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Re: Fields and Forces



First making clear that I am no expert whatsoever in this, I would say
the following: I think there a number of assumptions involved in the
comparisons -- assumptions that may be wrong. Ratios of coupling
constants tell you something about ratios of forces, if you assume that
charges are those of the "fundamental" particles we know. This is
particularly hairy for gravitation because no fundamental gravitational
charge (i.e. mass) is known. The system of units, and a breakdown of
quantum calculations points to something fundamental at the Planck Mass
(hc/G)^1/2 = 10^-5 gram. Suppose one imagines a particle of the Planck
mass but with order of the electron charge. The gravitational force is
stronger by a factor 137, and the electric repulsion becomes a small
perturbation. What would a bound state of such objects look like?

If such a Planck Mass object binds with another, the lowest Bohr orbit
is at the radius to make such an object a Black Hole, and the binding
energy is virtually the entire original rest mass. Thus the entire rest
mass is radiated away in the binding and one winds up back at the
elementary particle mass region, yet with far too much binding energy to
be accounted for by any known force between elementary particles. This
is simply because no one has ever seriously conisdered that the binding
energy in such a system (say perhaps it is a bound state of quarks)
could ever be a large fraction of the unbound rest mass.

There is more discussion of this in a paper of mine (with Lloyd Motz) in
Nuovo Cimento 1979.

Jerry Epstein