IPI Letters

Does Electricity Suggest the Universe is Constantly Recycled?

Rodney Bartlett — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0300

This was inspired by an article in New Scientist which looked at the everyday experience of static electricity and was amazed by science's lack of knowledge about what it is. My very short article speaks of change in orientation of fields caused by movement in the opposite direction making negative charge become positive and positive become negative, and describes the process with the equations 180° ΔO = + => - (180 Degree Change in Orientation Equals Positive Becomes Negative) as well as 180° ΔO = - => +. It also looks at something from a different angle viz electric-magnetic equivalence, and refers to a chemistry experiment at Oxford, quarks, and digital waves.

Erratum: A General Law of Functionality: VanCampen’s Law

Arend van Campen — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0300

Extending the Standard Model through Generation Number Reinterpretation

Barry Robson — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0300

It is often stated that there is little obvious relationship between the rest mass energies in the standard model except that mass increases with generation in each one of the particle types, i.e. within the series of quarks, electron leptons and possibly neutrinos considered individually. However, this is misleading. Aclearer, more coherent, pattern emerges when (a) the notion of a generation number is treated as a quantum number divorced from separately considering each series, (b) when the particles are considered as arranged by the rest mass plus a small constant mass in the manner of a loop quantum field correction (with focus on the ”package” that somehow holds the particles of similar mass), and (c) when the logarithms of the mass-energies are plotted in a particular way against the generation number to include the photon, Higgs particle,Wand Z bosons, and a popular form of the conjectured graviton. The fact that the convenient use of log MeV/c2 mass energy is not
dimensionless is discussed. Three mainstreams I, II, III emerge from the clusters; the first two differ in slope and extrapolate to converge persuasively at a generation zero that is tempting to associate with massless spin 0 bosons, notably the photon, generating 11 clusters of mass energies with reasonably tight dispersion. It is suggested that the 4 generations may arise through a phase shift of π/2 related to 4 orthogonal superpositions of spins or bits |0>and |1>comprehensible in terms of axis rotations corresponding to progressive multiplication of the superpositions by imaginary number i. A projected mass energy for mainstream III, primarily the neutrino series, projected to generation zero, lies in the mass domain of axion-like particles (ALPs), still considered good dark matter candidates. The amplitude is more problematic, but, Chester’s pedagogical bead-on-a-circular- wire model provides a plausible explanation in terms of wavenumbers and kinetic energy as mass energy.

Two-Term Scaling Law for Nuclear Charge and Stability Across Isotopes

Tracy McSheery — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0300

The structure of the atomic nucleus, of over 5,800 isotopes and isomers from the NuBase 2020 dataset, is traditionally explained through a patchwork of complex models. We demonstrate that a two-term law, Q(A) = c₁A²/³ + c₂A, captures the global charge-mass relationship of all known isotopes—stable and unstable alike—with a coefficient of determination R² ≈ 0.979. This "Core Compression Law," derived from a physical model of competing surface and volume effects, relating the charge distribution and competing mass density gradients defines a universal "backbone" for the entire chart of nuclides. The contribution of this study is the analysis of the residuals (ΔQ) from this law. Deviations from the backbone are not random but systematically classify nuclides into "Overcharged" (ΔQ > 0) and "Starved" (ΔQ < 0) bins, which directly correspond to known decay pathways. Crucially, the magnitude of the residual, |ΔQ|, exhibits a strong correlation with the logarithm of the half-life. This reframes nuclear instability not as a collection of separate rules but as a single, predictable principle: a nuclide's stability is determined by its geometric "charge stress" relative to the universal compression law.