Yesterday, the media reported widely on the upcoming launch of OSIRIS-REx. While many of these reports were accurate and informative, a few of the headlines were a little misleading. For example:

NASA Spacecraft Set to Explore Giant Asteroid That Could Destroy Earth

Fortunately, as the news cycle progressed, these inaccuracies were corrected:

No, Asteroid Bennu Won’t Destroy Earth

I thought it would be useful to summarize the effects of a Bennu impact. The Minor Planet Center classifies Bennu as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid because it has a diameter larger than 150 m and a minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of < 0.05 Astronomical Units (abbreviated AU and equal to the average distance between the Earth and Sun) with the Earth. Bennu has a mean diameter of 492 meters and its MOID is 0.003 AU. The MOID will steadily decrease resulting in a potential Earth impact during the later decades of…

Topic023: Where Particles Begin – and End, Bill Tifft, 7/04/16

Z W section of book chapter 4, table 4

Table of fits to the Lepton

Matter is a dynamical assembly of packets of passive energy. The 1 2 4 triad is apparently that basic package, not only a basic energy unit but a basic structural block for forming particles. The triad involves three consecutive doublings which appears to be the maximum doubling range possible within an individual structural unit. Quarks are then built upon multiples of triads, as will be shown subsequently in Topic024, to generate quarks and leptons, where the leptons represent limiting forms for quarks and both light and heavy mesons. Hadrons, mesons, bosons and baryons, are dynamical assemblies of quarks. The stable proton is, in a sense, the limiting form for baryons, but in fact is assembled from quarks, already limited.

The Zo and associated W Gauge…

Topic022: The Fundamental Forces, Introducing The Triad, Bill Tifft, 6/15/16

Fine Structure Constant

Book chapter 4, table 8

Before proceeding to discuss the nature of quarks, or even finish discussing leptons and light mesons, I need to introduce the `triad’, the key to defining the fundamental forces. Technically I have already introduced the 1 2 4 triad but historically it was originally recognized in the early years of QTC when the forces were defined. The full significance of the triad within QTC came later with the study of the nature of quarks as discussed in my book and the following Topic023. (For book information or acquisition see Post001 and Post002.) The key to defining the fundamental forces involves the `fine structure constant’, designated as `Alpha’, which measures the relative strength of the forces. Alpha measures the ratio between the interaction strength of a force and a fundamental reference strength…

Topic021: The Light Mesons and Lepton Limits, Bill Tifft, 6/02/16

Table 4, section 2 from book chapter 4

Table 7, section 4, from book chapter 4

One of the best actions possible in support of QTP theory is to provide good answers to puzzles in existing theories. QTP, through QTC and QTPP, has been very effective in that process. QTC speaks for itself through earlier Topics, with more to come, as the terminal figure of Topic020 illustrates. The ability to predict energy level patterns which define masses, properties (such as magnetic moments) of particles, and interrelationships between classes of particles is a unique and remarkable accomplishment. The baryon class of hadrons (quark based particles) find their home in tightly defined 3-d quantum energy levels intimately tied to a 3-d 64 Planck based doubling structure. This is possible because the structure is compatible with Keplerian vector dynamics in 3-d space. There…