within that theory, or any other theory that includes (or extends) it. If the term is used without an acknowledgment (implicit or explicit) of its context, the reader should be given a clear definition of its intended meaning." Something similar, regarding 'particles' and the explicit quantum theoretical foundation of the Standard Model, applies to 'a unifying particle'.

Of course, there is an alternative (at least one) ... that your idea is indeed radically simple, and doesn't require a demonstration that it can reproduce all the experimental and observational results that GR and the Standard Model can account for; IOW, that the hard won nuances physics students struggle with every year (think of 'energy', or 'mass', or 'wave vs particle') are unnecessary, or illusions ... all that's required is to get the same intuitive grasp of the nature of the universe that you feel you have.
Close, in some ways, but no cigar.

As I said above, this is bold, but foolhardy, if only because it implicitly assumes that the key terms you use in your idea can be understood sufficiently well without the need to recognise just how inextricably tied they are to the very math you seem to disdain.

Again, we've been over this before, many times ... try, for example, to define 'energy' in a way that does not make use - implicitly or explicitly - of any textbook physics, whether GR, quantum theory, or even classical physics. And without a clear definition of such a key term, how can anyone make any sense of your idea (other than intuitively)?

And if it is tied to some textbook definition, then there should be no reason why you can't continue to develop your idea using the same (or similar) tools and techniques that every physics student it taught.
A few minutes' work, by almost any BAUT member, could produce a list of 'eternal universe' ideas; some of those ideas have illustrious names associated with them - Hoyle and Alfvén, to take just two - some have been the subject of ATM threads (and some, such as EEM's, much better developed than yours); some are very old, some very new; and so on. Why is your idea more worthy of attention than any of the hundreds (thousands) of other 'eternal universe' ideas?

Several other BAUT members seem to have compulsions too (I won't name handles), some of which have domains overlapping yours ('eternal universe'); how would you respond to OTBB threads started by them (entitled, perhaps Compulsion II, or Compulsion with a Vengeance, or Compulsion the Sequel, or ...)? How much of this post of yours that I am quoting would, very likely, appear in any such other OTBB thread? How much has, in fact, already appeared, in OTBB threads started by other BAUT members with compulsions? If you read any such, how did you respond? If you haven't, why not go read them, and respond?

*And, FWIW, the only expressions of support, posted in BAUT, that I recall reading seem to convey little understanding of your idea.

You make some good points and I'm must say my compulsion is wavering. I'm not cured but you have saved me about $100 so far.

I know you don't have to re-read your post to notice that you don't say what you think I am saying. You just go on about why I don't stand out for saying it. I'm not trying to stand out as much as I'm trying to get some acknowledgment of what I am saying and some response from people who actually know something. I want to know what people in the know think about the fringe areas where I am interested.

Not just that there are many ideas out there, but what do you think about what caused the expansion? What new physics do those ideas require? What do others think we are expanding into besides "were not, space time is expanding from within"? Why do so many people have a problem with the term "infinity" and why does "eternal" seem to push peoples buttons. I want to compare what people in the know think and then compare it to what I think and see if I can improve my thinking.

In my view time and space are infinite. Any one who says otherwise has some kind of an agenda I think. I don't have any agenda except to have an opinion about things that we don't know based on our best guess. No one has the complete picture but I make a practice of having some ideas about it.

While I'm out viewing the OTBB, why don't you try to convey what you really think the big picture is?