Physicists at CERN, the underground particle accelerator in Switzerland, recently confirmed the existence of so-called "X-Particles. I would just like to use this as an opportunity to show how useful my concept of "The Flow Of Information Through The Universe", January 2016, is.
I started "The Flow Of Information Through The Universe", January 2016, as an independent theory but I now consider it as part of "The Lowest Information Point", December 2017, because this reusing of information at different levels achieves "The Lowest Information Point".
The idea behind this concept is that the structures at higher levels in the universe must be based on the information at lower levels. This is true because there is no information from anywhere else from which to build the structures at higher levels. An example that comes to mind is how the Solar System is made of atoms. The orbits of planets around the sun, as well as moons around the planets, very closely resembles the orbitals of electrons in the atoms.
It has to be this way because there is no information from anywhere else as to how to construct the large-scale structure, the Solar System. Using this principle we can thus discern, by looking at the Solar System, that the atoms of which the Solar System is composed must be of some similar construction. The same inference goes for larger-scale structures of which the Solar System is part. Indeed stars, including our sun, revolve around the center of our galaxy as if it was built on the same information as the Solar System and the atoms.
X-Particles, like so many other particles that physicists have categorized, exist only in very high energy conditions. This means just after the Big Bang, which began the universe as we know it, or maybe in particle accerators. The high energy can force together more fundamental particles that wouldn't usually combine together, bringing compound particles into existence for a brief time.
The protons and neutrons that compose the nuclei of atoms are composed of quarks. There are two kinds of quarks in atoms and they have fractional electric charges. An up quark has a charge of +2/3 and a down quark has a charge of -1/3. Two up quarks and a down quark give us a proton, with an overall charge of +1. Two down quarks and an up quark give us a neutron, with an overall charge of zero.
Protons and neutrons, each composed of three quarks, are known as hadrons and are stable. Other particles composed of two quarks, a quark and an antiquark, are called mesons.
But under extremely high energy conditions many other particles come into existence, if only briefly. Tetraquarks means composed of four quarks, but are not stable and last only very briefly. The recently discovered X-Particles are believed to be an agglomeration of quarks, forced together under high energy conditions that wouldn't normally exist, but are so-called because they exist too briefly to be analyzed.
The atoms of our familiar matter is known as first-generation matter. The electrons in atoms are not composed of quarks, they are of a different class of particles known as leptons. But there is a second and third generation of leptons, known as muons and tauons, that are not stable and do not last under ordinary energy conditions.
There is also a second and third generation of quarks, not composite particles composed of quarks but of quarks themselves. The first generation of quarks, that compose protons and neutrons, are the up and down quarks. There is a second and third generation of quarks, charm and strange quarks and top and bottom quarks. But these have no role in ordinary matter.
The particles that compose matter, hadrons (protons and neutrons) and leptons (electrons) are known collectively as fermions. There are also "messenger particles", known as bosons.
Neutrons are an essential part of atoms in every element except hydrogen. But even neutrons have an unstable nature. Neutrons are formed, during nuclear fusion in stars, by crunching an electron into a proton. Neutrons are necessary to hold the nucleus together, against the mutually-repulsive force of the positively-charged protons. The atoms of heavy elements have far more neutrons than protons or electrons.
But, unlike protons or electrons, neutrons are only stable while in the confines of the nucleus. A neutron on it's own will break down into a proton and an electron in an average of about 15 minutes. This is why there are protons and electrons in cosmic rays, but no neutrons.
Now, let's get back to our familiar environment of stable matter, with electrons and with protons and neutrons composed of quarks, in relatively low-energy conditions. The exotic particles, and agglomerations of particles, only exist in high-energy conditions, like just after the Big Bang. Scientists try to recreate the particles with particle accelerators.
All matter began, after the Big Bang, with the light atoms that formed. The original atoms were about 75% hydrogen, about 25% helium, and traces of lithium. All atoms heavier than this have formed by the two fusion processes that take place in the centers of stars.
The usual fusion process is the S-process, for "slow". Atoms are kept separate from one another by the electron repulsion of their outermost electron shells. A star is born when enough mass comes together by it's mutual gravity to overcome this electron repulsion and crunch smaller atoms together into larger ones. The new larger atom contains less overall internal energy than the smaller atoms that were crunched together to form it. This excess energy is released as radiation and this is why stars shine.
Heavier atoms require proportionally more neutrons in the nucleus, relative to protons. During fusion some of the electrons of an atom are crunched into protons to form neutrons, the process is known as K-capture. It takes four hydrogen atoms crunched together to form one helium atom, which is the next heaviest element after hydrogen.
A hydrogen atom contains only one proton and one electron. When four hydrogen atoms are crunched into one of helium two of the hydrogen atoms have their electron crunched into their proton to create a neutron. The helium atom that is created thus has two protons and two neutrons in the nucleus, and two electrons.
This is the stage of fusion that the sun is in now, crunching together four hydrogen atoms to form one helium atom. The new helium atom has less overall internal energy than the four hydrogen atoms that formed it. The excess energy is released as radiation and this is why we have sunshine.
The easiest atom to fuse together, the one requiring the least gravitational pressure, is the isotope of hydrogen known as deuterium. Most hydrogen atoms have only a proton comprising the nucleus but deuterium has a neutron as well. This is the easiest to fuse because one of the neutrons required for the helium atom is already there, it does not require crunching an electron into a proton. There are small stars, known as "brown dwarfs" that can fuse only deuterium.
A water molecule consists of one atom of oxygen and two of hydrogen, the familiar H2O. If the two atoms of hydrogen are deuterium, each with a neutron, the water is known as "heavy water" and is about 10% heavier than ordinary water. Ordinary water, if used as the moderator in a nuclear reactor, will absorb neutrons. So heavy water is used because it's hydrogen atoms already contain neutrons, it slows neutrons down without absorbing them.
Due to the ease at which deuterium fuses, thus releasing energy, a hydrogen bomb is formed by surrounding an ordinary atomic bomb with a layer of heavy water. The tremendous heat will cause the deuterium to fuse, and the excess energy that is released will make it far more powerful than an ordinary atomic bomb.
Aside from this S-process of fusion there is also the R-process, for rapid. The ordinary S-process only goes as far as iron. We know that the sun is a second-generation star that was preceded by a large star that exploded in a supernova. The debris from this explosion formed the sun and planets. The fact that the ordinary fusion process only goes as far as iron is why iron is so abundant in the inner Solar System. It is the most abundant element in the earth by mass.
All elements heavier than iron, such as gold, silver, lead and, uranium, require an additional input of energy to form. The only time that this takes place is during the explosion of a supernova. This is why iron, and elements lighter than it, are exponentially more common than elements heavier than iron. Atoms that usually wouldn't be crunched together are crunched together, into new heavy atoms, by the tremendous energy released during a supernova.
But many of the heavy atoms formed during the explosion of the supernova are less-than-stable. The high energy of the explosion forces atoms together but they may emit particles or radiation in order to seek a more stable configuration. These emissions are known as radioactivity.
With that background let's return to my theory of how information flows through the universe, from the lower to higher levels. The structure of our familiar ordinary matter is information, and this information must have come from somewhere.
Can you see how the elements heavier than iron, requiring the high energy of a supernova to put them together, are based on the information from the particles put together by the energy released by the Big Bang, particles which ordinarily wouldn't exist?
The newly-discovered X-Particles, along with the myriad of other particles that existed only briefly when forced together by the tremendous energy of the Big Bang and which particle physicists try to coax back into existence with particle accelerators, are the information, at a more fundamental level of reality, that the heavier elements created only in a supernova, and breaking down by radioactivity, are based on.
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