Doesn't bother it, since -- even if quarks are only a "model" -- so is everything else.  So in an imperfect "quark model", the quark flipping will explain the change IN THAT MODEL'S VIEW.  If another model turns up having to be used, one just has to adapt the PROCESS to the new model.

The point is that nothing we know or theorize or mathematize is anything at all but just a model. Understand, some are better than others, and some are FAR better than some others. But we have no "absolute" knowledge about anything.

So I'm not worried about that; for one thing, the quarks were just the best they could do, and that model is still being extended (some new evidence of even higher number of quarks in a particle, etc.).

Scientists, though, tend to be or become nearly fanatical on their preferred models. Unless one is careful, differing models can turn things into a real cur dog fight, instead of science.

Actually a curvature of spacetime itself is not observable either. When something passes through it and moves or changes, that movement or change itself is observed, NOT the curvature of spacetime.

The same is true for fields, potentials, and all the rest.

Putting it simply: Only the effect of some interaction between a cause and a previous observable is observable as a new observation. We simply take the effect of some former interaction, already observed, and then we watch for a change in that observable. When that change occurs, hoo boy!  We must got dem new "cause" because we got dem "new result" lak de Cajun say.

But we can never, never, never observe fundamental cause itself, because observation itself is a process only yielding the effect (of the cause's action on a previous observable).

The movement of a needle on a measuring instrument is an example. The instrument and the needle are already "previous observables".  When the needle is observed to have changed position or "moved", we INFER the cause, because of the way we have constructed the functioning of the instrument. From measurements we apply our model to INFER what the cause was, and what its actions were to provoke the changes in the observables our instruments recorded.

For unexpected (unpredicted by our prevailing model) observations we therefore must construct a "better model", hopefully consistent with what we know before, and one where that "adjusted model" either extends the old one or is a new one for new phenomenology.

But we really, really, really never do actually observe the "cause" of anything, only its effect.

Cheers,

Tom

Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2003 10:13 AM

Tom

Myron is theorizing that quarks don't exist and are only a theoretical construct.

If this is correct, how does this affect the validity of the mechanism of quark flipping that you describe?

Regards

Tony