After decades devoted to the task, Einstein’s attempt to develop a unified field theory for unifying gravity and electromagnetism was unsuccessful. Maybe his theory that gravity is a consequence of the distortion of spacetime by mass was wrong. Einstein’s idea of a spacetime continuum distorted by mass is totally arbitrary. The Royal Society didn’t prove this idea it merely vindicated Einstein’s prediction of the apparent curvature of space around the sun. In the new vortex theory the space around heavenly bodies is thought to be curved because it is vortex energy extending from mass and this idea originates from the single idea of vortex energy that can unify gravity and electromagnetism in terms of vortex interactions. Additional advantages of the new vortex theory is that it is compatible with quantum theory and incorporates many discoveries in physics and astronomy. It also complies with the requirements of the scientific method for a sound theory For these reasons it deserves to be given consideration.
I discovered the potential of the new vortex theory when I first saw Cecil Powell’s ground breaking cosmic ray photograph of mesons. 1 I came across it in 1966, in a textbook provided for my A’ Level physics course at the college of further education in Hastings. The town was celebrating the 900 year centenary of the Battle of Hastings. I celebrated when I realised the picture could pave the way for a reconquest of physics for Britain by the new vortex theory. Under the picture there was a caption which described the meson shower as a vivid illustration of the transformation of kinetic energy into mass. That impressed me. I realised immediately that if the subatomic particles in the nucleus of the silver atom were energy vortices then as the energy driving the cosmic ray particle passed through the proton and neutron vortices in the nucleus, it could have been transformed from wave into vortex motion. I imagined energy somewhat like batter passing through a doughnut machine. The batter takes on the shape of doughnuts while it goes through the machine but if these were to fall onto the floor they would immediately revert to a mess of batter. So with the mesons, on exiting the vortices in the silver atom they would immediately revert from vortex to wave motion. That could account for their extremely short life space. In the fullness of time this simple idea would enable me to explain the short lived particles generated in in high energy research laboratories which I would come to describe as multimillion dollar doughnut making machines. But before then I used the vortex theory to account for the forces associated with subatomic particles.
The vortex of energy can account for the forces associated with primary particles as vortex interactions. Because quantum vortices are dynamic systems of energy, if they overlap they would interact. An overlap would be expected to occur as vortices of energy are infinite extensions.
The vortex of energy would be expected to have an unlimited extension because energy is neither created nor destroyed. As the vortex energy extends out its intensity would diminish but never vanish altogether. This is illustrated by the principle that one can never get rid of a pie by dividing it into ever smaller pieces; it simply gets more dispersed. Like the pie, the extending vortex energy would never cease to be, it would simply spread out more thinly. The fact that the forces of gravity, electric charge and magnetism extend in three dimensions supports the idea they might be the result of vortex interactions because three dimensional extension is a fundamental property of the vortex.
As a three dimensional extension the vortex of energy would expand according to the inverse square law. This means the intensity of energy at a distance would diminish to a quarter as the distance doubles and to a nineth as the distance trebles. If the strength of vortex interactions is determined by the intensity of vortex energy interacting the force of interaction between overlapping vortices would be expected to obey this law. The forces of electric charge, magnetism and gravity do in fact obey the inverse square law in their strength of interactions. This supports the premise that they are caused by vortex interactions.
Subatomic particles are able to act at a distance instantaneously through the forces of electric charge, magnetism and gravity associated with them. Einstein called the ability of particles of energy to act at a distance spooky and he strongly resisted the idea of quantum entanglement.2 But experimental physics has come out in support of the quantum entanglement of photons of light and the infinite extension of quantum vortices of energy suggests the ability of subatomic particles to act at a distance may be the result of a form of quantum entanglement. If sub-atomic particles are infinitely extending quantum vortices of energy they would be in a state of constant entanglement or overlap and so instantaneous interactions between them would be expected. These we observe as the forces of electric charge, magnetism and gravity. The overlapping spheres of infinitely extending quantum vortices of energy are depicted by an ancient symbol called the flower of life and the appearance of an extending ball vortex of energy as concentric spheres can be seen in drawings of the lines of force in electric fields.
The ball of wool model for the quantum vortex of energy suggests that with displacement from the centre of spin the ball vortex would tend to be less a three dimensional spiral and more a nested set of growing or shrinking concentric spheres of energy. The way these expanding or contracting spheres of energy interact, as they overlap, produces the lines of force characteristic of electric fields. If shrinking concentric spheres of vortex energy set up a negative charge and growing spheres set up a positive charge, these diagrams show why like charges repel and unlike charges attract.
Compare the diagram of interacting concentric spheres of energy with the standard lines of electric force taken from a physics textbook.
To appreciate the vortex theory for electric interactions imagine you are in a quantum vortex and experience it as a fireball. As you move outwards from the fiery centre, the energy rapidly diminishes. Suddenly it vanishes altogether as though you have come to the end of the vortex and broken out of its fiery domain. However, the apparent surface of your vortex is not its boundary, it is merely the last intensity of energy that you can perceive. Looking out from this point into the darkness you see other fiery vortices moving about. You assume that all these spinning balls of light are separate vortices occupying a void of darkness - like stars in the night sky. However, your senses deceive you. The apparent void of darkness is full of energy extending from all the vortices. As the invisible energy from one quantum vortex overlaps that of another there is an interaction between them. Standing on your vortex and seeing nothing but a void between you and the others you are perplexed at the inexplicable attractions and repulsions between them and speak of spooky ‘action at a distance’.
In the vortex theory an electric charge is thought to be set up by the flow of vortex energy growing or shrinking in or out of a subatomic particle. Magnetism is considered to be set up by the rotation of the vortex particle, which is called its quantum spin. The natural magnetism set up by a spinning charged particle is known as its magnetic moment. Yet another force field may be set up when the magnetism moves because vortex force fields can be layered one on another.
A growing or decaying magnetic field can interact with an electric field for the following reason. In the spin that sets up an electric field the intensity of vortex energy changes. In the spin that sets up a magnetic field the intensity of vortex energy is uniform. Because a growing or decaying magnetic field involves a change in intensity of vortex energy it is effective as an electric field and can therefore interact with other electric fields.
The quantum vortex enables us to understand why electric charges occur as whole units of electric charge. Each quantum vortex contributes a single whole unit of charge. This is why there are no fractional charges in nature and why the charge associated with a quantum vortex is independent of its mass. The analogy of an army can help us understand this. Armies are made up of single whole soldiers. These represent unitary charges. Fractional soldiers without a limb are either discharged or not admitted into an army. That illustrates the fact that fractional charges do not occur in nature. Each soldier uses a rifle. The size of the soldier doesn’t matter. Whether the soldier is big or little he is equally effective as any other soldier with his rifle. Likewise the charge on a vortex is independent of its mass. Fractional rifles without a stock or a barrel would not work. In like manner while the fractional charges of quark theory may work well in equations they are a fiction that is not observed in nature.
The quantum vortex upholds Newton’s laws as well as Einstein’s relativity. Newton said, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Each extending vortex could be acting as a force against which another is a reaction. Therefore each vortex of energy would exist and act relative to the other. This provides a basis for understanding relativity.
In his special theory of relativity Einstein dismissed the concept of space existing as an absolute void. The extension of space in three dimensions suggests the apparent void of space is set up by extending vortices of energy. Space could be electrically neutral if there were an equal number of opposite charges in existence. It is impossible to have motion without space yet space is set up by energy in vortex motion. The conundrum of which came first space or motion would be resolved if each vortex of energy is treated as an extension of space relative to which its neighbouring vortex is a form of motion. That would make love thy neighbour a universal law. Einstein called it relativity.
I read in Einstein: His Life and Times 3 that when a reporter asked him to put his theory of relativity in a single sentence, he replied, “If you remove matter from the Universe you also remove space and time.” Einstein's remark confirmed for me that matter and space are connected and that they are the same thing; vortex energy. Before I read the book I had concluded from its 3D extension that space could be vortex energy extending from matter into infinity. I had realised if matter is the dense vortex energy we perceive, space could be the sparse vortex energy extending beyond our direct perception. I concluded that matter and space are not different things, they are just different ways we perceive the same thing. I used this idea to explain the central premise in Einstein’s special theory of relativity that the measured speed of light is independent of the velocity of the observer. It was obvious to me if we measured the speed of light the photons whose speed we were measuring would be in our own quantum field or bubble of space, which would move with us as we move. Measuring the speed of light relative to our own space would cause the measure to be independent of our own movement.
The space extending from the sun, for example, would take the form of concentric spheres. Starlight passing close to the sun would follow the curvature of the sun’s space much as a car would follow the road going round a roundabout. This could account for the deflection of starlight predicted by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity, confirmed by the Royal Society eclipse expeditions in 1919.
Einstein attempted to explain gravity in terms of a distortion of spacetime by mass. I contradict him. I propose space is curved not because it is distorted by mass but because it is an extension of mass. I reject Einstein’s idea that gravity was caused by spacetime curvature. I have proposed instead that gravity is caused by an electric interaction between matter and antimatter. In 1931 Paul Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter in the math he was developing for quantum mechanics. It seemed like science fiction until later that same year Carl Anderson at the California Institute of Technology spotted positively charged electrons emerging from a thin lead sheet he was bombarding with gamma rays 10. Dirac had already called them positrons. I accounted for this experiment as two wave trains of energy in a gamma ray photon driving through the nuclear vortices in an atom of lead. As they did so they were transformed into a pair of ball vortices with equal energy spinning in opposite directions. This would explain the electron-positron pair particles with equal mass but opposite sign of charge. When the positron encountered an electron their mass was annihilated and they reverted back to two gamma ray photons. I simplified this as two equal but opposite vortices of energy unzipping one another to revert from the vortex to the wave train form of energy.
In the summer of 1969, I was sitting by a stream in Cornwall pondering on where the energy spinning in the subatomic ball vortex came from and where it went. The answer that came to me was just as water in the stream cycles endlessly between rain drops and the ocean so vortex energy could be circulating endlessly between matter and antimatter. I proposed the Universe exists in two identical halves, one half being matter and the other half antimatter and that there is a universal cycle of energy between the two. I imagined energy spinning into the centre of an electron vortex as though it were a funnel. It then passed through a point of singularity at the centre, as though through a tunnel and then spun out the other side to form a positron vortex with equal mass but opposite charge.
For energy to form a uniform cycle it would have to circulate through every quantum vortex of matter in the Universe into an equal but opposite vortex of antimatter. That would mean beyond the centre of every subatomic particle of matter there would be an identical particle of antimatter. This implied a symmetry of forms that is, every form and action in our world of matter would be faithfully replicated in the mirror world of antimatter. This is reflected in every quantum of energy and every photon of light. Each contains two strings or lines of the movement of light in transverse waves travelling at right angles. In the 19th century they were thought to be electromagnetic waves but in fluorescence and polarization it has been shown that only one of the fields in the photon reacts with matter and also in photography only one field of energy in light reacts with the photographic plate. The other field plays no part in the world of matter whereas magnetic and electric fields are both effective in the world of matter.
Carl Anderson’s experiments demonstrated that one field of energy in the quantum appears to be presumptive matter and the other is presumptive antimatter. This is also evident from the fact that while each quantum or photon is governed by Planck’s constant, symbolised by the letter h, at a quantum level energetic events involve only half a quantum, which would be governed by half Planck’s constant, symbolised by h/2. Each subatomic vortex of matter in the world in which we live is governed by h/2. There is no explanation for this in the theory of quantum mechanics. In physics h/2 is given as the value of quantum spin but nobody appears to know why. The vortex theory that an antimatter half of the universe mirrors every form and action in the world of matter can account for this. The vortex account for quantum reality, which would be dismissed as naïve realism in quantum mechanics, can explain why quantum events occur as integer multiples of half Planck’s constant, h/2. The other half of h or h/2 is effective in the antimatter half of the universe. h/2 reflects the mirror symmetry of the universe. It seems each quantum of wave-kinetic energy is simultaneously in the world of matter and antimatter. I call this quantum loop symmetry.
Between matter and antimatter there is an electric force of attraction which causes bodies of matter and antimatter to accelerate together. According to the vortex account for quantum reality, if every form and action in the world of matter is mirrored in the world of antimatter, then there should be an accelerating force of attraction from the antimatter Earth acting through the centre of the Earth on every body of matter in and on the Earth. This would cause a centralising pull on everyone and everything resulting a fall toward the centre of the Earth. This we observe as gravity. The quantum vortex theory presents an alternative to Einstein’s theory for gravity as expressed in his general theory of relativity. But presenting gravity as an electric force of attraction between matter and antimatter the vortex theory has the advantage over Einstein’s theory because it enables us to unify gravity with the force of electric charge, which Einstein sought, unsuccessfully, to achieve. The vortex account for gravity suggests that the vortex of energy may be the unified field Einstein was searching for to the end of his life. This is because the quantum vortex theory unifies mass, static inertia, three dimensional extension, matter, antimatter, space, electric charge, magnetism and gravity as a field of energy spinning in three dimensions.
For a theory to be acceptable to science it must account for most things with the minimum of assumptions. The quantum vortex theory does that. But it must also predict the outcome of future observations or experiments. This also occurred. When considering the way energy extends in the vortex into infinity it is necessary to consider the size of space as a dimension. We all travel in this dimension when we grow from a single cell into a full grown adult. After Alice in Wonderland I named this the Alician Dimension because in a story that anticipated antimatter, Alice shrank into a looking glass world. The worlds of matter and antimatter could be connected in the extremes of smallness and bigness and an electric force of attraction causing acceleration could operate between them through both the largest and the smallest spheres of space. As well as the gravitation attraction between matter and antimatter in smallest space, there could be a pull from antimatter coming into our world of matter as a polar opposite to gravity acting through the largest size sphere of space, connecting the two halves of the Universe. This pull would operate on the largest things; it would cause galaxies to accelerate toward the largest sphere of space and the closer they would be to it the faster they would accelerate toward it. In the early 1970’s I was able to predict that galaxies furthermost from us would be accelerating faster from us than those closer to us. I also suggested that quasars, then observed as the outermost and brightest things in space, were stars undergoing annihilation over the largest sphere of space. It was obviously annihilation because quasars put out about 200x the energy of a star. Because stars are fuelled by nuclear fusion, which uses just over 0.5% of proton mass, anything generating 200x the energy of fusion must be using up 100% proton mass and the only process we know of that can do that is matter-antimatter annihilation. I announced this as a conclusion to a lecture I gave to young members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a first in the main auditorium, on January 15th 1975. I then published it as The Vortex Cosmology in my book that came out in 1995 5. The apparent accelerating expansion of the Universe was subsequently confirmed by Saul Perlmutter in December 1997. He called the cause of the accelerating expansion of the Universe Dark Energy because he was in the dark about its. Nonetheless he received the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics for his achievement. My achievement was to know that my theory of the quantum vortex satisfied the requirements of the scientific method for a sound theory.
In A Brief History of Time,6 Stephen Hawking wrote:
A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.
1. McKenzie A. E., A Second MKS Course in Electricity, Cambridge University Press, plate 19, 1968
2. Isaacson W., Einstein: His Life and Universe, Simon & Schuster, 2007
3. Clerk R.W., Einstein: His Life and Times, Hodder & Stoughton, 1973
4. Richards et al, Modern University Physics, Part 2, Addison Wesley 1973
5. Ash D. The New Science of the Spirit, The College of Psychic Studies, 1995
6. Hawking S. A Brief History of Time, Bantam Press, 1988