Via
The Conversation:
Fragments of energy – not waves or particles – may be the fundamental building blocks of the universe by
Larry M. Silverberg (Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University)
Matter is what makes up the universe, but what makes up matter? This
question has long been tricky for those who think about it – especially
for the physicists. Reflecting recent trends in physics, my
colleague Jeffrey Eischen and I have described an updated way to think about matter. We propose that matter is not made of
particles or
waves, as was long thought, but – more fundamentally – that matter is made of
fragments of energy...
...Using newer mathematical tools, my colleague and I have demonstrated a
new theory that may accurately describe the universe. Instead of basing
the theory on the warping of space and time, we considered that there
could be a building block that is more fundamental than the particle and
the wave. Scientists understand that particles and waves are
existential opposites: A particle is a source of matter that exists at a
single point, and waves exist everywhere except at the points that
create them. My colleague and I thought it made logical sense for there
to be an underlying connection between them.
Flow and fragments of energy
Our theory begins with a new fundamental idea – that energy always “flows” through regions of space and time.
Think of energy as made up of lines that fill up a region of space
and time, flowing into and out of that region, never beginning, never
ending and never crossing one another.
Working from the idea of a universe of flowing energy lines, we
looked for a single building block for the flowing energy. If we could
find and define such a thing, we hoped we could use it to accurately
make predictions about the universe at the largest and tiniest scales.
There were many building blocks to choose from mathematically, but we
sought one that had the features of both the particle and wave –
concentrated like the particle but also spread out over space and time
like the wave. The answer was a building block that looks like a
concentration of energy – kind of like a star – having energy that is
highest at the center and that gets smaller farther away from the
center.
Much to our surprise, we discovered that there were only a limited
number of ways to describe a concentration of energy that flows. Of
those, we found just one that works in accordance with our mathematical
definition of flow. We named it a fragment of energy. For the math and physics aficionados, it is defined as A = -⍺/r where ⍺ is intensity and r is the distance function.
Using the fragment of energy as a building block of matter, we then
constructed the math necessary to solve physics problems. The final step
was to test it out.
Back to Einstein, adding universality
...
Full article: https://theconversation.com/fragments-of-energy-not-waves-or-particles-may-be-the-fundamental-building-blocks-of-the-universe
