Having established that the basic premise in Halton Arp’s hypothesis is correct, we can take a look at what might cause matter to become more massive over time.
Halton Arp suggested that radiation in the form of high energy photons condense onto matter, thereby increasing the mass of matter over time while simultaneously cooling down the environment.
Sticking with Morton Spears’ particle quanta as our only building blocks, we see that the increased mass must be due to growing protons, because electrons are as small as they can get.
The electron consist of only 3 charged quanta, which corresponds to the negative orb of a photon.
The proton, on the other hand, consists of 2177 charged quanta. It consists of hundreds of photons.
It seems therefore plausible that the proton may have started out much smaller, and that it has grown to its current size over time.
The mechanism for this would be one in which protons sometimes consume gamma-ray photons as follows:
- A gamma-ray photon crashes into a proton.
- The photon breaks into an electron and a positron.
- The proton consumes both the electron and the positron.
If this is how things work, then we can assume that the number 2177 for the current size of protons is an average. Some protons may be slightly larger, and others slightly smaller.
Protons grow over time. Inertia and gravity become stronger as a consequence.
Going back in time by studying the fossil records, we might find evidence of an environment in which gravity and inertia was less. As it happens, that’s exactly what we find.
Since mass is an abstraction, mass condensation should be renamed charge condensation. The concept can be redefined as follows: when a proton absorbs an electron and a positron, the proton gains electric charge. However, there is a limit to how much charge a proton can acquire before it becomes radioactive (The proton/atom undergoes fission).
You’re right. The condensation process relates solely to charged particles, and the most direct way to describe this is ‘charge condensation’, as you suggest.
I remember debating the name of this chapter in my head when I was writing it, because ‘mass’ is an abstraction. It’s merely a name that encompasses gravitational force and inertia, which are two different phenomena related to the total number of charged particles making up the proton.
However, Halton Arp had already coined the phrase ‘mass condensation’, and I decided to stick with this because that’s the phrase most likely to be searched for. But the phrase is in fact a misnomer, and I will point this out in future revisions of this book.
Thank you very much for your comment.