Eric, Good point. They are edging into the mysteries of the Higgs field – and compounding it with semantic uncertainties. Given that quarks are not quantized, can any combination of quarks be? I cannot explain this but the vagaries of “rest mass” seems to provide a possible answer.
As with a photon, “rest mass” is almost a meaningless parameter since it cannot be grasped in a way that has objective relevance when it is to be converted to energy. Yet, quarks and electrons are said to be massless in one sense (the sense that makes the formalism work) while always acting otherwise in the real world. Which is to say that “fundamental properties” (in general) all have apparent mass because they couple to the Higgs field. Is the coupling itself variable according to circumstances? Isn’t that merely a semantic crutch? If fixed mass isn't an intrinsic property of anything basic, like a proton, it is difficult to prohibit any kind of mass-to-energy exchange… or alternatively, it provide the perfect precondition for rationalization. To be a bit cynical, this is why I have few reservations about forwarding a rationalization hypothesis like RPF. It works backwards from known effects instead of forward from known causes, so it molds to the facts without requiring much of an underlying foundation. Without the diproton reaction, of course, it would be lost – but the universality of that reaction provides all the required secondary credibility needed to make it work. As you may have read, “According to theoretical calculations the diproton reaction would have been much more stable (although still beta decaying to deuterium) had the strong force been 2% greater.” Lipinski’s gravity many provide that small boost :-) In any event, this tenuous situation is preferable in most ways to theories which fail out of the starting gate – as does every explanation which cannot deal with the lack of gammas, which essentially is all of the ones where the fusion is permanent. From: Eric Walker Jones Beene wrote: Stephen A. Lipinski and Hubert M. Lipinski released a new paper on their theory of all forces. http://unifiedgravity.com/resources/Theory-Describing-All-Forces-and-Prediction-of-the-Baryon-Rest-Masses.pdf ... In Reversible Proton Fusion or RPF ... Energy is released from proton mass (MEE) – which implies that the average mass of the proton population contains an exploitable excess mass, which provides many times more than chemical energy when converted. The abstract mentions quantization of the baryon spectrum, which presumably includes the masses of protons. I understand your reversible-proton-fusion explanation to require that the masses of protons not be quantized. Have I overlooked something in the paper that clarifies things? Eric
