Introduction to the Tron Theory
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | Introduction to the Tron Theory |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Jim Marsen |
| Keywords | tron, ron, tronos, vibra motion, aether, unified theory, tired light, missing mass |
| Published | 2014 |
| No. of pages | 10 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
The Tron Theory is proposed for unifying physical science. It presents a new fundamental particle called the tron. The tron is several orders of magnitude smaller than the electron. Trons are premised to be everywhere, their physical involvement thorough. Each tron is composed of even smaller particles called rons. Adjacent trons attract each other with an elemental force that is neutral of charge. The inter-tron force is inversely proportional to the distance between tron cores. The fundamental particles are constructed with trons closely pressed together. Tenuous arrays of trons cohere to form the respective imponderable physical fields. Micro-particle action is revealed as a causal discipline. Particles are presented in determinate activity. The composition and dynamic properties of the tron and ron are set forth in seven axiom forming the Tron Postulate.
Overview
This ten-page document is the manifesto of a mechanical theory of everything begun by Richard A. Marsen (1910–1974) and carried forward by his son James R. Marsen, who circulated it in 2014. It is an introduction in the strict sense: it names the entities, states seven axioms, shows four schematic diagrams, and promises that "future papers will explore the topics presented here in detail." No derivation is completed within it and only one formula appears.
The picture is frankly and deliberately mechanical. The universe is packed solid with trons — neutral, massive, "far tinier than electrons" — each consisting of a compressed core surrounded by an onion-like cloud of smaller particles called rons, which are in turn built of ons, and so on. Trons cohere by a charge-neutral attraction falling off as the inverse first power of the distance between cores. Where trons are squeezed tightly together you have matter; where they form tenuous ordered arrays you have a field, which the Marsens call a tronos. Electric, magnetic and gravitational fields are simply different tronos configurations, and "electric and gravitational fields are gradients of the density of trons in the tronos".
Two further claims give the theory its reach. Every microparticle's outer shell — its parfield — oscillates against the surrounding tronos, so the particle advances in surges; "the length of each particle surge is the same as its concurrent de Broglie wavelength". This vibra motion is offered as the replacement for wave-particle duality and for quantum indeterminacy: "it does not require the doctrines Indeterminacy or Complementarity, and is basically causal." And surging particles radiate into the tronos, so a photon is not a quantum but "interrupted continuous wave trains, such as 106 waves long, and even longer".
The argument
Trons, rons and the regress
The seven-axiom Tron Postulate is set out at the end of the paper. Trons are tiny, neutral, of minute mass, with a core embedded in a pliant cloud (Axiom 1). The cloud is made of rons, the core is compressed rons, rons are supported by "even tinier ons" (Axiom 2). Rons sit in generally spherical shells, "the size of each ron is proportional to its distance from the tron's center", and "each full ron-layer about a tron is made up of the same number of rons regardless of radial position" (Axiom 3). Each tron continually attracts rons onto itself, with an attraction potential "inversely proportional to the radial position of its outer rons" (Axiom 4). A tron stabilizes when its peripheral rons match the size of the contiguous boundary rons (Axiom 5). Displacements propagate by rons being peeled off and passed along chains of contiguous trons; near the Earth's surface "the speed of ron transmission is the electro-magnetic c. This speed is lower through regions of higher tron density, and vice versa" (Axiom 6). And the universe is filled with contiguous trons, rons filling the interstices between trons and ons the interstices between rons (Axiom 7).
Ron-flux and the origin of waves
Figures 2 to 5 carry the dynamics. Compress an inner group of trons and their ron clouds shrink, releasing a ron-flux that is absorbed by the surrounding larger trons; the inner region grows denser and the outer region thinner. When the inner group reaches maximum density the flow reverses and rons return. "This dynamic interaction continues: the array of Fig 4 alternates with Fig 5. The amplitude of this exchange slowly decreases over time," until the density is uniform. This alternation is the mechanism for generating and propagating radiant waves, and, applied to the parfield of a single particle, the source of vibra motion and of the newly introduced parameter "particle frequency".
Matter, nuclear binding and fusion
"Nuclear binding energy is the enhanced force among tron groups that are highly compressed together at the core." In a fusion reaction "trons belonging to the nucleons are squeezed out from where the nucleons join", joining the local tronos; part of their potential energy raises the local tron density and part becomes kinetic energy. Electrons and nucleons are formed when trons "are concentrated and bound together", which the paper places at "the energetic cauldron found at the cores of galaxies". Matter is therefore never created or destroyed, only re-packed.
Cosmology
The only equation in the document governs the tronos density around a mass:
- d = kM/r
with d in trons per cubic centimetre, M the mass, r the distance, and k "a constant (to be determined)". From this the paper draws two cosmological conclusions. The summed mass of interstellar trons "adds up to account for the observed 'missing mass' of the universe". And since "the velocity of electromagnetic waves is inversely proportional to the density of the tronos", light slows near a star, which "accounts for the bending of light by a star".
The redshift is not expansion: "the red shift is seen to result from an imperceptible but nonetheless continual energy loss occurring in stellar radiant waves as they propagate through the intergalactic tronos" — a tired-light cosmology, which the paper commends as "a calmer cosmology".
Assessment
The Marsens are attempting something with a long and respectable pedigree: to replace fields with a mechanism, so that gravitation, electromagnetism and nuclear binding are not three unexplained laws but three configurations of one substance. The wish to "visualize particles and fields and their interactions" and to recover a causal, deterministic microphysics is exactly what motivated Kelvin's vortex atoms and Lord Rayleigh's elastic aether, and the paper's insistence that an equation is not an explanation is a serious position honestly held.
One piece of the construction is more careful than it first looks. Axiom 3 requires ron size to scale with radius and each shell to hold the same number of rons; those two conditions are geometrically consistent, since a shell of radius r has area proportional to r2 and rons of size proportional to r have cross-section proportional to r2. The shells then thin geometrically inward, so "innumerable ron-layers" can indeed fit inside a finite tron. That is a designed detail, not an accident, and it deserves acknowledging.
Everything else in the paper is an assertion, and where a consequence can be extracted it goes badly wrong.
The one equation makes the speed of light vary by a factor of hundreds. Take d = kM/r together with Axiom 6's rule that wave speed is inversely proportional to tron density. Then the speed of light scales as r/M. At the Sun's photosphere, M/r is about 214 times its value at the Earth's orbit, so light would travel roughly 214 times slower at the solar limb than here. Even ignoring the Sun's surface, the Sun's contribution to the density at the Earth exceeds the Earth's own by a factor of fourteen, so c would vary by about ±3.4 per cent over the year as the Earth's distance from the Sun changes by ±1.7 per cent. The measured constancy of c and of atomic frequencies is at the 10−17 level in modern optical-clock comparisons; the real gravitational effect on light propagation, the Shapiro delay, is a few parts in 106 at the solar limb, not a factor of 214. Any usable version of this idea needs d to be a large uniform background plus a tiny mass-dependent perturbation, which is not what the paper writes.
The same equation makes the tron density infinite. A density falling only as 1/r encloses a mass growing as r2: integrate kM/r over a sphere and the tron mass inside radius R rises without bound, eventually exceeding the source mass by any factor one likes. Summed over all the matter in a large universe it diverges outright, in the same way as Olbers' paradox. This matters because the paper wants exactly that surplus to be the missing mass — but a halo profile of 1/r does not produce flat galactic rotation curves either. Flat curves require an enclosed mass rising as r, hence a density falling as 1/r2. With 1/r, the enclosed mass rises as r2 and orbital speeds would rise as √r indefinitely, which is not observed in any galaxy.
An inverse-first-power force between contiguous particles is not stable. A 1/r attraction has a logarithmic potential — it never releases a particle, and the force contributed by successive shells of an infinite tron sea grows as r dr, so the total pull on any tron diverges quadratically and must be cancelled by exact isotropy. The paper offers no account of how a universe "filled with myriads of trons", all attracting one another with such a law, avoids collapsing into its own cores.
Light bending is claimed but not derived, and the analogy is an old one. Treating a gravitational field as a refracting medium with index rising toward the mass is Eddington's classic optical analogue, and it does reproduce the observed deflection at first order provided the index is tuned to 1 + 2GM/c2r. But the paper's k is explicitly "to be determined", so nothing is predicted: the factor that would distinguish the correct 1.75 arcseconds at the solar limb from the Newtonian 0.87 is precisely the constant left unfixed. Saying that a variable wave speed "accounts for" bending states a possibility, not a result.
Tired light conflicts with two well-defined measurements. The light curves of Type Ia supernovae are observed stretched in duration by exactly (1 + z), which a static universe with photons losing energy in transit does not produce — the photons would redden without the events taking longer. And the cosmic microwave background is a blackbody to better than a part in 104 across its whole spectrum, whereas any scattering process that steals energy from photons over gigaparsecs distorts a blackbody into something else and blurs distant images, which are seen sharp.
The photon as a million-wave train is contradicted in the laboratory. A classical wave train can be split at a beamsplitter; a photon cannot. Anticorrelation experiments of the Grangier–Roger–Aspect type send single emissions at a beamsplitter and find that the two detectors essentially never fire together, a result no continuous wave train reproduces. The energy-versus-frequency relation in the photoelectric effect — where the stopping voltage depends on colour and not at all on intensity — is the same difficulty in its original form.
Finally there is the regress. Axiom 2 makes trons of rons, rons of ons, and the text says the ron "is similarly made up of infinitely minuter ons". An explanation that terminates nowhere explains nothing in particular: whatever property is asked about at one level is deferred to the next, and no quantity can ever be computed, which is why the paper contains no numbers. The Marsens' complaint about modern physics is that it substitutes mathematics for mechanism. The difficulty with the Tron Postulate as it stands is the mirror image — it offers a mechanism so unconstrained that it cannot be made to predict anything, and the single formula it does commit to is refuted by the constancy of the speed of light.