Introduction

A year has passed since I published two short books on physics in which I used a strict particle model to explain the physical world we live in. In this model, nothing happens without direct physical interaction. There’s no action at a distance. Everything that exists is an assembly of particles. Every force is due to particles colliding and interacting.

The books, titled The Velcro Universe and The Velcro Cosmos, outline a physical model that can be used to explain a whole range of physical phenomena. The Velcro Universe covers, electricity, magnetism, gravity, optics, and the atom. The Velcro Cosmos covers space, time, inertia and energy.

Both books were hastily written. They contain no elaborations and no excuses. The physics is laid out without explaining the wider context. My aim was solely to show that it would work, and as such the two books are still relevant. However, there are some errors and misrepresentations. There are also quite a few things that could do with some elaborations.

With the dust now settled from my initial excitement, time has come to write a revised version of my two books. I will elaborate on my thinking and explain more fully why the model is the way it is, and how it can be used to explain the observed universe.

My aim is not to make the reader a true believer in my theory. I don’t believe in “settled science”. That goes as much for this theory as any other. Rather than settling on one theory as the one and only true representation of reality, I’d like to see people open to the idea that the world can be described in many ways, and that the different ways deserve equal attention and scrutiny.

Settling on a single idea only serves to restrict the mind. As Aristotle once said, it is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it. The thought I want the reader to entertain in this book is the idea that everything we know can be derived from three basic particle quanta and a handful of rules to fuse it all together.